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2.13 Rostlaube, Free University Berlin Photo: Reinhard Görner/Freie Universität Berlin

punctuated by white pillars, creating an impression of lightness despite the building’s large footprint.

The most significant element of the Free University Berlin’s campus in terms of the remit of this study is the so-called Rost- und Silberlaube complex (Figures 2.13 and 2.14). This monolithic structure is what makes the university interesting as a campus study.

In 1963 the university launched an international competition to design a new campus for its philological institute on the Orchard Site in Dahlem. The brief made clear demands as to growth and fostering inter-disciplinary relations. It stipulated that the humanities and mathematical-natural science facilities needed to be capable of eventual expansion by 20 and 60 per cent respectively, and that the building should include spaces which encouraged dynamic exchange between members of different faculties. The competition was won by Parisian firm Candilis Josic Woods, and partner Shadrach Woods assumed responsibility for the project.¹⁴

The resultant complex is a vast, continuous mono-structure comprising two sections – the Rostlaube and Silberlaube – designed around the principles of growth and communication (Figure 2.15).

Wood’s winning entry was a low-rise rectangle, essentially two storeys plus basement, structured around a web of internal pedestrian streets.

These were the primary sites for community interaction. The main streets gave the building a clear pattern around which space was assigned as ‘built’ or ‘non-built’ areas organized in terms of zones:

activity, study and rest. The activity zones with the heaviest usage, such as lecture halls, seminar rooms and cafeterias, were sited along the main pedestrian streets at ground floor level. Interval spaces along side streets and on the upper storey were allotted to research, specialized teaching and individual interchange. Rest zones took the form of courtyards and roof terraces distributed throughout the rectilinear grid. These took up 50 per cent of the floor space, and offered the complex a chance to breathe. A vivid colour scheme was applied to walls and floors for orientation purposes.¹⁵

The architects sought a complex that fully exploited every opportunity to encourage contact amongst its inhabitants. Departments were not separated into different buildings, thus the psychological and physical barriers that traditionally divided disciplines were not enforced by architectural ones or the creation of individual departmental identities. Rigid hierarchies were exchanged for pluralism and tolerance expressive of the spirit of artistic and social revolution of the time. The University of Illinois at Chicago may have served as a type of model for Woods. Although the Chicago campus housed 2.14 Silberlaube, Free University Berlin

Photo: Reinhard Görner/Freie Universität Berlin

each function, whether classrooms, laboratories, or offices in its own separate structure, Woods praised its intermingling of faculties and flexibility of its physical plant. Flexibility was key to Woods’s conception of the modern university. As growth and change were inherent in the nature of the institution, Woods envisaged spaces that could be dismantled or created within the fixed grid of internal streets. Externally, the façades were fabricated from Cor-Ten-clad steel panels in set sizes, which could be moved and replaced as the building grew. Inside, demountable and moveable partitions similarly permitted changes in organization.¹⁶

Woods’s campus was a striking departure from archetypal German examples. Germany had not responded to the campus model developed in the Unites States and United Kingdom. Typically, its universities were city-based, multi-site institutions scattered around the city landscape. In its suburban, densely organized site, the Free University was more akin to the campus model. Yet the Free University did not aspire towards the Anglo-American tradition of a marked institutional presence. A crucial difference between the Anglo-American and German traditions is the latter’s lack of a specific institutional identity. The academic function of the German university was not identified by any particular architectural style or specificity

and thus it merged into the urban fabric. In many ways the Free University belonged to this tradition. Woods gave his complex no central focus, no entrance façade and even no central entrance. No one elevation is given precedence over another. The megastructure sits discretely in its surroundings. Despite its vast footprint, it makes no grand architectural gestures and is essentially restricted to two storeys in height to harmonize with Dahlem’s villas. Woods emphasized that the building was an instrument, not a monument.¹⁷

A myriad of influences seemingly affected this unusual design.

Le Corbusier’s Five Points Towards a New Architecture can be detected in the Free University’s flat roof gardens (point two) and the free planning of the ground floor (point three), while its structure was based upon his Modulor, a proportional system tailored to human scales based on irregular grid intervals. The complex’s internal circulation and courtyards are reminiscent of the bazaar streets and riads of Morocco, where Georges Candilis and Shadrach Woods met and worked for four years. The Free University’s design may also have been related to 1950s architectural avant-gardism. The era bred an interest in the concept of the ideal city in a rapidly fluctuating world, in which the strict boundaries between house and city were dissolved and flexible large-scale structures played a key role.

2.15 Aerial view, Free University Berlin Photo: Bavaria Luftbild/Freie Universität Berlin

F R E E U N I V E R S I T Y B E R L I N

In this sense, the Free University itself was conceived as an ideal city.

