Peter Eisenman's new building brings DAAP international prestige, unites a sprawling college for the first time and gives visitors quite a unique experience.
by Deborah Rieselman
"The steel beams are crooked!" the anxious caller announced. It was 1995, and the concerned citizen had called UC President Joseph Steger directly. The fact that the beams were supposed to be crooked -- that in the end, the entire building would deliberately look crooked -- had never occurred to him, nor to anyone else driving down Martin Luther King Drive that spring.
Now, DAAP's Aronoff Center for Design and Art has a crooked interior to match and crowds of visitors admiring it. The resulting public intrigue has caused the University of Cincinnati to be lauded in "The New York Times" and "The Washington Post," featured on covers of national magazines and even highlighted in national travel publications. The Smithsonian Institution made plans to sponsor a bus tour to the campus.
Right here, in the conservative Midwest, on a shady corner of Martin Luther King Drive and Clifton Avenue, the rest of the world is taking notice of those crooked lines -- lines that are tinted in pastel hues and twist through the hillside, lines designed by intemationally renowned architect Peter Eisenman.
Eisenman's intent was not only to create lines that would draw attention, but ones that would reflect the school's purpose. "For students, living with and working in this building ought to be an education in itself," he says. "Any space created for a school of design should somehow reflect the activity carried out in the building. Design instruction always involves innovation and risk, as well as history and process -- in other words, all the issues that are involved in the disciplines to which the school is devoted."
Understanding how that philosophy was central in Eisenman's concept sold the UC administration and faculty on his "daring" design, a one-word description that also comes close to summing up the New York architect. His work is not easily described. For that matter, it isn't easily viewed, either. In reality, it is best "experienced."
DAAP's new Aronoff Center, named for former Ohio Sen. Stanley Aronoff, is a prime example. On the exterior, the floors, walls and windows slant at odd angles. Passersby see no parallel lines, no right angles, no square rooms. It appears the construction crew made a giant mistake.
Then there's the building's color -- assorted shades of pink, green and blue, considered Eisenman's "palette," according to Michael McInturf, project architect since 1989. Pastels are not what people expect out of a university building. Such buildings are supposed to stand tall in their freshly pressed brick or stone suits. They're not supposed to slink and crawl through a hillside in their colorful play clothes.
The $35 million center has raised a great deal of interesting conversation across campus and the city. Good-humored critics claim it looks like melting neapolitan ice cream, a Jetsons cartoon or a Florida resort, still in need of accompanying pink flamingos.
DAAP Dean Jay Chatterjee loves the banter. "We're not at all defensive about evoking response," he says. "It would have been sad if we had no response. Architecture, after all, mirrors the culture of different civilizations. For example, when we think about the Grecian civilization, what we visualize is the architecture. Our Center for Design and Art has unquestionably contributed to the discourse about architecture."
Next page | The real "experience" of the Aronoff Center begins when one enters it.