Un-finishing
Although Wurster Hall’s design intent was that it remain perpetually unfinished, changes have been made in the spirit of its designers’ expectation that inhabitants would make adjustments to fit their own needs. Since the seismic retrofit project completion, two major projects have enhanced the building’s core space. A renovation of the central courtyard brought more of the old Ark’s soul and smoothed some of the cold rationality inherent in the original design. An elegant addition housing the College’s new digital fabrication lab marked its transition into twenty-first century design.
The courtyard was a key driver of Wurster Hall’s form, but it never quite lived up to anyone’s expectations. Vernon DeMars perhaps best captured the contradictions inherent in it when he said, “We could have afforded brick…But beyond being considered sentimental, it was judged to be incompatible with concrete. So we have honest asphalt.” Although many students were attracted to the radical newness of the building, they did not feel the same about the courtyard. Just a few years after the building opened, students were digging up the asphalt in an attempt to make the space more hospitable.
In the final year of the building’s seismic retrofit, the College held a design competition for a reimagining of the courtyard. The winning competition entry, submitted by landscape architect and CED graduate Patricia O’Brien, proposed a major reconfiguration of the courtyard, including a new exhibit pavilion and a full repaving in brick. Budget constraints significantly reduced the scope of the O’Brien’s design, but it nonetheless created a more inviting exterior space for the College.
The digital fabrication lab, adjacent to the courtyard, is one of the few visible additions to the building. Designed by Bay Area firm Mark Cavagnero Associates Architects and completed in 2014, it houses the CED’s laser cutters, 3-D printers, and other production equipment. The addition is subtle by requirement. It could only occupy the space formerly used as the outdoor work area for the wood shop, and it had to re-use two of its solid concrete enclosing walls. Inside the space is a symphony of precisely controlled machinery, but the exterior quietly establishes a more formal and refined edge to the courtyard.
The most recent addition to Bauer Wurster Hall came in the form of virtual space. Efforts to digitally represent Wurster in three dimensions go back to the 1980s, but in 2020 a group of students lead by architecture professor Luisa Caldas, developed new dimensions. In response to the isolation of the Covid pandemic restrictions, this group created “Virtual Bauer Wurster,” an immersive virtual model of the building where students could interact, share their work, and reconnect in real time.
While the digital version of Bauer Wurster Hall does not profess to replicate the tangible qualities of its concrete analog, it captures its essence. It fulfills William Wurster’s hope for an open, boundless space that students can make and remake as their own.