With decentralized faculties dispersed throughout the adaptable, single structure intended to promote free social interaction, Woods’s vision was informed by the aspirations of the ideal modern city rather than the pattern of German academia. However, this vision proved in reality unattainable. Its form, in practice, engendered detachment rather than integration, which in time brought forth vandalism, notably graffiti.¹⁸

The Orchard Site has suffered radical reversals in its popularity.

The praise lavished upon the design’s originality and innovation upon its publication in 1963 soon turned to vilification after the erection of the first section (1973). Its Cor-Ten façade proved a failure. The material was intended to take on a rusty patina – a quality which gave rise to its Rostlaube nickname – which would act as a protective coat. In the Free University’s case, however, the protective surface failed to form and the steel corroded in numerous places. The building’s flexibility was also heavily derided. Like many of the buildings of the period designed to respond to changing usage patterns, such as the Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo, the potential to transform the Free University’s ground plan was not exploited. Another of the plan’s unique features not fully exploited was its outdoor spaces. Envisaged as leisure areas, the courtyards and terraces were thoughtfully designed. The surfaces were covered with grass or gravel and planted with trees grouped together in various ways, so that each environment was unique. Nevertheless, the university community failed to fully engage with the spaces and they sunk into neglect.¹⁹

Recent years, however, have seen a reawakened interest in the Orchard Site’s physical plant, from architectural historians, critics and the university itself. In 1997 the university inaugurated a complete reappraisal of the complex. Both the Rostlaube and Silberlaube urgently needed renovation. Both buildings contained asbestos, their flat roofs leaked and the Cor-Ten steel had rusted; furthermore, the complex lacked a clear layout. Norman Foster & Partners was appointed to direct its overhaul. Completed in 2004, the restoration project returned the structure to full glory and made its fresh planning approach appreciable once again. Effort was made to minimize the scale of alterations and keep the original fabric where practicable.

The original colour scheme, incorporating red, yellow, green, blue

and purple, that was employed as a way-finding device was restored and once again enlivens walls and floors. The degraded Cor-Ten was replaced by bronze panels, which differ little in appearance from the original modules. Where change was embraced was in the structure’s organization. Foster himself exhaustively examined the building’s network of streets, outdoor spaces, and ‘zones’, resulting in a modernization of the university’s dated special concept to render the building more functional for academic life. The original building’s shortcoming was the confusion created by the lack of demarcation between individual institutes, which led to first-year students wandering corridors in search of their seminar rooms. The circulation system was oft criticized for its complexity, augmented by arcane street signage.

Foster’s concept was predicated upon the intention of uniting the nine separate departments. Each institute was allotted its own visibly separate area, and each gave up its individual library to be replaced by a large, central library. In 2003 Foster’s new library opened (Figure 2.16). It was inserted into six of the original courtyards, united by the removal of linking sections of the existing building. The hemispherical new library, dubbed the Berlin Brain, joins to Woods’s complex at two points, maintaining the original objective of cross-connectivity.

Importantly, the central location of the building within the complex means that the institutes and the library are in close proximity. The whole building consists of a single, enormous, light-filled room. Like the Rostlaube, the Brain is restricted in height yet its hemispherical shape has allowed an increase in accommodation equal to over half the complex’s footprint.²⁰

The Free University’s Orchard Site has its flaws, yet from its opening it offered a completely new formula for the spatial organization of a university as a network of opportunities for communication, reflecting the zeitgeist of flexibility, innovation and democracy.

The internal streets should not be viewed as mere corridors; they fulfil their purpose of encouraging informal exchange amongst the university’s community. The building’s experiments with connectivity and circulation render the campus a unique, interesting specimen of the 1960s spirit of innovation that resulted in a revolutionary era in campus design. With Woods’s design made more practicable for modern usage by Foster & Partners’ reappraisal and the dramatic addition of the Philological Library, the relevance of this building is affirmed.

2.16 Philological Library, Free University Berlin Photo: Nigel Young/Foster + Partners

2.17 Plan, Harvard University

On 28 October 1636, the Great and General Court of Massachusetts Bay convened a meeting. Amongst the afternoon’s busy agenda was an epochal act – the endowment of £400 towards the construction of

‘a schoale or colledge’. The founding of a college only six years after the colonization of Massachusetts Bay was a bold feat. Yet the colony leaders were unwavering in their belief that for the experiment to prosper, the New World needed a leadership of educated men. The College opened in 1638 upon a one acre plot of land in Newtowne,

a village six kilometres from Boston (quickly renamed Cambridge in recognition of the English university of which many of the Colony’s leaders were alumni). This plot has grown over the centuries to form the heart of the university today, Old Harvard Yard. In the Old Yard, Harvard has developed a setting captivating for its sense of place, indelibly tied to the essence and reputation of the university.

How the Yard has achieved this rare quality is a chronicle of seemingly haphazard decisions. Harvard Hall I, the college’s first