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By the time Bunshaft was at work, Yale was used to getting buildings from their name architects quite unlike the buildings they were usually known for. Philip Johnson lives in a severe bachelor glass house in Connecticut, the kind of place beloved by House Beautiful. But in designing for Yale a new science complex on Pierson-Sage Square, Johnson surprised everyone by designing a turreted architecture of burnt umber brick and purplish Longmeadow stone that reflects the sullen soil of the area. So far he has finished the $3,500,000 Kline Geology Laboratory, a medieval keep whose slit windows admit daylight willy-nilly—and which one Yale Corporation member dryly describes as "solid as rock and functional as an electric log." Its fortresslike appearance will be repeated in a 13-story tower for the Kline biology quarters.
No Locked Doors. In the beginning, the inspiration for Yale's contemporary architectural renascence was Griswold, but since his death last year much of the talk at Yale centers around the bouncy, crew-cut figure in baggy tweeds, Paul Rudolph, Yale's 45-year-old architectural Wunderkind. Harvard-trained Rudolph is regarded by many as the fastest comer on the U.S. architectural scene. His Wellesley Jewett Arts Center was acclaimed as a dazzling display of design pyrotechnics. For the city of New Haven, which like Yale is astir with architectural activity, he has put up a parking garage that stretches for two entire blocks, and is probably the world's most esthetic place to stack automobiles. Most recently he has been coordinating architect for Boston's radical new Massachusetts Government Center.
Rudolph's whims have become campus parlance at Yale. He apotheosized the conversation pit, thinks cushions should replace furniture, has a phobia against locked doors. There is a streak of the romantic in Yale's young chairman of the department of architecture. He wishes his buildings to end as "beautiful ruins."
Last week Rudolph's latest "ruin" was dedicated—Yale's new Art and Architecture Building, the most daring contribution in the entire Yale scheme. Rudolph works in the very building that he has designed and, as he says, "it's a very disconcerting experience." So is his building. A massive rack of rafters, the Art and Architecture Building staggers out by layers to shut off the vista up New Haven's Chapel Street. From the street there appear to be nine stories, but the inside is shelved off into 36 different levels, with ceilings ranging from seven feet to 28 feet. Shunning sleek exterior finishes, Rudolph opted for corduroy-like concrete walls. To make them even rougher, he had workmen rough up the edges with claw hammers. The building is both massive and full of surprises. "All sorts of conceits," says Rudolph, puckishly pointing out fishbones, seashells and coral in the concrete, "are buried in the walls."