New RISD Dorm is a “Design Triumph” - Architectural Critic Will Morgan
Friday, November 22, 2019
The Rhode Island School of Design's new dormitory at the top of Waterman Street is an architectural triumph.
The freshman residence hall is the kind of serious, innovative, and environmentally sensitive public work of art that Providence should be encouraging.
North Hall is the art school's first new dorm in three and a half decades.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTIt offers housing for 148 students.
Its six stories encompass 41,000 square feet; it cost $25 million.
It was designed by NADAAA of Boston, led by RISD's alumnus Nader Tehrani.
Tehrani's previous firm, Office dA was also the creative force behind the imaginative renovation of Rhode Island Hospital Trust Building into the RISD Library and dorms a dozen years ago.
Nader Tehrani is an architect's architect, a thoughtful artist who would rather be good than trendy.
He is also very wise to the limitations of architecture, as well as its possibilities.
"The fact that I care about craft does not protect me from being compromised in those very areas by bad construction, project managers, and clients."
As Tehrani further told me, "It is just very tough designing a good building, and even when you do, to get it built well."
Ably supported by an admirable crew, particularly Shawmut Construction and Odeh Engineers, North Hall is successful on both counts.
The residence hall's frame is a pioneering hybrid of cross-laminated timber and steel.
The timber consists of layered kiln-dried softwoods, shaped in 8 by 50-foot planks trucked from Canada.
The CLT is lighter than concrete, and so that saved construction time, while allowing a smaller crane in the constricted urban location.
From the "cool roof" to the enhanced wall insulation and the use of all LED lights with censors, North Hall is a thoroughly green building.
Energy recovery ventilators provide only un-recirculated outside air, while low flow showers and toilets will save 3,200 gallons of water a day over conventional systems.
Every room has its own thermostat and heat pump, not to mention operable windows.
The furniture, designed specifically by RISD furniture professors John Dunnigan and Lothar Windels, are fashioned in sustainable European beech and bamboo plywood.
Admittedly, some might find the interiors a bit utilitarian (there are no dropped ceilings masking mechanicals, for example).
But students are blessed with all kinds of amenities, including studios, lounges, kitchens, and gallery spaces.
The views, especially on the downtown side, are among the best the city can offer.
All of the students I spoke with were enthusiastic in the praise of their new home.
But beyond the residents' response, what about the new dormitory's place in the nationally significant neighborhood of College Hill?
North Hall demonstrates what a good architect can do with a simple, well-proportioned rectangle on a city lot jammed up on all sides by buildings and busy streets.
NADAAA utilizes just two exterior materials–brick and fiber-cement rain screen panels–to transform a simple box into an intriguing and vibrant composition.
Both wall surfaces, created of repeatable elements, provide texture and offer changing shadows.
The play of light on these materials lifts this box into the realm of excitement and drama, as the facades playfully change color or exhibit different shadow lines depending upon weather conditions and the times of day.
In rain or snow the fiber-cement panels may look like granite, but appear flatter and less delineated in the bright sun.
Some have complained that the grey color is gloomy, but it has understated elegance of a perfectly tailored gray flannel suit.
Subtly wins over flash.
Even at architecturally literate universities, the quality of the new design can vary considerably.
But with North Hall, RISD and the dorms' builders realized that it occupies too important a location to be just another piece of developers' real estate.
"I hope," the very savvy Nader writes," North Hall will not only be a place of residence, but also a didactic edifice that can be read, interpreted, interrogated and even overturned … not only a place of comfort and respite, but also a place that challenges and provokes."
GoLocal architecture critic Will Morgan has written extensively on academic architecture, including the books, The Almighty Wall (MIT) and Collegiate Gothic (Missouri).
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