Dartmo.

New renderings of the Visual Arts Center have appeared on the Project Page. Where an early page by the firm stated an area of 80,000 square feet, and articles accompanying the initial renderings pegged the building at 96,500 to 99,500 square feet, the “revised program analysis,” surprisingly, identified a need for more area rather than less: it’s now at 105,000 square feet.

The November renderings show a building that seems to have the same basic form and numbers of bays as before. The renderings include plans for the first time. The idea of ground-level retail does not seem to have survived, but the artist-in-residence gets a fantastic perch in the lantern above the campus-side entrance.

Elevation drawings also emerge for the first time, along with contextual views from Lebanon Street and a site plan and photo of a model showing the plaza framed by Spaulding.

There are also images of a sectional model of the arts forum, which is the atrium close to the Lebanon Street entrance, and other views.

This building should look expensive.

[Update 01.10.2009: Two watercolors by Jeff Stikeman have been added.]

Engineer Richard D. Kimball and his firm helped design Dartmouth’s Heating Plant and original network of steam pipes in the mid-1890s. It turns out that RDK Engineers is still around and claims that its project at Dartmouth was the first underground steam distribution system in the country.

The 2001 Arts Center Infrastructure Analysis (pdf) by Rogers Marvel with Ove Arup suggests that the heat plant eventually move to Dewey Field, north of the Medical School.  That would allow the Hood Museum or other arts functions to take over the old plant building.

Although the Provost’s November 13 letter stated that the Visual Arts Center project would be delayed up to six weeks for a reassessment, the Valley News reported that the school is going ahead with this one before the Planning Board.

The Center will open in March 2012 (VAC project page, projects schedule [pdf]).

The commercial building that Dartmouth’s real estate office is erecting south of Lebanon Street at 4 Currier Street is well under way, as the regular photos taken from behind C&A Pizza show.  The building will start out housing the Studio Art Department while Clement is demolished and the Visual Arts Center is built.  Demolition of Clement, along with Brewster Hall and the oil bunker that serves the Heating Plant, will begin in May of 2009.

[Update 12.17.2008: The Big Green Alert Blog recently quoted the VN article's quotation of John Scherding of OPDC "as saying the college 'intend(s) to keep moving forward,' on the project."]

Thayer School’s Flickr photostream includes a set of historic photos of the school.  A couple of aerial photographs of Hanover (1, 2) are also worth viewing.

The Skiway is overhauling its snowmaking system with a gift from four alumnae among the nine daughters in the skiing-and-snowmaking Dupré family (news release, Valley News).

[Update 01.10.2009: Vermont Business Journal notes other work on the Skiway, including some blasting.]

The Alumni Relations Office has devoted a small stand-alone website to Dartmouth’s trees.

The Council of Independent Colleges maintains detailed building-by building information in its Historic Campus Architecture Project.  One interesting revelation is that Charles Augustus Young, the Dartmouth graduate of 1853, well-known Princeton astronomer, and participant in the design of Dartmouth’s Shattuck Observatory with his uncle, architect Ammi Burnham Young, is listed as the designer of the 1881 Williston Observatory at Mount Holyoke College.  The interesting shingled building does not appear to follow the plan of Shattuck.

Cornell’s marching band has been the subject of a parade in Manhattan since the mid-1970s.  Although it has grown from one block to six blocks in length, it is still New York City’s shortest parade, Newsday reports.  This year it followed the Cornell-Columbia football game.

Polemicist-architect Leon Krier has seen a small number of his buildings built around the world.  The few in the U.S. include what is probably his first university building in this country, the Jorge M. Perez Architecture Center at the University of Miami (2005). The bright white, rather Byzantine building is unconventional, although it does not seem to have been given a particularly transformative site (the campus map [pdf] shows it at L-6).  See the extensive photography by Mary Ann Sullivan and article by Andres Viglucci, “Architecture: A Building Apart,” CNU Florida (posted October 16, 2005).

U.N.H. Professor Blake Gumprecht’s book The American College Town has been published.  The U.N.H. press release provides some information about the book, and Inside Higher Ed interviewed the author.

Moore Ruble Yudell, designers with Bruner/Cott of Dartmouth’s McLaughlin Cluster, Kemeny/Haldeman Hall, and the upcoming ’53 Commons, continue to work on major campus projects around the world, as explained in an article in Metropolis.  Here in the U.S., the South Lawn project at the University of Virginia attempts to continue Jefferson’s Lawn beyond its termination at a set of existing buildings, carrying the space across a street and around a corner.  In Dublin, Ireland, the firm is designing the transformation of the large parklike grounds of a former insane asylum (Grangegorman) into a campus for the Dublin Institute of Technology.

Metropolis also has an article (pdf) on the “post-American campus” in the Middle East, which is experiencing a boom in construction of American-influenced universities.  American University of Kuwait, the school Dartmouth has chosen to create extensive partnerships with since it opened in 2004, is planning a new campus of its own.  A preliminary proposal depicted on page 4 of the AUK Chronicle (June 2008) (pdf) suggests that the campus will be secure and auto-oriented and might share more with the early-ninth century St. Gall Monastery Plan than a typical American campus.

The Valley News reports that the outpatient surgery center (2008-2010) is going ahead but confirms that the Koop Medical Science Complex is on hold.

The November 13 letter from Barry Scherr and Adam Keller (pdf) stated: “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.” The three-part complex planned for the south end of the hospital is shown in a November 3, 2006 announcement and is explained in detail on its capital campaign page.

A College newsletter says “The Hanover Inn is in the early planning stages of building renovations to include the guest rooms, 1st floor conference rooms, and main floor kitchen, dining and lobby areas” and names Truex Cullins & Partners as the architects. The Inn is considering expanding its footprint (Dartmouth College Finance and Administration News 1:1 (January 16, 2007), 3, [pdf] (viewed November 19, 2008)). The Inn’s website also notes that “[w]e are planning a full renovation of The Hanover Inn within the next few years and we intend to pursue our commitment to make this a model hotel for environmental concerns” (Hanover Inn, “Environmental Commitment” (updated October 21, 2008, viewed November 18, 2008)).

This project is among those whose planning was put on hold recently.

Dartmouth announced the delay, which is the result of budget pressure. Small-scale upgrades will occur instead. The project page has more updates.

Theta Delta Chi is naming its addition to the north for Marc Fragge ’87. Several photos of the construction are available, including one showing the site in relation to Thayer Dining Hall’s west end. A November rendering of the addition shows the flanking walls lowered to reveal more clapboarding.

David Williams ’79 of Davis Brody Bond Aedas is the architect of the Tri-Kap renovation, The Dartmouth notes.

Zeta Psi has its own construction photos on line. This house is seeing some of the most extensive interior alteration of any Fuller Audit project.

The Dartmouth recently depicted Chi Gamma Epsilon with a roofed steel fire stair at its east end that looks like an incomplete Fuller Audit addition, but it is hard to tell.