building program and generative ideas
When the University of Pennsylania was conceived, the four colleges then in existence in the English colonies – Harvard, William & Mary, Yale, and Princeton – were all schools for educating the clergy rather than preparing their students for lives of business and public service. This ethos of pragmatism, economy, and functionality was to be expressed in the campus’ architecture. Circumscribing the Blanche P Levy Park, UPenn’s original quad, are buildings that eschew histrionics and embrace an infrastructural and industrial quality as a way of manifesting an academic ideology.
