Ohio State University opens its doors to 550 students, both graduate and undergraduate architecture, landscape architecture and city and regional planning. It was stated that it was an ambitious process and Mack Scogin Merrill Elam architects managed to survive the short list and asked Wandel and Schnell architects as its local collaborators. The University was renovated to allow the three schools to merge together as one. The building itself is beautiful with really high ceilings; open atmosphere with spaces and was ‘architecturally electric’. However they were forced to use marble cladding, and with marble not being a durable material it would cost a lot of money for maintenance. This whole project was expensive and costing them a lot of money, due to perhaps bad decision making. The site also took up a lot of the landscape, as Michael Van Valkenburgh found out when he went to landscape the perimeter. It was always kept in mind that it was beneficial for the students, which should be appreciated. Overall the architecture itself is beautiful and the building was being renovated for the right reasons, on the other hand there was a lot of bad decision making along the way and money saving methods should have been taken into action.
Knowlton Hall Ohio State University
Image Source: http://library.osu.edu/buckeye-stroll/locations/knowlton-hall/2010-knowlton-hall
Image Source: http://library.osu.edu/buckeye-stroll/locations/knowlton-hall/2010-knowlton-hall