University of Nebraska Lincoln - Cornhusker Yearbook (Lincoln, NE)

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necessity, or both. In any event, not premeditateJ. It seems to have Ivcn horn of the necessity in cities like New York and Chicai o, u ' here the lofty buildings began to make dark caverns of the streets and city ordinances became necessary to provide an ever- increasing setback as the buildings assumed hftier and loftier proportions. And, lo and behold! It suddenly davoned up in artists that this method of construction greatly improved the beauty and symmetry of the structure and as a result of it wc have such buildings as the Tribune building, of Chicago, and the new State Capitol of Nebraska as the forerunners of a new and purely American culture. Now we have observed that the finest examples of landscape that we find in the vicinity of our cities arc the golf courses and, strange to say, these were never laid out for the primary purp ise of creating landscape but were created for the sole purpose of providing nine or eighteen, (as the case may l-e) fairways that the player might have an unobstructed view between his tee and his flag. The net result (if which VnMs to create the kind of a picture that I have just described to you with the flag for the central figure, supported on either side by trees or .shrubs or drives or creeks or any other natural work of not sufficient note to detract from the central feature. Now to apply my interpretation of what a picture is or wh.it a picture might to be; by like rules, lo a landscape, or what a landscape should be: I. A landscape should have a well-defined and well wrought boundary which would answer as the artistic frame to our picture; and, first of all, I might say suggestively that a street or streets can never be adequate boundaries for a landscape, for the very simple reason that its creator may not con- tiol the vista on the other side. A thicket, a river or a screen of shrubs or trees might an.swer for a boundary or, where the necessities of the case require, a landscape may be bounded by a h.ilf bhvk of ground surrounding it and f;icmg it, the construction and planting thereon being planned for framing purposes. In other words, tlie first rule governing the creation of ,i l.mdscape is that no matter where within the enclosure the observer m;iy stand he may not be permitted to see an objectionable thing from ail artistic point of view. II. The second important objective that one should seek lo .icquire is that there K no imssible avenue of ;ipproach or entry into our landscape scheme through which an objectit)nable view could be had, and from every important avenue of .ipproach the builder .should strive lo present to the observer a picture complete in itself with a central feature (preferably .s ime monumental building) supported oi: either side by pl.intmus or le.s.ser structures thai m.iy .serve to .iccentuale the view. o

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TT PROPOSED BUILCme 5lTOATI0n PLAtl LincoLH City ■ Campus UniVtRSITY OF • ME5ltA5KA Now no architect and no artist in all the long history of art and its development ever succeeded in creating a new form, nor will they m the future ever succeed in so doing. They have discovered the beauty of form and have adapted it to our uses and our tastes and our comfort. For instance, it has been said that a Greek workman some centuries before the beginning of the Christian era, carelessly placed a hollow tile cylinder upon the ground over a sprouting Acanthus plant and that in due time the plant grew up inside the tile and out of the top thereof and a builder passing by noted the beauty of the combination — the tile and the Acanthus plant growing out of it. This became the motif of the capitol of the Corinthian column that has been reproduced to this day in our most artistic structures. Again, we suppose that a gable roof is the simplest possible form of construction, the purpose of which is to keep the rain out of a building and the form was used by primitive builders for that pur- pose alone and without consciousness that it would one day be the form that should be used as n covering of the Parthenon, the most beautiful building of all times, nor that it would become the motif of the great Gothic cathedrals of the middle ages. Again, after the same method, there seems to be developing in this country of ours a new theme, or mot ' f, in architecture that, like the others I have mentioned, seems to be the result of chance or PaKe :{ 1 ' [lIIK AVWAWA A yA A AVTAM

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s III. In the development of a campus landscape it seems to us that the ideal method (and the necessary one) is to create a considerable number of these pictures complete in themselves, dominated maybe by a greater vista in the form possibly of a quadrangle or oval, depending upon the nature or topography of the area. Now in our studies of the situation at the University of Nebraska we found that during the life of the institution covering a period upwards of fifty years, that the governing board had many time? sensed the desirability of plans looking to the future growth and development of the institution, and were anxious to make plans that would be adequate to take care of future requirements and from time to time during that period we think a half dozen or more considerable schemes were laid out with that purpose in view. We found, too, that each of these plans had been in turn stored away in the vaults or cupboards of the Administration Building and lost, so far as services to successive governing boards was concerned. We found, also, that any movement in the premises looking toward the perfection of other and greater plans were listened to with great indilTerence and that a great amount of inertia had to he overcome in order that any progress at all might be made. In order, then, that the plan we had in view might not meet the same fate of its predecessors we began studiously to search for the cause or causes of their undoing, if any there might be, and we came to the conclusion : 1 . That all the plans that had been submitted were the work of architects and that an architect by reason of his culture and training has dominant in his mind the housing problem, his whole training having been directed rather toward the building itself than toward the setting of it. All his fees and all his livelihood having been based during all his experience upon a percentage of the cost of the building itself. We found that his energies had been, as a rule, directed toward the possible housing needs of the University for its several colleges for a term of years and the plans that he de- veloped therefore stressed that motif. 2. The plan seemed always to have been superimposed upon the University and was never the outgrowth of a studious effort on the part of those most intimately in- terested and contained no contribution that breathed a breath of the life of the University itself. Our conclusion has been that to plan the future area of a campus in such a way that it may live, it should be contributed to by every department of the University, inclusive of the governing board, the faculty, the alumni, the student body, and where located within a city, the Chamber ot Commerce, the city council and other affiliated interests. Our experience has been that widely-distributed photo stats of plans with requests that suggestions of change be made; the adequate digestion ot these sug- IMI y. S4v: • :4V• y4V