NCAAbbs

http://construction.rice.edu/OpenProject.aspx?id=258

My last weeks on campus, I saw a bunch of surveyors put up markers in that plot of land right behind the GRB mini-sallyport and in front of Hamman Hall. I originally thought they were just remaking the paths, but apparently a new building will be going up there. Wouldn't that just end up crowding up that entire quad?

See the construction map for more details.

I'd say goodbye to that quad - it won't be there any more, looking at the map. It'll be cool to have an observatory there at some point. Yeah, you won't see too much, but you can't see the really cool stuff at Harvard, either, but it's still neat to go up there at night and try to see what you can.

110K sqft? How is that even possible in that tiny space?!

Why do they keep cramming buildings and buildings into Rice and eliminate all the beautiful green space? Next thing you know we will look just like UH. Now, don't get me wrong, UH campus is not ugly by any means. But it does look like, well, an urban city space. Rice campus has alway seemed to me more open and less crowed. But they keep cramming buildings into every possible space they can.

progress

Four floors 166' 7" square, although it will likely be more of a rectangle than a square footprint.

Long gone are the days of outdoor concerts on the lawn between Hamman Hall and Laboratory Loop Road.

http://www.rice.edu/maps/maps.html
I like how this map still has a ghost of the old Wiess on it.
How long before the building between the RMC and Herring goes in?
They're probably just waiting for the $$$.

Let's just be thankful that they didn't build three Sids, as was once planned.

Indeed. Especially with the larger student body, Rice will be needing more classroom and modern laboratory space, the latter especially for rapidly advancing fields such as physics.

Looking at that map, however, it doesn't look like there's much more open land. (And with increased undergrad population, it would not be good to remove any of the intramural fields.) So I wonder if some existing buildings will be replaced or expanded ... like the old Bonner Nuclear Physics Lab was razed to make way for the much larger Duncan Hall. If all of the Physics faculty and labs move entirely into this new building (are they?), might Herzstein Hall be repurposed or even expanded/modernized, say to match Sewell Hall (doesn't it have three basement levels?)?

Yep, Progess ... just as Thrill said.

I find this very sad. It began with GRBrown bldg cutting off the quadrangle from the RMC. Now it is being filled in. These buildings should be built across the street from Biology, Geology and Space Physics... Next to the new building for the Business School...

No more green space...

Long gone are the outdoor concerts of any kind, any place, besides KTRU's Outdoor Show...

Physics is the largest graduate department on campus (closely matched by other sciences). We've been spread through 4 different buildings for many years (Keck, Herzstein, Herman Brown and Dell Butcher) and office space is a premium (like, grad students were getting shoved in cleaning closets, I kid you not). We were purportedly offered space in the CRC, but it wasn't anywhere near vibration-free enough for experimental labs.

Also, no, we won't be out of Herzstein. We'll probably get out of Dell Butcher and Keck, though, which were never PHYS buildings in the first place... the original "goal" was to have every department in a single building, but they couldn't build a big enough one for physics. :(

Lastly, you won't see a lot of renovations on Lovett or Herzstein, the 2 oldest building s on campus IIRC, because the expense of becoming ADA complient is probably a deterrent (not to mention difficult).

Parking garages need to be built. IMO, we first build one in the grassy are at Univ and Shep... could be used for village, students, med center and fb games. Not good to walk to, but easy with a shuttle. I bet you could pay for it with village/med center/game parking and still have reserved spaces for o/c students... Then, build one in the northeast stadium lot for students. You can then reclaim some of the parking lot as green space.

I know above ground garages aren't on the list, and below ground has issues... but these two areas, especially the village one, wouldn't really be that big a part of the campus vision. Put a brick facade and plant a bunch of oaks around the stadium lot one, and you wouldn't even notice it.

I'm not quite sure where you mean (University and Shepherd don't intersect each other...?) but if you were going to build a garage, why put it on green space? Why not on top of an existing surface lot?

Er... Physics is bigger than the Jones School??


