University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. (Formerly Southeastern Massachusetts Technological Institute / SMTI, 1963-1969 and Southeastern Massachusetts University, 1969-1991.) 285 Old Westport Road, North Dartmouth, MA, 1963-.
‘The central organization of this campus is purposely a moving, or dynamic, one. That’s the very nature of what is needed, as I see it. When one gets beyond the spiraling mall, with its defining buildings, walks, terraces, plantings, etc., then other architects will take over, and indeed they already have. In that sense, I’ve thought of it as similar to Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia, wherein he made a fixed, well-defined, marvelous central core for the campus. But, beyond the core, other architects took over, building very inferior structures. The idea, the central core, must be strong enough as a center of the campus, and other architects will add on to that. But the cohesiveness of the center remains intact.”
Cook, John Wesley. Conversations with Architects : Philip Johnson, Kevin Roche, Paul Rudolph, Bertrand Goldberg, Morris Lapidus, Louis Kahn, Charles Moore, Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown. New York: Praeger, 1973.
“SMU is a new commuter campus on a very large piece of land well removed from other structures. Its design started with Jefferson’s University of Virginia and his defined “lawn” surrounded by pavilions connected with covered walks on two sides with the rotunda addressing the view on the opposite side. SMU’s “lawn” is a spiralling space, defined by a series of connected buildings on opposites sides, with a narrowed entry at one end and an open ended space at the other where the spiral becomes much larger, is marked by a campanile, and turns towrds the lake. This central pedestrian complex was set in a mile diameter access drive connecting to an inner ring of parking. I got fired before the “spiral” was finished but fortunately I had some friends in other architectual offices who saw it through.
Desmond and Lord?
Desmond and Lord, yes – they believed in the scheme and carried out most of the buildings which define the central space.”
Davern, Jeanne M. “A Conversation with Paul Rudolph.” Architectural Record 170 (March 1982): 90-97.
On his firing from SMTI / UMass Dartmouth in 1966:
‘Yes, I was fired. But in a sense, my influence and efforts did not change that drastically — not at first anyway — because the other architects — and I have to emphasize that there were many architects involved — understood that there was a pervading idea, series of ideas, welding the campus into one, and that it needed to be an ongoing effort, so the other architects actually came to my rescue, otherwise it would not have worked.
The then Governor of Massachusetts [John Volpe, 1908-1994] felt very strongly that I should resign, so I had no alternative but to do so. This was essentially over questions of cost, but his staff, as I understand it, reported that our buildings were little, if any, more expensive than others the state of Massachusetts was erecting. But the good governor, as I understand it, retorted that it didn’t matter really what they cost, they looked expensive, which I thought was a very nice compliment. In any event, too much was at stake, from my viewpoint anyway, and too much had already been planned or designed or considered. It is one thing to put on paper initial ideas, and it is another thing to see that those ideas are developed properly through the labyrinth of integrating the work of many different kinds of engineering, disciplines, modifications of program, considerations of costs, learning from earlier work on a large project — both negative and positive –and correcting or modifying that experience.”
Rudolph, Paul Marvin, 1918-1997. “Sub Rosa: Interview with Paul Rudolph”. Ed. Lasse B. Antonsen, January 12, 1996.
