Chapter two case Studies

CHAPTER TWO Case Studies

Aarhus University Aarhus, Denmark

Aarhus University is unique within the canon of university design. Its alliance with a single architectural firm, C. F. Møller, sustained through nearly eight decades, has produced a campus overwhelming in the homogeneity of its architecture and planning. Its ensemble of lecture theatres, classrooms, laboratories, offices and libraries is compellingly pulled together by the dogged application of a single architectonic vision, creating a village of simple, rectangular yellow brick buildings capped with yellow tile roofs within a parkland setting (Figure 2.2). Founded in 1928, Aarhus University was intended from the outset to be different from Denmark’s only other university, Copenhagen. The University of Copenhagen was representative of the historic universities of continental Europe. Non-residential,

its premises were scattered throughout the city. In contrast, Aarhus University sought to define itself by offering teaching, social life and accommodation upon one site; in other words, by developing upon the Anglo-American campus model. In 1929, Aarhus City Council donated a 27-acre site to the university, and a competition was launched to plan the campus and design its first buildings.

The competition was won in 1931 by the triumvirate of architects C. F. Møller, Kay Fisker and Povl Stegmann alongside landscape architect C. Th. Sørensen. Their proposal fused modernist planning with a park-like setting. Displaying enormous sensitivity to the natural beauty of the rolling terrain, their plan shied away from any traditional institutional monumentality in favour of a dispersed layout of independent buildings determined in height and area by their function. The design evinced the popularity of the Bauhaus School, and was particularly influenced by a school in Bernau near Berlin recently completed by Hannes Meyer, director of the Bauhaus School. The school’s buildings sensitively interacted with its undulating site through horizontal and vertical displacements, a method which was to be important at Aarhus. The Bauhaus aesthetic heavily informed Møller, Fisker and Stegmann’s 1931 design. Cubistic blocks with flat copper roofs, horizontal window strips and smooth white façades characterized its buildings. The buildings as realized, however, were somewhat different.¹

The university was almost entirely dependent on private donations, which had a profound effect upon the physical form the campus was to assume. A gift of yellow bricks from a local manufacturer induced a change from the concrete, copper-roof Bauhaus style utilized in the competition entry to a language of yellow brick and yellow tile buildings. The first building, housing the chemistry and physics institutes, was completed in 1933. Simple, almost austere in external appearance, it utilized the donated yellow brick for its walls and had a saddle roof pitched at 30 degrees clad with yellow tiles. The strained economy of the 1930s is palpable in its form, yet

its fabric is by no means meagre. Its modest, unornamented profile reflects the development of a Danish functionalist style, which the campus came to epitomize. Its modernist leaning is manifested in its angularity – almost severity – while its simplicity and brick construction reveal empathy for Danish building and form. The first building was followed by residence halls (six were built up to 1947) and five professors’ houses (razed 1970) identical to it in their materials, colouring and clean uninterrupted profiles.²

The style of these buildings was greeted with cynicism by some members of the University Union, familiar only with the ideals of classicism, and when plans began to be formulated for a main building in 1937 the Building Committee demanded greater monumentality. By this time, the Møller-Fisker-Stegmann partnership had formally dissolved and Møller undertook its design alone. The Main Building, as completed in 1946, was indeed infused with a subtle grandeur. Its simple yellow brick and yellow tile fabric was embellished by brick patterning which texturized the building’s gables that projected northwards to form the university’s principal entrance (Figure 2.3). The free-standing arcade which linked them provided a romantic gesture. Wave-length patterning of yellow tiles covered the floor and ceiling of the Vandrehallen inside. Such features invested the Main Building with a levity that contrasted with the austerity of the first building. The most handsome, eye-catching element of the building is the main hall, the Aula. A vast, theatrical space reminiscent of Danish ecclesiastical architecture in its shape, its southern façade is one large glass expanse stretching right up to the gable (Figure 2.4). This was a bold use of glass at the time, and it offered a magnificent vista across the rolling grounds. Its dramatic image was immediately adopted as the visual symbol of the university. From the retaining wall of the building curves a mini, open-air amphitheatre whose steps meld into the natural slope of the land.

The fluid integration of architecture and landscape is fundamental to the design of Aarhus’s campus. As soon as construction commenced on the first building, the landscaping began, led by Sørenson. Sørenson’s vision was one of a tree-clad park populated by oaks alone. He planted individual acorns across the site, which have matured into a magnificent tree canopy and created a simple yet affecting setting for the institution. His monomania for acorns was not necessarily popular at the time, but it provided a fitting counterpart

to the homogeneity of the architectural palette and moreover had symbolic, practical and economic advantages. Oaks were safe to grow near buildings, and, in the straitened years of the Depression, planting acorns was a prudent option. Furthermore, the promise encapsulated within the acorns to flourish into mighty oaks seems analogous with the ambitions held for the university itself. Sørenson’s sole digression from oak was the climbing ivy that ascends the walls of many of the buildings. A distinctive feature of the campus, the ivy softens the angularity of the structures and its vivid show of green, red or brown leaves changing in rhythm with the seasons enlivens the yellow walls.

