Carbondale Campus

Southern Illinois University | Carbondale Campus

By:Adulsak "Otto" Chanyakorn

            Before the fall break, I had an opportunity to walk from Morris Library and cut through the open space between Woody Hall and Pulliam Clock Tower. It was interesting to me that the atmosphere of the open space with manmade landscape was beautiful (Figure 1). I can see the harmony of the architectural language from Woody Hall and Pulliam Clock Tower as they become unified. They relate and share some certain characteristics.  The designers of those buildings were concerned about the overall environment of the campus. So, they created the harmony of the campus as a whole. Moreover, the quality of the materials used for the buildings were fine materials which defined the taste and thoughtfulness of SIU’s campus in selecting architects They also were built with high quality. One can see that there are a lot of buildings on SIU’s campus that dedicate themselves to the unity of the campus and the overall context, such as Wheeler Hall, Shryock Auditorium, Pulliam Hall, etc.

In contrast, some campus buildings that were built after Word War II were poorly designed, out of scale, and disharmonious to the overall campus atmosphere. They even created inappropriate spaces or dead spaces that students tend to never use. Most architects who designed the new buildings for the campus were trained in international modernism. They expressed their own individual architectural signatures more than being concerned about the unity of the campus as a whole. There is a conflict between international modernism and the overall needs of the campus. However, there are a lot of architects from modernism who designed the new buildings at SIU with deep consideration. They were trying to produce new architecture that speaks with the past and also expresses the moment of our time. For the obvious example, I would like to mention Louis Kahn’s British Art Center at Yale University (1977) (Figure 2). It respects the context. At the same time, it expresses itself and carries the beauty of our time.

Southern Illinois University at Carbondale is a beautiful campus. We should cultivate its own beauty. We should not abandon our commitment to our campus by selecting quickly and cheaply designed structures to be built on the campus. Even though we are facing the difficult financial time, our decisions now will have deep impacts on the future of our campus.