PHILADELPHIA | Penn Medicine New Patient Pavilion | 343 FT | 17 FLOORS

[PHL10]

Originally Posted by ajaxean

Penn's campus looks worse than some community colleges. They won't be satisfied until it looks worse than ALL community colleges.

[Cro Burnham]

Originally Posted by techchallenger

Thanks for a laugh.

I'm guessing the guy was rejected by Penn at some point.

[Londonee]

Originally Posted by ajaxean

I just don't think this claim has any basis in reality. Penn's campus is grossly inferior compared to tons of other prominent American universities: UVA, Duke, UChicago, Yale, UMichigan, Berkley, Princeton, Boston College, Columbia, Harvard, William and Mary, Stanford, WashU, University of Washington, UCLA, Notre Dame, MIT, Rice, and I could go on and on and on. Frankly, I can hardly think of any prominent national university with a discernibly worse campus than Penn's, except maybe NYU given that they don't really have a campus at all.

Wow, troll much? Locust Walk - the heart of the campus - is an objectively beautiful and almost perfect urban, academic space. Period.

[Boku]

Originally Posted by PHL10

That's cute, but it's no LCCC.

[thisisforreal]

Originally Posted by ajaxean

Penn's campus is grossly inferior compared to tons of other prominent American universities: UVA, Duke, UChicago, Yale, UMichigan, Berkley, Princeton, Boston College, Columbia, Harvard, William and Mary, Stanford, WashU, University of Washington, UCLA, Notre Dame, MIT, Rice, and I could go on and on and on. Frankly, I can hardly think of any prominent national university with a discernibly worse campus than Penn's, except maybe NYU given that they don't really have a campus at all.

UVA - did not make the list
Duke - did not make the list
UChicago - did not make the list
Yale - did not make the list
UMichigan - #17
Berkley - did not make the list
Princeton - did not make the list
Boston College - did not make the list
Columbia - #24
Harvard - did not make the list
William & Mary - did not make the list
Stanford - #4
WashU - did not make the list
University of Washington - did not make the list (though a personal fav of mine)
UCLA - did not make the list
Notre Dame - did not make the list
MIT - did not make the list
Rice - did not make the list

[ajaxean]

—

[jjv007]

Originally Posted by ajaxean

That's a great guess actually. Another good guess would have been that I am a Penn student, and that I'm constantly overwhelmed by the mediocrity of an incoherent, dysfunctional campus that looks like it was designed by a Soviet Bureaucrat in a rush.

Awful Soviet architecture like this tallest educational building in the WORLD:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow...University.jpg

[Arch+Eng]

Originally Posted by ajaxean

That's a great guess actually. Another good guess would have been that I am a Penn student, and that I'm constantly overwhelmed by the mediocrity of an incoherent, dysfunctional campus that looks like it was designed by a Soviet Bureaucrat in a rush.

Let's take a westward walk down Walnut Street shall we, starting after the elevated tracks? Tell me which of these buildings you thinks adds to the campus and the city?
Penn's Ice Rink
Walnut Street Parking Garage
Rittenhouse Labs
Hill College House
Design School Building
Van Pelt Library
Lippencott Library
Franklin Building
Annenberg Theater
Graduate School of Education Building
Solomon Experimental Psych Labs
Wharton's Hunstman Hall
High Rises

Penn has literally some of the ugliest campus architecture in the world. The university brutalized (hah, get it?) its campus and the neighborhood. Yes, Penn has a few good old buildings on campus (I love Bennett and the Quad in particular), but a few isolated nice buildings does not a campus make. Isn't something gravely wrong when some of the nicest architecture at a university is the frat houses and some of the most repulsive buildings are the main library and several of the dorms?

Its just a little Brutalist


Hey, throw some roof top villages on that thing and we have a modern marvel.

[hammersklavier]

Originally Posted by ajaxean

That's a great guess actually. Another good guess would have been that I am a Penn student, and that I'm constantly overwhelmed by the mediocrity of an incoherent, dysfunctional campus that looks like it was designed by a Soviet Bureaucrat in a rush.

Let's take a westward walk down Walnut Street shall we, starting after the elevated tracks? Tell me which of these Penn buildings you thinks adds to the campus and the city?
Penn's Ice Rink
Penn's Walnut Street Parking Garage
Rittenhouse Labs
Hill College House
Design School Building
Van Pelt Library
Lippencott Library
Franklin Building
Annenberg Theater
Graduate School of Education Building
Solomon Experimental Psych Labs
Wharton's Hunstman Hall
High Rises

Penn has literally some of the ugliest campus architecture in the world. The university brutalized (hah, get it?) its campus and the neighborhood. Yes, Penn has a few good old buildings on campus (I love Bennett and the Quad in particular), but a few isolated nice buildings does not a campus make. Isn't something gravely wrong when some of the nicest architecture at a university is the frat houses and some of the most repulsive buildings are the main library and several of the dorms?

