ARCHITECTURE
Three’s a Charm
If there is one building type that every architect knows well,
it is the Architecture School. The place where all architects
are created, it is the architect incubator, the silent teacher
that’s always there. Architects will speak often of their schools,
describing their buildings to each other in arcane lingo,
painting vivid backdrops for stories of late nights, struggles
and triumphs on their way to understanding their chosen craft.
The relationship between architects and architecture schools
is unique, and it is rare for an architect to have the opportunity
to design one, rarer still to design an addition to one’s own.
Such is the case with Lee III, Thomas Phifer’s addition to
Clemson University’s Lee Hall.
Built in 1960, Lee Hall was conceived as a pristine cloister
on the campus edge, inwardly focused, with a courtyard entry.
A later addition to the rear, Lee II, presented broad expanses
of windowless masonry, with studios and offices opening
onto a second, internal courtyard. A collection of places for
quiet learning, while wonderful in many ways, Lee Hall was
an enclave.
text: Tom Savory
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photography: Annemarie Jacques
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Rooftop sun control devices.
What first appears simply
as a well-crafted box becomes
more subtle the closer one
gets. Approaching the building
by foot, a series of translucent
shrouds, rooftop sun control
devices, become visible, lending
a vaguely anthropomorphic
profile to the roof. Moving
closer, the box itself seems
somehow warped, the result
of an almost imperceptible,
slightly disorienting curve in
the roof’s surface.
Closer still, the broad west
masonry wall that visually
ties the design to the original
building breaks free at the
edges, delaminated from both
building and ground, floating
free in striking contrast to
the heavier masonry of the
earlier buildings.
The north and south
facades, by contrast, are lyrical
expanses of ultra-clear glass set behind a lacy pattern of
y-shaped columns that support delicate translucent roof
projections framing and filtering daylight at the building’s
edge. And the less visible east façade actually folds into the
otherwise rectilinear plan, in straightforward deference to an
adjacent ravine.
This well-crafted box is, in fact, fractured and playful,
With the completion of Lee III this spring, Phifer has
responded to the enclave with a design that is at once playful,
rational and open. John Jacques, Phifer’s former professor
and his collaborator now 35 years later, describes the design
as turning the cloister “inside out.”
Recalling his earliest days at Clemson as “a young, young,
student,” Phifer says he often felt insecure and unsure.
Searching for direction, he would find himself
wandering the halls, visiting art and landscape
studios and absorbing the work of older
students. In his wanderings he would find
comfort in the realization that others, too, were
searching, a realization that built confidence.
“Everyone wanted to close their doors,”
he says. But by opening doors and removing
walls, Phifer sought to recreate in Lee III the
atmosphere he yearned for as a student – an
open, collegial environment where students
and teachers mingle, disciplines overlap and
learning occurs spontaneously.
The result is a romantically utilitarian
pavilion that openly presents itself, inviting the
public in and encouraging inhabitants to gaze
out across open space.
Diagrammatically, as always with a Phifer
design, this building looks simple, completely
perceptible almost immediately. But the
simplicity is deceptive. While Phifer’s North
Carolina Museum of Art first appears
mysterious, revealing itself almost reluctantly,
Collaborators: Phifer (left) and Jacques discuss Lee III in Phifer’s New York studio
Lee III is the opposite.
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The north facade.
warped and filigreed, providing a subtle foil to an otherwise
highly rational scheme. Inside, the building is organized
around a series of 4 parallel 2-story bars – taut, rectilinear
machines for learning – connected by a bridge that extends
into Lee II.
Housing faculty offices and seminar rooms, these bars
overlook and modulate a single, expansive studio floor. Treelike steel columns rise above the bars and splay out to frame
circular skylights that provide diffused light evenly throughout
the space. Interior finishes such as exposed concrete floors,
metal roof decking and steel beams are straightforward and
utilitarian, giving the space an industrial feel.
