Page 22 RAIN Summer 1994 Volume XIV, Number 4 Left: student-run, student-built. The best kinds ofeducation emphasize the practice ofself-direction and cooperation. Left top, the Campbell Club Co-op at the University of Oregon, one ofthree buildings myned by Eugene's Student Cooperative Association. Residents describe life in these houses as a continuous exploration of real democracy. Left bottom, once again, the U ofOfoundry, designed and built l!Venty years ago by students. Each facet andfunction ofthe University could improve through this type offundamental f acuity and student involvement. Even if it hadn't, Alexander would face a final hurdle: As the pressures compounded, the group lost interest in producing nice places to live, despite Alexander's guarantee to build very special dwellings for the same price as junk. Since students, and administrators, believed this to be impossible, they proclaimed it undesirable. This was more than a little frustrating for the architect, who·feels strongly that poor people should not be forced .to live in bad buildings. That students and staff ultimately disagreed with this is particularly frightening, and exactly opposed to the intentions of the Experiment. Apartment dwellers these days live in minimalized . housing: boxes for storing people when not at work, school, or driving around. Add a television, and no one seems to care what the space around them looks like. Through the abuse of resources and people, mass-produced pre-fab housing is cheap and turns a quick ·profit, making investors interested in neither durability nor livability. People have, in a way, adapted to·this kind of housing, and see nothing wrong with it on paper. But rooms, windows, porches and courtyards should be shaped carefully, to nourish people, and give them connection to nature and neighbors. Alexander specialize~ in making human-scale spaces at low cost. Sometimes this involves trades. For example, to save money Alexander planned to reduce the square footage a little bit. This caused an uproar in the pressured design group.,Americans are addicted to excess room: it's the sort of limited freedom that people living in prisons cherish. Under more reasonable conditions for discussion, people normally agree that slightly smaller, well-designed rooms with useable outdoor ·space are preferable to large cardboard crates on a parking lot. In this fashion, cost, durability, and quality became "issues" in a design group which should not have existed until the politiGal problems were publicly resolved. The upshot was a public firing of Alexander, sacrificed to take the heat off the University. The administration continues to move to tear down the Amazon, but has no intention of replacing it with Alexander's careful, user-informed designs. Students today are trying to prevent the demolition in the political arena, and difficult design meetings are still being held, only without Alexander. There exists a proposal to make the o~d Amazon into an independent cooperative
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