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Science Center

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1972–1978, Perry, Dean, Stahl and Rogers; 1991 renovation and addition, Perry, Dean and Rogers. Wellesley College.
  • Science Center (Keith Morgan)

More widely admired off than on campus, the building brought architect Charles F. Rogers II to prominence and updated the prestige of a venerable Boston firm best known for designing Colonial Williamsburg. The aggressive display of mechanical elements along the roofline and fire stairs across the facade proclaim the practical priorities of the building program, which reorganized Wellesley's science curriculum. Yet the Brutalist concrete and brightly enameled steel are deployed in an intricately layered composition embracing trees and intended to evoke picturesque values. At the rear, joining the building to a remodeled 1920s Collegiate Gothic structure, is an atrium juxtaposing old and new in the lively manner of such contemporaneous projects as Quincy Market (GC5).

Writing Credits

Author: 
Keith N. Morgan
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Data

What's Nearby

Green, Founders, and Pendleton halls
Williams S. Houghton Memorial Chapel
Jewett Arts Center
Wellesley College Campus
Davis Museum and Cultural Center

Citation

Keith N. Morgan, "Science Center", [Wellesley, Massachusetts], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/MA-01-WL11.9.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Massachusetts

Buildings of Massachusetts: Metropolitan Boston, Keith N. Morgan, with Richard M. Candee, Naomi Miller, Roger G. Reed, and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009, 519-520.

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