The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 84, No. 9, Ed. 1 Friday, November 1, 1996 Page: 10 of 20
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Features
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THE RICE THRESHER
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SEPTEMBER 1994
This Friday, Rice wilt
building. Duncan H N
engineering building) le
new, interdisciplinary a
it boasts colorful architi
like no others on campus tnd a prominent
location at the heart of campus.
Here's the story of how it tifine to be, from
conception to moWin.
tory, layout, and photos by Chrispf Spielep
Space and Money
In 1988. Kit e was awarded a National Science Foundation 'grant to house
the l entei lor Research on Parallel Computation, a multi-university com-
puter research institute. As part of Us contribution, Rice was expected to
build new space toi the institute
In the short term, that need was taken care of by putting offices in
1-ondren Library At the same time, though, the George R. Brown School of
l'.ngineering began discussing a new building.
In 1971, Rice opened Hermann Brown Hall, built to -house the Mathemat-
icsand the Mathematical Sciences (now Computational and Applied Math-
eniatu sf departments. In the years since, CAAM had grown and spawned
of! the Computer Science and Statistics departments. As a result. Hermann
Brown became increasingly crowded.
Many of the faculty of those de-
partments were alt eadv working to-
gether in a multidiscipliuary Com-
puter and IntorniatiunalTechnology
Institute. The school of engineering
began to think of a "CfTl building."
In the spring ol 1993, Associate
1 lean of Lngineeruig Don Johnson
and CRI't Associate 1 hre.etor 1 )aniel
I 'owe II sat down with an Excel
spreadsheet to begin to plan out
space allocations
Hie building would include all uf
t AAM and Statistics, the systems
and computer engineering portion
of f it ctrn al and i oui|niter Lngineer-
uig, as well as (RFC and the ol lice ol
the dean oi Engineering.
From those numbers a rough pic
tnre ol the building evolved: .r)9,910
s(|uare teet ol net space - all the
space in the building which could
actually be used as offices, meeting
rooms and the like, excluding hall
ways, bathrooms, lobbies and walls (most Rice buildings are planned on the
basis of net squarejeet, the space enclosed by the exterior walls).
The program included not only 250 offices but also a large auditorium,
two lecture halls and several classrooms. C lassrooms were a particular
issue. Engineering classes are often in the 40 person size range, but Rice
has few classrooms of that size. "We didn't have the rig'ht kind of place to
teach our courses so we insisted on classrooms." Johnson said. As it turned
out, the CFB is one of the few recent Rice buildings completed with as many
classrooms as originally planned.
The board-approved the project on March 31, 1993, giving the develop-
ment office the go-ahead to begin fund-raising. The "Campaign for Compu-
tational Engineering" was begun with a $45 million target to cover not only
construction funds but also an endowment for maintenance.
The fund-raising campaign began, as most (jo, with the Development
Office thinking of prospective donors, engineering alumni, people who
have given money before and Houston engineering firms.
Carol Baker, head of the campaign, said, "When we approach someone
who's given before, we'll say something like, 'we have a wonderful-oppor-
tunity to build something that would be great for the future of Rice.' If
they're interested, we might set up a meeting with the dean of Engineering
or show them plans. Then we might come up with a figure — the money is
usually given over five years --- and come up with a proposal."
Raising fuhds: A glossy brochure -
introduces the proposed building to
prospective donors. '* -
Ha— flKlil 1
ren ana raper
In the spring of 1993, the Buildings and Grounds commiUeeof the Board
■gf Governors sent out letters to 100 different architectural firms asking if
they were interested in designing the building. Twenty to 30 responded; six
of those were chosen to submit final proposals.
The final choice was John Outram of London. Now the two-year process
bf designing tfje building began. On the Ricje side; it would be overseen by
the architects in Facilities and Engineering as well as Computer Science
Pfbfessor Keith Cooper, who was chosen as the faculty liaison to the
project, a long-standing Rice practice.
