A. Richard Williams: Building Education Recollections

Professor Emeritus A. Richard Williams, FAIA, the Design Architect for the original building dedicated in 1964, is actively participating in the Reimagining of Education collaboration with the School of Architecture this fall. 

History of the Education Building 1960-63
from ARCHIPELAGO – Designs for Learning (in draft), by A. Richard Williams, FAIA

It so happened then at Illinois that the College of Education was in line for a new building on a site framed by older Neo Georgian structures conforming to the standard three storey block plus a dormered slate pitched roof with a cornice line at 50 feet above grade.  The faculty of Education, in writing their program, strongly expressed their dismay that their forward looking curriculum had to be fitted into this standard block, pointing out how anachronistic it would be for their students to go out to positions in brand new contemporary schools that responded to new design breakthroughs in spatial organization, flexibility, use of light, air, furnishings and closely integrated landscape design.

On returning from San Francisco I had an urgent call from Dean Allen Weller of our College of Fine and Applied Arts: “Could I make a study of how Education’s program could be accommodated in a contemporary design in such a Neo-Georgian context?”  He also reported that the university architect’s office would use the same program to develop a Neo-Georgian design – in other words we would do an in-house competition to be presented to the powers that be, including the Board of Trustees, for a decision.  I thanked the Dean for the challenge, saying I’d be flattered and delighted to take it on, but wondered if we shouldn’t keep the competition under wraps, what if it got out in this day and age that the University of Illinois was still engaging in a battle of styles?  So it was decided.  Now I had a special mission for a planned trip abroad that summer with my mother, to spend more time in England to become an “expert” on Georgian in order not to do it, and at the same time learn more about contextual harmonics of different styles as they existed side by side at Oxford, Cambridge and elsewhere.

Maybe it was a preconception, maybe not, that the key to solving this problem of style harmonics might be to respond to the College of Education’s desire for a more open, flexible plan by working it out in lower level spaces, much as lower garden walls tie the higher block building masses together.  The long, low orangerie pavilion enclosing Mantagna’s huge painting of Caesar’s return to Rome, attached to the Georgian three-storied mass of Blenheim Palace embodied this idea as did Wren’s arcaded library addition to the gothic quad of Trinity College in Cambridge.  At Nancy, France the architect Emanuel Here   composed the Georgian style Place Stanislaus with three story blocks on three sides of the square with the fourth side a one story pavilion with a gateway leading to a series of gardens. 

On return to Illinois I tried this scheme for the chosen site on a north-south axis connecting the two east/west parallel blocks of 50 foot high corniced buildings facing each other about 300 feet apart.  The Education building thus became in appearance a one-story link with a deep overhanging roof fascia thick enough to act as a balcony to stateroom like offices around the building perimeter at a second level.  This fascia of pre-cast concrete panels picked up the same height as horizontal limestone belt courses on the Georgian facades between their first and second floors.  The ground floor became a transparent colonnade just high enough to enclose classrooms with mezzanine offices above but under the wide overhanging, inhabited roof.  Labs, shops, and other flexible spaces were placed at a below grade level opening on a sunken court to the east.  On the west side a wall enclosed courtyard at grade level gave some seclusion for classrooms opening on it as well as serving to make the whole building appear lower.  It may sound like cheating to try to make four floors seem to be one – in any case the scheme was enthusiastically supported by the faculty.  It now remained to convince the higher authorities that this approach would gain their approval.

Meanwhile, the university architect’s office was preparing a typical Georgian block scheme.  At the last presentation of the two proposals, President David Henry and key university committee members were delighted with the contemporary pavilion design that I presented so it went forward to the Board of Trustees and was approved.  Along with other new master planning proposals across the campus, most involving a much more positive role of landscape architecture, particularly in prairie grove character, the yoke of Neo-Georgian conformity was broken.