*le sigh*

So, let me get this right, you're whinging that Penn's campus is ugly because its Brutalist-era buildings are ugly? Do. You. Have. Any. Fucking. Idea. How. Fucking. Entitled. That. Sounds?!?

Most of us are Drexel and Temple grads, and if you've ever bothered to step one fucking foot off your fucking campus bubble you would have fucking noticed that these fucking schools are fucking entirely monuments to fucking Brutalism!

[Arch+Eng]

Originally Posted by hammersklavier

*le sigh*

So, let me get this right, you're whinging that Penn's campus is ugly because its Brutalist-era buildings are ugly? Do. You. Have. Any. Fucking. Idea. How. Fucking. Entitled. That. Sounds?!?

Most of us are Drexel and Temple grads, and if you've ever bothered to step one fucking foot off your fucking campus bubble you would have fucking noticed that these fucking schools are fucking [i]entirely[i] monuments to fucking Brutalism!

Easy Easy

[ajaxean]

—

[Cro Burnham]

Originally Posted by ajaxean

That's a great guess actually. Another good guess would have been that I am a Penn student

OK, OK, maybe you just got a crappy grade in the Intro to Urban Planning final this semester. Quit procrastinating by instigating Philly phlame wars and get back to the books. And lighten up, you're lucky to be there. Remember you could always transfer to Bronx Community College if the need for a better campus vibe becomes too intense. Plus you'd save alot.

The main knock against Penn in my opinion is that there is no Wendy's nearby, in addition to the general lack of rooftop shopping.

[Philly Fan]

Originally Posted by Cro Burnham

The main knock against Penn in my opinion is that there is no Wendy's nearby, in addition to the general lack of rooftop shopping.

WORD.

The only thing better would be a ROOFTOP WENDY'S. [I think I just peed my pants. ]

[Knight Hospitaller]

Originally Posted by thisisforreal

UVA - did not make the list
Duke - did not make the list
UChicago - did not make the list
Yale - did not make the list
UMichigan - #17
Berkley - did not make the list
Princeton - did not make the list
Boston College - did not make the list
Columbia - #24
Harvard - did not make the list
William & Mary - did not make the list
Stanford - #4
WashU - did not make the list
University of Washington - did not make the list (though a personal fav of mine)
UCLA - did not make the list
Notre Dame - did not make the list
MIT - did not make the list
Rice - did not make the list

That Notre Dame and Princeton didn't make the list calls it into question (full disclosure: I graduated from the former). As for Penn, I think it's a fine urban campus (full disclosure: I graduated from the Law School). It's not entitlement minded to observe, however, that it's often an incoherent miss-mash, mostly saved by it's older buildings and undermined by the awful mid-late 20th Century stuff. That said, I agree with the feckin' rant about how feckin' ugly Drexel was (I think it's getting much better). Just walking through there on my way to Penn from 30th Street made me appreciate the latter more. Speaking of feckin' ugly, just thinking about the 30th Street area in the 90s makes me want to heave.

[hammersklavier]

Originally Posted by ajaxean

I guess it's entitled to want high quality architectural and civic design when ANY institution spends tens of millions of dollars on buildings which will interface with the public for decades and possibly centuries?

This is exactly the mechanism by which bad architecture and bad public spaces happen, hammersklavier. Instead of people demanding thoughtful, coherent, human-centered design, they'll settle for crap because it's a popular fad or because "it's good enough compared to that other guy."

Maybe you went through college on a full ride. But, personally, I'm shelling out $200,000 for this place. Entitlement is when you expect something for nothing. I'm literally mortgaging decades of my life to pay for this experience. I don't think it's wrong to expect or demand a high quality environment when the bill is this high.

(1) I went to Temple.
(2) I did it on loans. IOW shut up about finance.

The way you're missing the point is utterly comical here. The 1960s were an era of immense (public) investment in college campuses. Schools like Cleveland State in Ohio were built literally out of whole cloth in the 1960s.

Or: Every school has ugly 1960s buildings. It's a part of their fabric. Cases in point --

Yale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_U...r_20,_2008.jpg

Harvard:
http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/images/co...7/8/v2/786.jpg

Columbia:
http://www.emporis.com/images/show/6...ast-corner.jpg

U. of Chicago:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...of_Chicago.JPG

Duke University:
http://66.media.tumblr.com/42b58da4a...lyyo1_1280.jpg

So. Stop. Kvetching.

