2/10/15 Week 4 Day 1

      Today a tour was planned for the mechanical rooms of Temple Hoyne Buell Hall, but we were not able to obtain access because all mechanical rooms have been sealed off due to concerns that students will try to obtain access to the underground system of steam tunnels that runs through campus. Instead of being taken directly to the mechanics under the building, we were shown the oddly visible portions of the mechanical systems that run through TBH Hall.

     The return and supply systems of air for THB Hall are not only visible but prominently displayed to the outside world from the top of the building. They move all of the warm or cool air throughout the hall during the more unpleasant seasons of the year, the supply line branching off into increasingly smaller pipes as it reaches to bring air to individual rooms further and further away from the source.

2/5/15 Week 3 Day 2

     Today we visited the Krannert Center for Performing Arts, a spectacular building that is as interesting as it is huge.

Inside the center, after you climb the stairs that lead up to the entrance, is large model of the entirety of the building. There is no vantage point outside of Krannert from which you can see the whole of it, but the model allows you to take in the enormity of the building.

     The first thing we were shown after meeting up with our tour guide was the very floor we were walking on, a thing of pride for the Krannert Center and also a thing of great beauty. According to our guide, the tiles were made of teak and had been arranged so that they looked like the midwest from an aerial view.

      We were then taken to the “second floor” which was actually underground. This is where all of the work that went into creating musicals, plays, and operas happened. We saw the shop that created the sets, the costume department, and even backstage.

      We then saw the theatres from up top, from the place where an audience would sit. The Foellinger Great Hall is an almost perfectly symmetrical room where symphonies and orchestras come from all over to play at. We could only peak in on the Studio Theatre, but we saw the Tryon Festival Theatre, the set of which we had been allowed to view earlier from backstage. Our guide explained about the "fly space" above the theatre and how its used for flying things like and actors and props. The audience only views a fraction of what happens in a play, seeing only what the director wants them to see through a small window while everything that creates the magic happens backstage and up in the fly space.

      An orchestra could not perform in the Tryon Festival Theatre, nor could a play expect to be able to function correctly in the Foellinger Great Hall. Each space is created to house a particular type of performance and the architecture and planning that goes into each room reveals that.

     The Krannert Center for Performing Arts is a beautiful place with rooms that house some of the country's most fantastic performances. It was an honor to receive this in depth tour of one the most luxurious buildings in Urbana-Champaign. 

2/3/15 Week 3 Day 1

     I visited the five orders of columns around campus today with Grace Deetjen at 

http://deetjenarch199.blogspot.com/

1/29/15 Week 2 Day 2

     Today we took a tour of the Abbott Power Plant on the corner of Oak and Armory, located all the way on the west side of campus. A power plant is not made with aesthetic in mind. It is not supposed to please the eye, impress upon the memory, or be a joyful experience. A power plant is a building with a purpose, a job to do, and the structure of the building both inside and outside portrays that.
     The most prominent things about the outside of the plant are the two towers that rise above rest of the building and the surrounding area, pumping into the sky two, thick, white stacks of what I would later find out was water vapor. Entering the building it is easy to see that they are tight on security. After only a minute or so of standing inside the stairwell that barely sheltered myself and several other members of the tour group, someone came out to inquire as to why we were there.
     We signed in and waited for the rest of the group to arrive. Once everyone had gathered we learned some background information about the plant before splitting off into two different tour groups. Abbott supplies the steam to campus and only part of the electricity. In order to accomplish this task, the inside of the plant is a well-oiled machine. We all donned earplugs, eyeglasses, and hardhats before heading into the plant itself.
     The inside wasn't pretty. Loud machines whirred from every direction; pipes carrying who-knows-what ran along walls here and there; ladders and staircases led up to a second story with a see-through floor. No, it wasn't pretty, but it was clean. It was tidy and organized and efficient, which everything a power plant should be.
     Most of the talk about turbines, jet-engine-like generators, and the dangers of organic material in coal burners went either over my head or was caught before it could even get to my ears by the sound of the machines and earplugs. Once we got down to the basement it was a bit quieter, and I could listen to the information about the steam tunnels.
     The guide took us through a maze of machines, ducked us under a large pipe, and lead us to an unassuming door near the back of the basement. This was the entrance to the steam tunnels, nearly twenty miles of which ran underneath the campus. An intense heat drifted from within the door, and I being in my sweater wished I could stand just a little farther back. He told us that some of the tunnels had been stripped of their insulation and because of that, those sections could reach up to 180 degrees fahrenheit.
     "Tissue damage starts at 130," he warned us.
     Thus ended our tour of the Abbott Power Plant, a building created for a specific purpose, an efficient machine housed within a large building topped with towering stacks that bellow clouds of water into the air. A source of power and steam for the campus. We doffed our safety gear and left the warmth of the plant, thanking our guides.

1/27/15 Week 2 Day 1

      Today, starting at Foellinger, we walked up through the Main Quad, Bardeen Quad (the engineering quad) and the North Quad. The view from the bottom of the Main Quad, looking out onto the lines of sidewalk the trees that line the perimeter, all the way to the Union on the opposite side is a fantastic sight even without sunshine.

      The Main Quad has a theme running through most of it, red brick and tall columns,

and an imaginary line runs around the edge of quad, most of buildings' front meeting up with this line, creating the illusion of an enclosed space, a central box of architecture and learning for the campus. Of course there are outliers;

architects want to have a piece of their era in their work. They want the style of the time period in which they lived to show through in their legacies. 

     After taking a look at one of the most locally-famous pieces of architecture on campus, Altgeld,

a building whose halls are about as difficult to navigate as the many urban legends surrounding its history, we headed north to Bardeen Quad.

   The axis of this quad, created for engineering students just above the Main Quad, runs along its side. Walking north along this sidewalk, one sees the sloping hills and Boneyard Creek off to the right as well as a large piece of art at the north end.

The tour of the main axis of campus finished off with the North Quad, a small space dominated by the Beckman Institute at its head. A large structure, its length separates the north side of the city from the campus, a supposedly open center for all to learn.

Despite being small and perhaps not well-enough thought out, the North Quad does hold some amazing artwork, like this piece, a structure whose interior changes color periodically.

The main axis of campus is beautiful way to spend some time exploring. The quads are magnificent and the architecture holds so much history and so many stories. An entire day could be spent wandering up to Beckman and taking in the sights. Even longer could be spent exploring the history of buildings and the land around it.