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WELLESLEY,
Mass. -- The Wellesley College Board of Trustees has tapped
Atlanta- based Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects to design
the college's new campus center.
The
firm has extensive design experience at colleges and universities,
including the Ohio
State University's new School of Architecture, the music
library at UC-Berkeley,
and student housing at Tulane
University. The firm's work has received five national
AIA Awards for Excellence and has been featured in numerous
publications including Architecture, The New York
Times, The Boston Globe, and Time magazine.
"Mack
Scogin and Merrill Elam are a brilliant design team with
tremendous experience working with campus communities and
various constituencies," said Edward Lawrence, vice chair
of the Board of Trustees and chair of the architect selection
committee. "They will push us to create an outstanding building
that makes its mark on the landscape of this magnificent
campus."
Mack
Scogin, who will be the lead designer for the campus center,
is the Kajima Adjunct Professor of Architecture at the Harvard
Graduate School of Design, where he was Chairman of the
Department of Architecture from 1990 to 1995. "Mack Scogin
is a designer of enormous skill, resourcefulness, experience,
and sensitivity," said Bill
Mitchell, a member of Wellesley's Board of Trustees,
a member of its search committee, and Dean
of the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. "He is a designer who really
shines in circumstances where there are multiple voices
to be heard and complex and sometimes contradictory demands
to be resolved."
"Since
its inception Wellesley College has been and continues to
be one of the most distinguished academic and physical environments
in the world," Scogin said. "Over the years there has been
an extraordinary tradition of stewardship and innovation
necessary to sustain this distinction. As the selected architects
for the new campus center, we recognize the significance
of our responsibility to extend and strengthen this tradition
as we work with the Wellesley community on the design and
implementation of this important, visionary project for
the campus. It is, indeed, a personal and professional responsibility
we welcome with a great sense of honor and excitement."
In
addition to her practice, Merrill Elam lectures and teaches
frequently, having served as visiting critic at Harvard's
Graduate School of Design and visiting professor at Yale
University and the University of Virginia. She was architectural
consultant for Wellesley's 1998 Campus Master Plan. With
Scogin, she received the 1995 Academy Award in Architecture
from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the 1996
Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design.
The
approximately 75,000 square foot campus center will house
a bookstore/café, space for student organizations,
a large multi-purpose space for performances and social
functions, and formal and informal meeting spaces. The building
will be named for Lulu
Chow Wang '66 and her husband Anthony, whose $25 million
contribution was the largest in Wellesley's history and
the largest commitment by an individual to a women's college.
The
trustees also voted to site the building in the Alumnae
Valley, an area adjacent to Alumnae Hall and the Physical
Plant. "The Alumnae Valley site opens a whole new range
of opportunities and challenges us to reframe the way we
think about the campus," noted Lawrence. "We have the opportunity
rehabilitate an important part of the campus and create
a new landmark near the entrance to the college."
Both
actions were recommended to the Board by the Campus Center
Architect and Site Selection Committee, which had undertaken
a comprehensive, seven-month process of consultation and
review before making its final recommendation. Chaired by
trustee Ed Lawrence and comprised of faculty, students,
trustees, and staff, the committee reviewed proposals from
12 architects, culled from an initial list of over 60, before
narrowing its field to three finalists. The committee separated
the site selection and architect selection processes, asking
each finalist to comment on the two sites proposed by the
1998 Campus Master Plan.
Wellesley
College is a prominent liberal arts college and has been
a leader in the education of women for 125 years. The College's
500-acre campus near Boston is home to about 2,300 undergraduate
students. Wellesley's distinguished alumnae include former
Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, Senator Hillary
Rodham Clinton, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, and broadcast journalists
Cokie Roberts, Diane Sawyer, and Lynn Sherr.
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