Herring Hall, built to house the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, Rice's business school, is a Postmodern masterpiece. Simultaneously bold and deferential, it summarizes the architectural history of Rice University and constructs wholeness where before only fragments had existed. The exuberant patterns and colors of Herring Hall's exterior surfaces (students nicknamed the building “Herringbone Hall” for the brash, two-tone diapering on its narrow east and west elevations) overshadow the reconciling role Pelli envisioned for Herring Hall: it was meant to demonstrate to university officials that Cram's master plan could be reasonably adapted to contemporary building requirements and, in the process, ameliorate some of the destructive departures that occurred from the 1940s to the 1970s.