Construction & Landscape

Few things define Bauer Wurster Hall more than its wholesale embrace of exposed concrete as a construction material. Although concrete appealed to the architects for both aesthetic and economic reasons, they attributed the building’s material innovations to Isadore Thompson, the building’s structural engineer.

Thompson’s key contribution was to suggest that the building’s entire exterior as could be constructed from two-story precast concrete units. At the time it was conventional to run steel columns through two stories, but this was unheard of in concrete construction, which had typically used single-story units or poured-in-place concrete. With Thompson’s method, the large I-shaped units could be fabricated elsewhere, transported to the site, and then hoisted into place on the façade.

This approach achieved significant costs savings and won attention as one of the largest precast buildings in the US, but the architects had mixed feelings. DeMars was doubtful of the monolithic use of a single material, although he eventually came around admitting that the concrete horizontals endowed the building with sculptural unity. From the start, Esherick was enthusiastic about Thompson’s avant-garde solution, as he was captivated in general with technological advances in construction.

Yet even Esherick later admitted its limitations. The technology to control concrete was immature, and the team did not have the money to do exquisite concrete work like that at Kahn’s Salk Center in La Jolla. The steam curing of the concrete—another time and cost-saving measure—resulted in the crazed concrete finish that lends the building a particularly dreary aspect in rain. Esherick’s chief regret, however, was that the perceived durability of the concrete persuaded the university to judge the building maintenance-free, precluding many routine upkeep measures. 

As the building neared completion, planning began for the surrounding landscape. The final landscape design can be attributed to the well-known Bay Area landscape architect Thomas Church, who was a longtime consultant to the university and frequently determined the planting of areas around newly constructed campus buildings.

Drawings in Church’s archives suggest that faculty from the Department of Landscape analyzed the setting and provided alternative design concepts to Church, but he was likely also embodying the landscape priorities of the 1956 Campus Plan on which Church had worked closely with Wurster. The 1956 plan emphasized the retention and augmentation of the campus’ “natural informal appearance,” which they felt made the campus a particularly distinguished California setting.