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Agnes Arnold Hall: Influences

Architecture & Planning
Kenneth E. Bentsen, Agnes Arnold Hall (1968), south elevation

Kenneth E. Bentsen, Agnes Arnold Hall (1968), south elevation (Photo Eric E. Johnson, by permission)

In a recent post I analyzed the formal aspects of Agnes Arnold Hall.  Like other buildings, it is a product of its time. Looking closely, we can see that Kenneth Bentsen interpreted some new ideas about composition and building layout that emerged in the early 1960s.

Agnes Arnold Hall owes more than a little to a well-known building at the University of Pennsylvania, the Richards Medical Research Building (1961) by Louis Kahn. The Richards was one of the most influential designs of the 1960s. Why? Prior to this, modern architects often expressed the building as a perfect geometric shape—usually a box and often a glass box. The usual practice was to place support services such as restrooms and stairwells in the center with the human occupants on the outside near the windows.

Louis I. Kahn, Richards Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania (Photo, Richard Anderson)

Louis I. Kahn, Richards Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania (Photo Richard Anderson by permission)

Kahn’s big breakthrough was to pull the support services out of the central core and place them on the outer edge of the building. There the services, housed in tall brick towers, became an important part of the building’s overall design (no more box!). Likewise, in Bentsen’s building the corridors, stairwells, and elevators are on the outside where they contribute to the design.

Agnes Arnold Hall also shows the influence of Paul Rudolph, another important architect of the period.  He helped popularize the style known as “Brutalism,” with its monumental concrete buildings. Best-known was his Yale University Art & Architecture Building (1963).

Paul Rudolph, Yale Art & Architecture Building (Photo Sage Ross, Common License)

Paul Rudolph, Yale Art & Architecture Building (Photo Sage Ross, CC BY-SA 2.5)

Rudolph’s buildings were extremely complex. Occupants negotiated frequent level changes, as every floor seemed to be a mezzanine to another floor. The Yale A&A was said to have 37 different levels on 9 floors. And like Kahn’s building, some of the towers on the outside held stairs, elevators, and restrooms.

Yale Art & Architecture Building, section view (The Paul Rudolph Archive, Library of Congress)

Yale Art & Architecture Building, section view (The Paul Rudolph Archive, Library of Congress)

In a small way you see some of this spatial complexity at Agnes Arnold Hall. Escalators (now stairs) thread their way through a four-story lobby area that is open to the outside. The lobby flows into an open courtyard at the basement level, and visitors enter the building over a bridge that spans this courtyard. But Rudolph’s influence is also apparent in the way the concrete is finished. Most of Bentsen’s building is faced in brick, but at the basement level the concrete retaining walls of the courtyard have what is called a “corduroy” finish. This was Rudolph’s trademark (look closely at the Yale building).  After the concrete walls were poured and the forms removed, the workers attacked the surface with a jackhammer. Instant texture.

The Kenneth E Bentsen Architectural Papers, housed at the University of Houston Special Collections, are currently being processed.

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