The ivy is testament to the marriage between artifice and nature that was engineered from the campus’s earliest days. The buildings, perfectly attuned to their topography, appear to grow organically from the ground. The result is, as Møller christened it, a ‘park university’. The university is set in rolling moraine, bisected along its north– south length by a brook dammed into two artificial lakes. The plan preserved this ravine, pushing buildings to the campus edge and creating a pastoral hollow at its centre. The buildings were orientated perpendicularly either north–south or east–west, organized loosely in clearings in linear groups of varying heights, lengths and breadths. This variance allowed for a degree of individuality for each separate institute within the unbending formula of yellow brick, yellow tile and identical roof profile.³

In the 1960s, Denmark’s growing prosperity led to a corresponding growth in higher education, a phenomenon which was reflected in Aarhus’s building activities. The decade saw the erection of an administration complex (1964) and library (1963) at the northern periphery of the park, both adopting the planning and stylistic format that had characterized the campus for the past three decades. The area of the campus expanded in stages as additional land abutting the park was purchased. Vacated military barracks were acquired and razed in the 1960s, extending the estate westwards. The science buildings that were erected upon the site evidenced the effect of increasing pressure for space upon the physical environment. Whilst adhering to the architectonic blueprint, the complex was organized so densely that its interior has been likened to a labyrinth and the vision of a ‘park campus’ was lost.⁴

Predominantly, however, the university’s expansion has not compromised Møller’s original concept. Quality of design and

2.5 View towards Aula, Aarhus University Photo: Torben Ekserod

craftsmanship has largely been upheld to high standards, a feat that has proved achievable because of the restraint and cost-efficiency of the original vision. Despite the changing tides of architectural fashions over its 80-year history, the buildings form a unified entity with only minor modifications in building style. Vital to this has been the retention of the C. F. Møller practice, from the 1930s to the present day. The development guidelines that were prepared by the practice for the campus in 1988 outlined its future in broadly identical terms to those used by Møller half a century earlier. Buildings, it counselled, should ‘grow directly out of the ground’, and take the form of staggered blocks with gables. Functions requiring large spaces, such as lecture theatres, should be accommodated in onestorey blocks laid out perpendicular to taller buildings. Exteriors should remain clean in their profile, devoid of extraneous detail such as cornices or architraves. Yellow brick and tile remained the material of choice. Comparison between the 1946 Main Building and the park’s most recent addition, a 2001 auditorium complex, reveals the degree to which Møller’s concept has been upheld. Yellow bricks and tiles characterize its exterior. On its northern façade, one gable wall is pierced by a great wall of glass, in perfect dialogue with the south face of the Aula across the parkland (Figure 2.5).

Employing the architectural language of the oldest buildings for contemporary ones could have anachronistic results. But this has not been the case at Aarhus. The simplicity of organization and design, the nuances of regional and national traditions and the subjugation of the built environment to the natural has lent a timelessness to the campus. The rigid formality of the built environment has invested Aarhus with an exceptionally strong design identity, but it has its drawbacks. The plan offers no room for change. Thus the blocks of the auditorium complex adopted the long rectangular shape of other campus buildings despite the format being impractical in terms of acoustics.⁵

Young climbing ivy has begun to take root on the auditoria’s exterior in the pattern of many of the university’s older buildings, which will in time strengthen the interaction between the structure and its landscape. Both C. F. Møller’s 1988 guidelines and 2001 master plan for the campus valued the importance of retaining the original landscape programme. The ‘banalization’ of the grounds with flower beds was cautioned against, for example, so that the campus retains its oak-park atmosphere. A key ingredient to this is that the campus has not yielded to the motorcar. Small car parks are scattered around the periphery, but cyclists and pedestrians

have priority. Departments are connected by undulating pathways

which weave through the park to take best advantage of vistas of buildings and nature. Used by university members and the public alike, the park constitutes a key green space of the city at large. Its public nature is made clear by the absence of fences or walls defining its boundary. Wayfinding on the campus is, however, problematic. The uniformity of the buildings hinders orientation, while there are few maps to alleviate this. Each building is, though, clearly labelled with white lettering, a feature of the original buildings enforced by recent preservation frameworks.

To preserve the parkland quality of the campus, it is unlikely any further standalone buildings will be erected there. Instead the university is catering for its growth by expanding its premises outside the park, both on land immediately adjacent and on satellite campuses. Between 1979 and 2001, the university increased its footprint by 75 per cent. Neighbouring former military barracks have housed the Aesthetics Department since 1998, and in 2000 the Theology Department moved into an orthopaedic hospital building, built in the 1940s, next to the administration building. From 1999 humanities were relocated into a new sub-campus, called the Nobel Park, opposite the park, which combines university and private commerce buildings (Figure 2.6). Although the opus of the C. F. Møller practice, the Nobel Park contrasts with the piquant identity of the yellow village in the main park. The height of the buildings and their compact layout evidences an urban density at variance with the park campus. Notwithstanding its ‘park’ appellation, tarmac and cars have replaced the sylvan aesthetic of its parent campus. It likewise employs a different architectonic aesthetic. Instead of yellow, pitched-roofed buildings, those at the Nobel Park are cuboid, red brick, flat-roofed structures linked by glass stairwells. While the main campus employs strict angularity and consistent materials, it avoids insipidity through its commune with nature and variety in height and distribution of blocks. At the Nobel Park, there is no such divergence, resulting in an insentience contrasting with the older site.⁶

The main campus possesses an individualism which is difficult to replicate. Its understated yet noble architecture and rigid yet organic homogeneity have created a unique campus that is laudable for its consideration to landscape and Danish traditions and the diligence with which its original master plan has been heeded.