Our campus’ more than 250 buildings aren’t known for being particularly easy on the eyes. This is no revelation. The unfortunate aesthetics that characterize much of daily life at LSU have long been the subject of student complaint through the likes of sarcastic tweets, angry op-eds (guilty as charged) and, perhaps most commonly, good ole’ casual commiseration on the route to a class in someplace like Lockett or Hatcher Hall.
There are, of course, exceptions. The French House, the Norman chateau-style home to the Ogden Honors College, is a quaint jewel box of a building. Hill Memorial Library, sitting just west of the decrepit and more frequented main library, is quite pretty. There are also the bright and dignified Italian renaissance-inspired facades that line the Quad. Mind you, emphasis should be placed on facades, as most would agree that any brightness or dignity associated with those buildings vanishes as soon as one enters them.
A building which many are probably surprised to see excluded from the above list is Patrick F. Taylor Hall, the freshly built engineering hub on the southern outskirts of campus.
Known as the pride and joy of most STEM majors and the building with Panera Bread for everyone else, PFT has been heralded as the university’s premier architectural attraction and is often brought up as a counterweight to the classic campus eyesores of Lockett, Hatcher, the older dorms and the main library.
However, I’m a bit more skeptical of the hype surrounding PFT. While its generally clean facilities and open, natural light-diffused atria and study areas are undoubtedly a refreshing improvement upon the often dirty and cramped atmospheres of other buildings on campus, there’s still something hollow and soulless about the place.
It shares too much of a resemblance to a factory or warehouse. Its stark, sleek functionality suffocates any possibility of architectural play or nobility, qualities on full display in the more organic curves and ornamentation of the French House or Quad facades.
In fact, I would go as far as to say that the only thing attractive about PFT is its cleanliness, more open features and, above all, the mere newness of the building. Moreover, I suspect that the building’s favor among students will not be long lasting and may even slowly fade into the status currently held by some of the rough buildings already mentioned.
For many, this may simply seem like the natural course of things. Buildings are built, they’re nice while new but inevitably grow ugly with age.
This is such a sad way of thinking about buildings, though, amounting to the architectural sector of our culture’s characteristic addiction to all things disposable. Moreover, it’s most definitely not “the natural course of things.” I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Europe over the past year and can testify to the power of structures that were built to be beautiful in perpetuity.
What does one get from writing a pessimistic pan of university architecture? After all, it’s not like there’s much hope of it changing in the near future.
Well, what we do at universities is important. The environment we do that work in should reflect that.
Evan Leonhard is a 21-year-old English senior from New Orleans.
