It is another week at Notre Dame, and another team has come just short of a national championship. Like the basketball team before them, the men’s hockey team fell in their tournament. Certainly, this was a tremendous disappointment, and more importantly, it denied us the opportunity to defeat those monogram-stealing “Fighting Sioux” of North Dakota in the final. But there is a silver lining in every cloud, and I intend to find it.
Falling short of a goal leaves us with remorse, lingering doubts, and second guessing. We question “What if…?” interminably. Most of the time, however, we only construct the alternate histories up to that point wherein we win the championship – nobody thinks to consider the consequences of actually winning. So I invite you to imagine this scenario: What if ND had won the 2010-2011 hockey national championship, and then proceeded to go on a drought for the next 40 years?
This would be a real tragedy under any circumstances, but especially so this particular season. Now I can see you scratching your heads, thinking, what on earth does any of this have to do with architecture? Well, as it turns out, Notre Dame is moving into a new hockey arena next season – bringing an end to the Joyce Center era.
Hence the scenario. I can almost hear the disgruntled alumni letters in the viewpoint page now: “The curse of the Joyce Center. A betrayal of our working class/Catholic/traditional what-have-you. You’ll never win another national championship until you repent of your sins, tear down that monstrosity, and return to the glory that is half the north dome of the Joyce Center!” I exaggerate, but the point is clear: people, especially sports fans, invest buildings with meaning. Lots of meaning. Way more meaning than they could ever rationally justify. That is why I, for one, am thankful that we did not win a national championship this year. It leaves the door open for this new building to expand into its own august legacy, relatively free from the long, tyrannical, rose-tinted shadow of nostalgia for the mythic deeds of its predecessor.
This is a point that both architects and the public often seem to forget, at least until someone tries to tear something down. It is no surprise that long-time University architect Ellerbe Becket was finally sacked (pun intended) in a debacle over the most sacred building on campus – the House that Rock Built. We talk about it like the patron saint of football had personally climbed up on a scaffold and laid every brick in his own martyr’s blood.
The lesson here is simple: when an architect approaches a project, it is more than just a building. Ultimately, a building itself is a container for human activity. At the same time, the form and character of our built environment informs and constructs the identity within which we act. This understanding, simultaneously so magnificent and yet humbling, is at the core of architecture.
Art historian and early preservationist John Ruskin, in what is quite possibly the greatest run-on sentence of all time, nobly expresses this very concept:
“For indeed, the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching , of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in the walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity. It is in their lasting witness against men, in their quiet contrast with the transitional character of all things, in the strength which, through the lapse of seasons and times, and the decline and birth of dynasties, and the changing of the face of the earth, and of the limits of the sea, maintains its sculptured shapeliness for a time insuperable, connects forgotten and following ages with each other, and half constitutes the identity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of nations: it is in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture; and it is not until a building has assumed this character, till it has been encrusted with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have been witnesses of suffering, and its pillars rise out of the shadows of death, that its existence, more lasting as it is than that of the natural objects of the world around it, can be gifted with even so much as these possess, of language and of life” [The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1849].
In his commentary on this passage, Sir John Summerson observes that Ruskin believes “the art of architecture is the art of building ancient monuments; or rather, of building structures which after several hundred years of exposure will be received as such by an unknown generation of men.” In light of such demands for greatness, both from past alumni and legions of fans yet unborn, the next column shall begin to examine The Compton Family Center, future home of Notre Dame hockey.
Matthew Balkey is a fourth-year architecture student, and may be reached at mbalkey@nd.edu. Speaking of droughts, Notre Dame has not won a football championship since the season before he was born. Just saying.
