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EINHORN YAFFEE PRESCOTT AND HELFAND ARCHITECTURE SMOOTHLY INTEGRATE MODERNIST FORMS WITH TRADITIONAL MATERIALS.
In renovating and adding onto an existing science facility, Swarthmore College faced an old dilemma. The college wanted to create a contemporary architectural response befitting an evolving program, yet not jeopardize the cohesion and spirit of the campus's historic architecture. Located on the edge of a 200-acre woods, the college, founded in 1864 by the Hicksite Quakers--the more liberal branch of the Society of Friends--was, and still is, coeducational and fiercely intellectual. "Architecture is vitally important in expressing this tradition as well as inspiring imagination and creativity," says its president, Alfred Bloom.
The campus displays its fair share of architectural styles, including the central building, Parrish Hall, a Second Empire-style, mansard-roof affair dating to 1881, plus superbly iconic examples of Collegiate Gothic buildings by Karcher and Smith, such as Clothier Hall, designed in 1929, and Worth Hall, a dormitory built in 1924. Although Swarthmore's architecture has taken on a variegated look over the years, the campus buildings are unified by the pervasive use of local stones, most notably Wissahickon schist, glinting of silver and gold mica. Yet the DuPont Science Center, designed by Vincent Kling in 1958, egregiously diverged from the campus mien. The Modern rectilinear center, clad in a yellow-tan precast-concrete aggregate panel, has always struck a jarringly tacky note. Fortunately, it needed to be updated and expanded.
Program
For economic reasons, the college wanted to keep most (69,000 square feet) of DuPont, adding 75,000 square feet of new construction for science classrooms, laboratories, offices, and a student commons. The new addition would also link physically to an adjacent library, along with Martin Hall, a handsome, Moderne-style stone biology building, designed in 1937 by Cram and Ferguson.
The college first brought in Einhorn Yaffee and Prescott (EYP) of Boston to program the spaces. As Larry Schall, vice president of administration at Swarthmore explains, the school was impressed by the architecture and engineering firm's previous work on large science buildings at other college campuses. But Swarthmore also valued the design sensibilities of Margaret Helfand, FAIA, of Helfand Architecture...