Boston College Master Plan

Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

stellarfun said:
Maybe BC expects the number of Jesuits to decrease steadily.
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BC is becoming less and less a Catholic School....


In fact, many "religious" schools are not meeting their quotas, so they're going secular.


My cousin (who lives out in Utah and Shreds the Gnar for a living) is going to BYU and he's a mormon's nightmare.
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

Mayor Menino's Crohn's said:
BC is becoming less and less a Catholic School....
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With the largest community of Jesuits in the world and 70+ percent of the student body reporting as Catholic, how in the world do you figure that?

What an individual does is one thing, but BC as an institution is very much still a Catholic school and will remain so.
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

Much of the garbage architecture/planning is a product of BC's effort in the 60's and early 70's to morph from a commuter school that served Obie from Allston and Sully from Southie. There was a lot of federal money used to build dorms, the guidelines of which encouraged "build it big and build it cheap".

I like the look of these renderings, and hope that they aren't Hotel Commonwealth II in execution.

As to Gothic campuses, Yale is fine, but Trinity is my favorite!

P.S Good for BC for upping its game over the years!
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

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Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

forgot about this thread! I don't work at bc anymore so nice update!
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

Photo update:


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Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

Some more renderings. I heard construction is well ahead of schedule due to good weather.

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Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

Lurker is pleased, except for the resemblance to Yale. Boo Yale, GO CRIMSON!
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

Looks fantastic.
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

Princeton also returned to Collegiate Gothic with its newest (and sixth) residential college, Whitman College.

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S19/04/10O93/?section=featured

http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/whitman/images/

I remember the project getting good reviews, and I just re-read one from the WSJ. There are a few pretty interesting facts contained in the article that, I think, suggest that traditional architectural styles are not as difficult to build as is often said:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119067974691738128.html

Wall Street Journal said:
"The hand-cut bluestone is laid as a highly intricate variety of random ashlar masonry, with no readily perceptible pattern allowed to emerge. This required enormous skill of the nearly 80 stonemasons who worked on the project. Less than a third of the applicants were hired. ... Whitman proves skilled stonemasons are available in this country; it so happens skilled carvers are available too."

"Whitman's walls will last for centuries, an unlikely result with frame construction. But the college came in at a very steep $136 million. A senior university official, Mark Burstein, estimates that traditional construction increased the project cost by 15%. Hardly surprising, considering the university commissioned some 20 wall mock-ups to gauge masonry patterns, coloration and textures as well as mortar types."
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What's interesting to me here (and maybe this is just my relative ignorance) is that

(a) it seems the claim that's often made that there are too few skilled artisans to build non-modernist structures has a bit of myth to it;

(b) $136M for 2 major institutional buildings -- especially at the peak of the construction boom in 2004-07 doesn't seem that steep to me;

(c) it also seems like the 15% cost premium for building high-quality Collegiate Gothic (as opposed to the typical glass-and-steel box) is pretty minor... no?
 
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Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

I like that BC is continuing it's Gothic tradition -- a bit more variety in style and stone shades could break up the monotony (see the Yale and Princeton buildings above) but generally this is a campus improvement.
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

BC is making the transition from Metro Boston & Mass./ New England to the US and International aclaim just as BU and NEU did a few years to a couple of decades ago for BU

Meanwhile U Mass Boston and Wentworth are taking the first step up the ladder -- shedding the commuter school image for the Metro Boston / New England student pool

At the rate things are going the group of the Hub's Global Research U's could expand from the current 3++ (MIT, HU, BU + Tufts + Brandeis on a smaller scale) to 5++ in the next decade or so -- this bodes well for the Knowledge Economy here abouts and also is good for the US and the World as a whole
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

Whighlander, I agree that Boston-area schools have undergone a dramatic change in their orientation in recent years and have become much more national- and international-facing institutions than they were not too long ago. However, I feel we on the forum often shortchange BC to some degree, and to say that BC is more of a "commuter" school while BU or Northeastern are more nationally focused doesn't match with my understanding of these schools.

To my mind, BC has been more of a national school for a longer time than BU or especially Northeastern. When I was in high school (10 years ago), BC was where very strong students who might also be applying to Georgetown, Dartmouth, Northwestern, etc., went. My friends who were there had roommates from places across the country and world. BU was more of a commuter school for rich kids who weren't necessarily very good students. NU was a commuter school for not-so-rich kids who weren't necessarily very good students (two of my three best friends went there).

Today, BC is #31 in the US News National Universities rankings (right behind UNC-Chapel Hill, tied with Brandeis and ahead of the likes of William & Mary and NYU).

BU is currently #53, right behind Tulane and just ahead of OSU and University of Maryland College Park.

NU is #62, tied with UGA, Southern Methodist University, Syracuse, Worcester Polytech, and Purdue, with UConn, Texas A&M and University of Florida just ahead of it, and Rutgers and Clemson just behind it.

I don't mean to put down any other schools -- especially since I realize BU and NU have, to their credit, improved themselves GREATLY in the past 10 years -- but BC is a much stronger school, particularly at the undergraduate level, than I think many of us on the forum and perhaps in general in the Boston area realize.
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

Where BC lags behind Harvard, MIT, BU, Tufts, and to an extent Northeastern is that it is weak in engineering, some science, and lacks a medical school. It is strong academically in the undergraduate liberal arts, management, and law.

The liberal arts are not an economic engine.
 
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