Dartmo.

• There is an unusual aerial view of the north end of campus in the Dartmouth Medicine magazine. It is a view from the north looking south, and it hints at the way Main Street used to cross the Green on a diagonal. The photo makes the Green’s northeast-southwest path appear to be an extension of College Street.
• There are far to many changes in planning, development, and regulation of suburban sites in the Upper Valley to keep up with on line. Here is just one example: the Valley News reported on a new development proposed for the edge of Centerra.
• Naturally Vermont has a Marble Museum (New Hampshire does not appear to have a Granite Museum…) and it is mentioned in a Rutland Herald story on the pervasive use of marble at Middlebury and other schools.
• The completed addition to Spaulding Auditorium includes extra storage for the Band’s instruments, notes the construction management firm. Interesting.
• The Valley News had a story on blazes marking the Appalachian Trail in downtown Hanover.
• The Dartmouth reports that double rooms in Fahey and McLane will be converted to triples. It seems only a couple of year ago that Fahey and McLane were built to allow the rooms in other dorms to decompress from triples to doubles.

A Valley News article reports President Kim’s suggestion that Dartmouth host a national institute of the science of the delivery of health care. One imagines that it would accompany or expand upon the existing Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. That institute is scheduled to occupy the postponed future Koop Medical Science Complex at the south end of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (map).

If not located at the hospital, however, such an institute would make an excellent candidate for placement north of the medical school, even on the golf course. It would not require parking for patients; it would benefit from its proximity to downtown — walkable if not convenient enough for a student function — and yet it would be indisputably part of the college.

To allay the concerns expressed here last year, this building and any other buildings on the site should be made to follow the form of the town, not the campus. A grid of streets with sidewalks and buildings, rather than a network of curving driveways with lawns, would promote density while acknowledging that the college does not expect students to walk this far from the Green on a regular basis. The buildings would harmonize with the campus without pretending to be a part of it — much more South Block than McLaughlin Cluster.

The Institute for Security, Technology, and Society could move to the site, along with other administrative offices now at remote locations, such as the offices in the bank building on Main Street and the Development Office, which is in Centerra.

The perfect completion of such a plan would involve the Hanover Country Club House. The club has wanted a larger and more convenient clubhouse for several years. A new east-west connector street at the north end of this expansion project, crossing the south end of the golf course between Lyme Road to Rope Ferry Road, could provide an excellent site for such a building. The clubhouse would occupy the north side of this street, looking up the stretch of greensward; the south side of the street would be a densely-built wall representing the end of the urban development of Hanover. Compare the fascinating conditions of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews.

In Hanover, the clubhouse would stand on the north side of the northern cross-street, whichever was built:

Example of town-form development

[Update 02.06.2010: Map added.]

[Update 09.25.2010: With all this talk of buildings, it never occurred to me that the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science would be mostly on-line.]

Engineering Ventures of Burlington is working on a Satellite Parking Facility for about 400 cars on the suburban Route 10A east of Hanover.

The Development Office has published requests for a number of specific gifts, including the ’53 Commons Terrace. Three zones will occupy the space between the building and Maynard Street: the Portico, which is a collonaded space; the Terrace, which will have space for 100 people to sit and might be stepped downward away from the building; and the South Lawn, which has a White-Housey sound to it and will be the northernmost Lawn at Dartmouth, an equivalent to Baker Lawn.

The Graduate Student Suite in ’53 Commons will be the first headquarters for grad students of the College.

“The Scholars’ Green” is an idea for reinvigorating Baker’s Catalogue Room with comfortable furniture and other amenities. The idea is a good one, although “the Catalogue Room” would be a better name than “the Scholars’ Green.” Experience at other schools has shown that any fancy computers placed here will be used mostly for watching YouTube and that a single espresso machine will set the tone for the whole space.

Plenty of other interesting requests appear, including one for support of College Traditions.

(The profile of the Development Office has been rising, with its new offices (U.K. Architects, 2003) in 41 Centerra Parkway; it even has its own training department with a curriculum for training staffers.)

The Dartmouth Regional Technology Center site is up and provides views of the Center’s new building in Centerra (U.K. Architects, 2006): distant and closer (see also the firm’s page).

Landscape architects Saucer + Flynn have posted new information including descriptions of eight projects for Dartmouth as well as landscapes for North Park Street Graduate Student Housing, 7 Lebanon Street, the DHMC, projects in Centerra, and the Sphinx.

The firm also designed a wrought-iron fence for Skull & Bones in New Haven, which is not the kind of landscape project you see every day.

The Dartmouth covered Senator John Sununu’s visit to the Dartmouth Regional Technology Center in Centerra.

The state-run NH Business Resource Center has a thorough article about the incubator.

Ethanol firm Mascoma Corporation now occupies the majority of the building.

The Route 120 tech incubator known as the Dartmouth Regional Technology Center [no website yet] in Centerra Resource Park [no website left] looks interesting as depicted on the website of its designers, UK Architects of Hanover.

Construction began in August 2005 (pdf) and finished last fall, according to a thorough article in New Hampshire Business Review.

The Dartmouth and Vox have covered a number of building-related topics recently:

• Zoning for the 53 Commons north of Maynard Street
• The dedication of Kemeny Hall and the Haldeman Centers on the Kiewit site
• The Real Estate Office, which is redeveloping the block south of the Hop
• The Faheys’ gifts
• The Records Management office, which has moved out of Centerra to Etna Road in Lebanon:
  
  

The Dartmouth Regional Technology Center, funded by a $2.6m federal grant (Vox article) and a donation of two lots by Dartmouth (New Hampshire Business Review article) is erecting a building to house tech startups at Centerra, east of Hanover, as noted in Trumbull-Nelson’s current projects list.