consider the park to be a trendy, ill-conceived waste of money. It was a major target of community activists, but was built regardless.' In another case, the Business School received donations for a strident gateway, and a gross brick bunker known as the Chiles Center. These qisplaced an inviting campus entrance and early Oregon Experiment success. Administrators apparently weren't interested in, playing tough with a donor's location preference. User groups are certainly not in control of this process. The highest level user group, the Campus Planning Committee, has no authority, merely advising the President's office. This collection of busy professors and transitory students is easily manipulated, as are other .. . Despite the us.e of the Experiment's democratic terminplogy within University administrative circles, the physical evidence overwhelmingly suggests that nothing remotely approaching the plan actually exists at the University ofOregon. The two new smiling plate-glass office buildings above are unremarkably typical ofmodern, politely accepted, cold-blooded schools of design. Above left, the latest addition to Lawrence Hall, which houses the School ofArchitecture and Allied Arts. Originally built in the '20s with rustic Art Deco ornament, the building continuqlly suffers from trendy amending and remodeling. By the time ofthis most recent addition, the Experiment had long since atrophied within a bureaucratic body-cast. Above right, the infamous University Riverfront Research Park, a costly attempt to hop onto the high-tech bandwagon, with office floors that should encourage Silicon Valley computer executives to indulge ·in their fondness for cubicles. This project was so controversial that it was officially removed from the community decision-making proces.s. Left top, millions from Nike's top executive, a University graduate, pour,ed into a library addition so disrespectful ofpeople that it might act as a deterrent to education. This e+trem~ly expensive semi-circular wooden bench ~s topped by an ornamental trim that makes leaning back impossibly uncomfortable, and the foot-rest is just a bit too far away for anyone's legs. The first thingfound upon entering the library is this endless hallway, left, the inside ofa submarine in pastels. Terrifying, windowless: a miserable prelude to finding a book. Many components ofAlexander's plan, clearly ignored, would have made such'a design impossible. The badly,misplaced gate, left, creates a subtle damage also warned ofexplicitly in the Oregon Experiment: avoid cutting off the campus from th~ city - don't turn the University into a glorified high school. The giant gate is a model demonstration of this effect: it cuts off visual contact between popular on-campus and off-campus hangouts directly across the street from each other. The effect is compounded by a business building, the Chiles Center, left bottom, a cruel, unresponsiv£! brickfortress, that inserted itselfupon an active, prominent campus corner at the whim o/the donor. Certain new . buildings feature quite arbitrary and disorienting postmodern ornament. . · The cold, unnatural Science Complex, right, sports dozens ofexcess ,, columns. Filmmaker David Heine quips, "Apparently Science has lost faith in The Arch. " RAIN Summer 1994 Volume XIV, Number 4 Page 17
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