I'm in favor of any building that further obscures that butt-ugly Hamman Hall from the rest of the campus. The one mistake they made when building GRB was they left that hole in it. I like a Sallyport like the next guy, but they should have hidden Hamman when they had the chance.

Largest non pre-professional department. Sorry, but I never see 99% of the Jones school, so I often forget they're here unless they're down in Valhalla wearing ties and leaving large tips.

(we like the tips, actually)

The ECE Dept. also claims to have the most graduate students. (See the first 'Point of Excellence' on their website: http://www.ece.rice.edu .) Of course, many of their grad students are also over in the physics space.

Univ and Greenbriar... sorry

I chose that lot because it isn't University space... but we own it. Its just a big empty grass lot near an office building. It is not really appropriate for any other University purpose I can think of. I am swapping greenspace OFF campus for greenspace ON campus.

My SECOND suggestion (as an and, not an or) is over an existing surface lot.

It occurrs to me that the comings ang goings of students parking in the football lot are rarely associated en masse with events... the bain of parking garages... Parking garages aren't a particularly good idea for a stadium lot... but if we put students in the garage (where many are now "covered" and thus preferred... then the current student lot is now open for games...

I believe the ideas behing packing more academic buildings into already built-areas are:
1. Preserve large-scale open space, by filling in exisiting openings between buildings, while preserving larger unbuilt areas as unbuilt: such as the Academic Quad, the wooded areas near Entrance 1, and particularly the intramural fields across the street from the new business school. I think that is a valid tradeoff.
2. Ensure that as more academic buildings go up, they remain within walkable distance of each other, rather than stringing them out all the way from Main to Greenbriar. This is certainly a laudable goal.

As for the big surface stadium lot, it will almost certainly shrink as parts of it are converted to grass fields, buildings, or garages. I think that will be a good development as well. That big sea of concrete is very unattractive and makes the buildings near it look isolated.

I remember someone in Valhalla used to threaten to cut off ties.

The light pollution in the center of Houston is so bad that you do not see many stars.

It will be hard to think of the Physics Bldg as being something other than the building next to Lovett Hall.

Its been a while since i paid any attention to the buildings, but Zi'd think that Bio/Geo/Spac might need to be replace at some point... which would add space without necessarily taking up more footprint.

Well, they recently 'renovated' Bio/Geo/Space so it'd be a big waste of money if they just tore those down. Until bioe and associated labs vacate GRB/Keck for the CRC, tearing down any existing lab buildings sounds kind of impractical. Then again, Vandy recently repainted a building that was to be torn down very soon. Maybe there's a pattern going on...

With the size of campus anyway, it wouldn't hurt that much to put some buildings farther out (by the new rec center, as some of you have mentioned). I just don't understand why they are getting rid of all that nice open space. GRB really doesn't bother me, but taking out that entire quad behind it is another story. Another location that comes to mind is the spot between Keck and Fondren/Archi bldg (reflection of Huma building across the longitude of academic quad). There's a bit of space there that they could make a building out of, without the removal of a quad as with the current proposed location.

Don't know what Pres Leebron is planning on making this campus look like, but please oh please don't make it look like Vandy's science/engineering campus. All the buildings on this side of campus are tall and so close together that all the greenery seems a little too dense for comfort.

PS - Enjoying grad school here at Vandy but I miss Rice

Well, I never really thought of the area between GRB and Hamman as a quad. I'd like to keep as much open space as possible too, but if the physics department is already overcrowded and will continue to grow, something's got to give. Looking at the satellite picture, the most viable alternative I see is directly across the street from GRB, between Archi and RMC. I think this is the area MartelOwl_08 is talking about. I bet something will go there eventually too.

I don't know how much space the rec center will leave there.

I'd put Herman Brown on that list. It takes up a fair amount of campus space but doesn't seem to provide that much interior space. Plus it is extremely ugly.

I guess you are right about garages. I don't really like the concept, but it's really a lot better than the status quo of a gigantic asphalt lot which could have better uses. I'd like to think that the light rail will reduce the need for parking, but that's probably still years away.