Dartmo.

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.]

The delay in construction of the Class of 1953 Commons north of Maynard Street is due to trouble obtaining permits, The Dartmouth reported last month, but the building is still going ahead (October 31 article) and will be built between August 2010 and August 2012 (Capital Projects Schedule October 13, 2008 [pdf]).

[Update 11.18.2008: With the endowment drop (story in The Dartmouth) requiring budget cuts (story in The Dartmouth), some projects are being put on hold, but "We will complete planning already under way for projects which would then require additional financial resources before proceeding to the next phase: Class of 1953 Commons and the C. Everett Koop Medical Science Complex" (November 13 letter from Scherr and Keller).]

The designs for Memorial Field’s West Stand or the replacement for Thayer Dining Hall have not been revealed, but a few smaller items of interest have come out over the past few months:

• Construction of the ’78 Life Science Center began in early September, notes the OPDC, after the Occom Pond Neighborhood Association’s appeal of Hanover’s zoning permission was dismissed (press release). A webcam shows the site when it’s light out.
• The reconstruction of Rolfe Field and the construction of the surrounding Biondi Park have been delayed by site conditions, quoted Jim Hunter of Clark Construction Company: “Dartmouth is just so old that you never know what you’re going to
  find underneath the ground.” When students were digging trenches in the area during World War I, they found an old house foundation.

• Moore Ruble Yudell has a page up for the North Campus master plan. It is under work > campus > planning > north campus on the firm’s website.
• A huge amount of effort has gone into building a sprawling housing development near the hospital at Gile Hill, and into making it not seem like affordable housing (site map). The project was designed by Gossens Bachman Architects of Montpelier, designers of the Rock of Ages Corporation Visitor Center and of a design for the Vermont Granite Museum.

Over the last decade, Dartmouth’s planners have concluded that the College must expand northward onto the Golf Course relatively soon. See, for example, the 2001 Master Plan, page 11 (pdf).

The latest 2001 plan tentatively suggests a location for the new road that would be required to make this expansion possible. The road would run from the Medical School/Dewey Field, cut through Dewey Hill, and head to the northwest to provide building sites on the very edge of — or actually on top of — the 17th hole of the Golf Course.

Rough compilation of maps suggesting route of golf course road north of Medical School, with potential building sites indicated by solid red dots; Baker at lower left

The buildings on this road would lie beyond the 10-minute walking radius that Dartmouth takes for granted as defining its pedestrian campus. The road, which would traverse fairly steep slopes, seems likely to go nowhere and to lack a connection to either Rope Ferry or Lyme Road. Because this development would focus on a paved thoroughfare instead of an architectural space, as all of Dartmouth’s most successful expansions do, it seems likely to be suburban in character — more Centerra than Tuck Mall.

Such an expansion would only seem inevitable if one were to begin with the premise that the existing campus is “full.” That premise cannot be accurate. Dartmouth should do everything possible to prevent it from becoming accurate. There are still plenty of places to add to existing buildings or erect new ones near the center of campus. Many of these sites contained buildings in the past or have been the subjects of building proposals dating to the 1920s:

Unsolicited master plan showing approximate sites to be built upon in preference to Golf Course; the only demolition required is in the Choates

Dartmouth should replicate existing densities before it expands in ways that are suburban, needlessly university-like, or simply cause the College to spread too far from the Green.

[Update 02.06.2010: Although campuslike development beyond the walking radius should be avoided, townlike development is desirable.]

Randall T. Mudge & Associates, Architects have created a firm website relatively recently. Familiar projects will include the Powerhouse Shopping Center in West Lebanon, David’s House at DHMC, and Dragon and the Rugby Clubhouse at Dartmouth.

The Berry Row landscape project, which focused on the bowl framed by Berry and Kemeny/Haldeman, has been completed. Photos from OPDC; initial design from Richard Burck Associates.

The Dartmouth has an article on the completion of the construction of the landscape between Berry Library and Maynard Street following a design by Richard Burck Associates (select Works in Progress). The set of grass-topped concrete terraces originally specified was replaced by a less-formal grassy bowl.

Several major projects, including ’53 Commons, the Thayer Dining Hall replacement, and the Visual Arts Center, have been delayed, The Dartmouth reports.

Kieran Timberlake has already shown preliminary designs for the Thayer replacement. The Dartmouth quoted Associate Provost Mary Gorman as noting that the building will be taller than Thayer — tall enough to see over the trees in the cemetery and into Vermont — and will have a nice outdoor space in front of it.

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 gives an update on the construction of the Berry Row landscaping.

The central path looks as if it will curve slightly, as shown in the OPDC plan, rather than take a straight shot as suggested by the Burck plan.

Is the temporary dining hall going to be an inflated bubble? Athletic departments put bubbles over playing fields sometimes, and Dartmouth seems to have considered it, but a May article in The Dartmouth Independent described the upcoming interim dining hall as “a temporary ‘bubble-like’ facility serving the two-year interim.”

Dartmouth’s steam tunnel continues to stretch northward. A thumbnail sketch:

• From Heating Plant along the Green to the Berry site (mid-1990s)
• From Berry site up Berry Row to Moore (around 1998)
• From Moore, tap into historic hospital tunnel network to reach Kellogg Auditorium and adjoining chiller plant (early 2000s?)
• From Kellogg, run northward behind Medical School to future Life Sciences Building site (2007).

The OPDC has posted photos of the progress on the new Varsity House (one of the photos shows Memorial Field in the context of the campus), the Montgomery House renovation (check the pondside facade), and the Soccer Field (with the turf in place and grandstand going in).

Most notable are the photos of the landscaping between Berry and Maynard Street, or Berry Row. See the substantial walkway that organizes the whole project, for example.

The Dartmouth reports on the use of the tower of the Church of Christ (the White Church) for a cell antenna. Dartmouth leases space on Fairchild Tower accross the street, as well as on the Inn, the article states. The article does not mention Baker Tower, although it must be taller than any of those buildings. Perhaps the tower’s profile and Stanley Orcutt’s weathervane are not suited to hosting antennas.

The latest project schedule (pdf) provides for the construction of an interim dining hall to take up slack while Thayer is being replaced. This idea was mentioned more than a year ago in The Dartmouth.

It is not clear whether the building itself will be temporary, although the short construction time suggests that it will be. The more temporary it is, the more interesting its siting might be…

The OPDC continues its photo essay on the Bradley/Gerry demolition, and the buildings are almost completely gone.

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 Trustees recently discussed updates to Lo-Yi Chan‘s 2001 master plan and the designs for the Visual Arts Center, the Life Sciences Building, the Class of 1953 Commons, and the New Thayer Dining Hall (press release).

Peter Bohlin, whose firm is designing the Life Sciences Building, designed the Vermont Institute of Natural Science Nature Center not far from Hanover in Queechee, Vermont (pdf).