"I was an active member of the design team since day one. I have no real
power, but 1 can badger. In a formal organization chart, John and I never
talk. In reality, we talk more than most people on the design team," Cooper
said.
On June 18, 1993, Outram sat down with some of the faculty who would
occupy the new building and began to sketch out ideas. 'Hie basic '"foot-
print" of the building developed first. Outram envisioned a basically rectan-
gular building, with a single wing — a reflected image of the Physics
Amphitheater,
In a design office meeting on June 23, 1993, the plan changed. Rather
than placing a wing opposite the physics building, Outram decided to place
a courtyard there to create "a cut-out into which the physics building might
fit if it were moved across the road."
The interior changed, tod: the original plan had been to line the exterior
walls with offices, then pLIce auditoriums and classrooms inside. The
resulting building, though, would have been far too wide, with too much
windowless space.
Instead, Outram placed the major rooms (lecture hall and classrooms)
at the eastern end of the building. Hie rest of the interior then developed
afftyn "occluded temple": a peaked roof perched on tall interior columns
which wVrVllwi filled in with offices. This left a "valleyfSn the interior,
"formed by a hallway on the bottom and layers of receding balconies.
By July 2. a fairly detail eTfschenie had emerged. The building had four
floors of offices and a glassed-in celestory to bring in natural light.
"This was a wonderful building — this was just an astounding building,"
Cooper said, When the architect's office did a price estimate, though, the
building came in significantly too expensive. It was time to cut costs.
The celestory went first lowering the roof eliminated dozens of very
pricy column capitals, lots of large windows and 1,000 feet of $400-per foot
railing It also eliminated a lot of natural light and buried the "occluded
temple" that had been the genesis of the old cross-section. -
To firing back the light, Outram proposed a line of circular skylights
Those, too, got lost in cost-cutting.
All the while, Outram had been sketching the exterior walls. He wanted
walls that stepped out in a series of brick arches as tlrey rose, Archwork,
though, requires a lot of hand labor, and curved windows are expensive.
Straight precast concrete "logs" and rectangular windows would have to.do.
Tlie biggest savings, though, came with an observation made "by (me of
Outram's associates. The columns,
he said, were too small. If they coilld
be made larger, the hallways could
run through the columns. With that
idea, the building went from four
stories and 140,000 gross square feet
to three stories and 112,000 gross
square feet while gaining 4,000 feet
of net space. "Once we made this
decision, it's just been fine tuning,"
Cooper said.
The final design was approved
by the Board of Governors in the fall
of 1994. Even at that point, though,
many small details remained to be
resolved to keep costs under con-
trol.
Some were simple. Slightly re-
shaping the precast bars on the win-
dows cut the cost from $1,200 to
$200 apiece. Some were major:
brickwork on the inside of the ar-
cades-was replaced by plaster, and a
part of the roof was flattened, saving
tiles and steel frame.
Even as the final details were
being worked out, though, the build-
ing site was being prepared. It was
time to build.
The evolution of design: The first
proposal, above was for a simple, T
stiaped btiilding. Adding two wings
rather than one, though, aligned-the .
building to Lovett Hall and enabled a
more flexible arrangement. The
resulting floorplan resembles the
cruciform shape of a Gothic cathedral,
"infested," in Keith Cooper's words,
with offices.
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Structure: A 40 by 60 foot section of
the'building shows columns (solid
squares) and foundation footings
(dotted circles).
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Before and after: A July 1993 cross-section (above) shows the fourth floor and
celestory, soon cut for cost reasons. Note the "occluded temple" forming the
roof and the "valley" in the center of the building. Below is the final building.
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The July 1993 scheme (view from Physics Lab): note .the elaborate (and expensive) brickwork
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Beard, Marty & Rao, Vivek. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 84, No. 9, Ed. 1 Friday, November 1, 1996, newspaper, November 1, 1996; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth246551/m1/10/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.