[allovertown]

Originally Posted by ajaxean

That's a great guess actually. Another good guess would have been that I am a Penn student, and that I'm constantly overwhelmed by the mediocrity of an incoherent, dysfunctional campus that looks like it was designed by a Soviet Bureaucrat in a rush.

Let's take a westward walk down Walnut Street shall we, starting after the elevated tracks? Tell me which of these Penn buildings you thinks adds to the campus and the city?
Penn's Ice Rink
Penn's Walnut Street Parking Garage
Rittenhouse Labs
Hill College House
Design School Building
Van Pelt Library
Lippencott Library
Franklin Building
Annenberg Theater
Graduate School of Education Building
Solomon Experimental Psych Labs
Wharton's Hunstman Hall
High Rises

Penn has literally some of the ugliest campus architecture in the world. The university brutalized (hah, get it?) its campus and the neighborhood. Yes, Penn has a few good old buildings on campus (I love Bennett and the Quad in particular), but a few isolated nice buildings does not a campus make. Isn't something gravely wrong when some of the nicest architecture at a university is the frat houses and some of the most repulsive buildings are the main library and several of the dorms?

Penn never looked it's best from the city streets. Most of it's best architecture was built in a time in which the campus was actively designed to face itself and turn its back on city streets that everyday Philadelphians use. Penn's presence on Walnut Street is certainly a failing of the campus, one they've tried to remedy in more recent decades to mixed results.

It's not that your criticism is totally off base, it's just not exactly tethered to reality. To totally ignore the heart of Penn's campus, locust walk and the numerous architectural gems that line it, is a major failing of your argument.
To hold Bronx CC's bland library as a great work of architecture and then claim how ugly UPenn is when it has countless buildings that are far more impressive, serves to highlight a clear bias that you hold. Why you hold that bias I don't know. But despite its failings there are parts of Upenn's campus that are undeniably beautiful and by flatly dismissing the entire campus you lose credibility.

You want to advocate for better architecture at Upenn, most would agree that's a worthwhile cause. But if you're to be successful you're going to need to be more realistic. Being so blindly negative only serves to signal yourself as an unreasonable person to others and from there it's difficult to make any progress.

[Arch+Eng]

Mods,

Please rename this "The Beautiful Campus Thread"

[Knight Hospitaller]

Originally Posted by Arch+Eng

Mods,

Please rename this "The Beautiful Campus Thread"

Or is it the Ugly Campus Thread? Time for a Boxbot thread on Threads about Campus Beauty or Lack Thereof.

[Parkway]

Rutgers Camden is another example of a school that essentially came into being in the 60s. It also faces in on itself like parts of Penn and much of Temple. Even though they have taken measures to add more uses on Cooper Street, the nexus of the campus is what used to be the intersection of 4th and Penn Street. Everyday I leave the law school on the western end of campus and walk through the middle of campus to get home not because its shorter but because it's a nice walk.

[summersm343]

Originally Posted by ajaxean

That's a great guess actually. Another good guess would have been that I am a Penn student, and that I'm constantly overwhelmed by the mediocrity of an incoherent, dysfunctional campus that looks like it was designed by a Soviet Bureaucrat in a rush.

Let's take a westward walk down Walnut Street shall we, starting after the elevated tracks? Tell me which of these Penn buildings you thinks adds to the campus and the city?
Penn's Ice Rink
Penn's Walnut Street Parking Garage
Rittenhouse Labs
Hill College House
Design School Building
Van Pelt Library
Lippencott Library
Franklin Building
Annenberg Theater
Graduate School of Education Building
Solomon Experimental Psych Labs
Wharton's Hunstman Hall
High Rises

Penn has literally some of the ugliest campus architecture in the world. The university brutalized (hah, get it?) its campus and the neighborhood. Yes, Penn has a few good old buildings on campus (I love Bennett and the Quad in particular), but a few isolated nice buildings does not a campus make. Isn't something gravely wrong when some of the nicest architecture at a university is the frat houses and some of the most repulsive buildings are the main library and several of the dorms?

Penn's Ice Rink will be demolished and redeveloped with mid-rises/high-rises at some point according to the master plan.

The Walnut Street Parking Garage will also be demolished and replaced with a new construction mid-rise at some point.

Rittenhouse Labs I actually like. I also like Wharton's Huntsman Hall and the Highrise Dorms.