In this piece, I continue my discussion of the ACE offices currently under construction in connection with Brownson Hall.  My final article of last semester addressed site placement and the potential for responsive development through design.  Our attention now turns to the building as an objet d’art, that is, a composition unto itself.

                The building is arranged in two main volumes, a cubic block to the north and a lower wing that extends to meet the existing structure.  Just before this interface with the historic portion, a bay projects out westward into the parking lot.  Each of these major movements is composed of a combination of elements, the design and disposition of which constitutes our present analysis.

                These elements, especially the masonry ornament and fenestration, are broadly neo-classical.  This represents a marked departure from the surrounding complex of vernacular facilities, which share characteristics with the farm buildings of Brittany.  With its towering, brick pilasters, the ACE office’s north block owes more to the barrière d’Enfer by Claude Ledoux than any pastoral or campus setting. 

                The barriers, part of a network to collect tolls on goods being brought into Paris, helped to provoke the French Revolution.  Fifty-odd years later, Basil Moreau founded the Congregation of Holy Cross to restore the Church in post-revolutionary France, and the rest, as they say, is history.  I find it somewhat problematic that the massive, severe neo-classicism of the waning Ancièn Regime and the brutal Directory should be so prominently inflicted upon the humane and agrarian ideal of Notre Dame’s French Quarter.

                Perhaps such a reading is overly harsh.  I wish to emphasize, however, that it is a risk the university ran in attempting a neo-classical building.  Whatever its subjective, historicist shortcomings, the building speaks to us.  Even as I criticize the details of its execution, I must applaud the university’s decision engage an architecture that actually expresses and embodies physical and cultural meaning.  We have passed beyond the silent brooding of the faceless façade.  The mute having now spoken, I pray that rhetoric may swiftly come.

                Most of the windows on both the north block and the adjacent wing are fairly pedestrian.  The dormers, in a nod to modern office equality, are visually a bit oversized.  The two distinctive openings are the central thermal window and a Palladian motif on the projecting arm.  Both, while modestly elegant, do not seem particularly adapted to the usage or character of an office building.  Furthermore, they appear to support conflicting interpretations, with the thermal unit giving a monumental impression, while the Palladian window feels more residential.

                A much more successful element lies directly beneath the Palladian window.  There, a brick archway connects the building with the lower parking lot.  This feature is a functional shelter from harsh weather and offers the possibility of a dignified means of accessible entrance to the building.  It also directly quotes the vocabulary of the existing building, emulating the arch on the east side of Brownson Hall.

                Lastly, the mansard roof, while an attempt to complement the adjacent buildings, is not without issue.  At the point where it adjoins the original building, the wider new construction creates an awkward gable wall.  The roof sitting atop it is correctly termed a gambrel rather than a mansard, which, by definition, would wrap around in a hip.  The avoidance of a hip in this location is understandable, as it would result in a needlessly complicated intersection of roof planes.  However, the preferable option would be that of a firewall rising above the roofline.  Such a mechanism would prevent the illusion that the original building is an outgrowth of the newer structure.

                This concludes my observations concerning the overall exterior design of the building.  In my next article I will cover the small-scale details and finishes.  I also hope to conduct an interview with Professor Thomas Gordon Smith, an esteemed member of our architecture faculty and consummate classicist.  Professor Smith consulted in the design of the ACE building, and I wish to give a fair hearing to his contribution to the project, lest you, the reader, be subjected to a one-sided analysis.