The result is a building that is part Louis Kahn and part
Albert Kahn. It is at once a study in the poetics of light and
form, and a pragmatic, no-nonsense response to a complex
design problem. While this fusion of poetry and pragmatics is
a hallmark of Phifer’s work, it is perhaps most clear in Lee III,
a building that must inspire and take abuse over time, while
remaining a flexible teaching lab. Nothing about this building
appears precious, yet because it is so rigorously organized, it
is unmistakably sculptural.
What may be most intriguing about Lee III, though, has
more to do with sound and touch than sight. Entering, one
almost gets the feeling the power is off. The building is literally
silent. Absent is that familiar “whoosh” when you open the
door, the shock of cold air hitting the skin, and the background
hum of air moving through ducts. It is comfortable inside but
not jarringly so, and the only sounds are the soft murmurs of
students and crisp distant footsteps.
In fact, as it turns out, the power is almost off, owing to
a sophisticated series of sustainable systems. Outside, an
array of pipes plunges deep in the ground, capturing the
earth’s steady temperature, to radiantly heat and cool the
floor year round. Various sensors control windows and lights,
exhausting air, admitting breezes, regulating humidity, and
providing artificial lighting as needed. Air flows through
faculty offices at low volume, relying on natural convection
to regulate temperature. Together these measures result in a
building that is intimately synchronized with its environment.
These individual systems, however, are only part of a
more fundamental strategy. In fact, the very building itself
is a sustainable macro-system. East and west masonry
walls guard against harsh sun while north and south glass
admits controlled daylight, pulling it deep inside. Playfully
sculptural shrouds dot a rooftop meadow, protecting skylights
from direct sunlight, on a green roof that absorbs and filters
rainwater for reuse. Inside, the 2-story faculty office bars that
modulate the main volume also contain their own microclimates - teacher terrariums overlooking open studios. Each
of these purposefully chosen systems, shapes, surfaces and
forms coalesce in a design that belies its complexity through a
relentless pursuit of clarity.
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The studio floor.
“Profoundly simple” is how Jacques describes the design,
recalling Einstein’s famous admonition to “make everything
as simple as possible, but not simpler.” And indeed the
building’s clarity is transformational.
Recalling that, even as a student, Phifer approached his
work with well-established discipline, Jacques describes his
process 35 years later as a tireless cycle of questioning, testing
and simplifying. He shares that before Phifer started to
design Lee III, he spent untold hours, over days of meetings,
listening, occasionally asking questions and mostly absorbing.
Jacques adds “We never worried about the design. Tom just
approached the process with tremendous, quiet confidence.
He would go away with the most difficult design problem
and always come back with an elegant solution.” He also
says Phifer would press further, often scrapping his own
solutions in favor of clearer, simpler ones the more deeply
he understood the problem. The result is a building that
delights, teaches and inspires while remaining a backdrop for
the work at hand.
Recently speaking with Kate Schwennsen, Chair of the
School of Architecture, she told me the building makes her
happy every day. From her office, looking across the studios,
she is able to watch the daily creative ebb and flow and the
kinetic effect of ever-changing daylight across space. She
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reflects on how the students have already responded to
their new environment, absorbing its sophisticated rhythms
and proportions, and how, inspired by the environmentally
conscious design, they have created a “building stewardship
council.” Both she and Jacques cite endless examples of how
Lee III has inspired its new charges, and they delight in the
countless visitors that show up daily to take it all in.
Discussing Lee III, Phifer, too, continually returns to
the building’s users. He looks forward to studios filled
with sketches and models, with paper, cardboard and color
everywhere. Visiting the studio recently, it was indeed clear
to see how the students’ work itself completes the design.
It brought to mind Phifer’s vision of the day when trees
grow to engulf the North Carolina Museum of Art, seasonally
cloaking it, marking the passage of time as the building
endures. Similarly, one imagines Lee III, the Silent Teacher,
gradually succumbing to the seasonal swell of creativity, and
reemerging in an endless cycle as her students learn, grow
and finally wander into the world to practice their craft.
Note: The Lee Hall Addition was designed in collaboration with
Greenville-based, architect-of-record McMillan Pazdan Smith.
sketch: Tim Floyd
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