REVIEWS

Bureaucracy and Ideology
— Lauren Morris

The tension continues in the University of Lethbridge architectural reinvention

It was supposed to visually express a new kind of university, one “liberated from the confines of bureaucracy and hierarchy” (Ditmars, 2014). Instead, Arthur Erickson’s University Hall at the University of Lethbridge confined rather than liberated. My grandfather, a teacher and chair on the local schoolboard in 1972 when University Hall was built, described it as “prison-like.” Subsequent generations also complain about the brutalism of Erickson’s monotonous concrete interior, a construction choice dictated by university administration when the brick Erickson had wanted to use as homage to the prairie landscape proved too costly. 

Erickson did not intend to put University of Lethbridge’s students and faculty in a prison. An idealist, he envisioned a unique, multi-use building, a sort of “university village” (Ditmars, 2014) that would democratize education. The University Board of Governors chose Erickson because of his reputation. Administrative and architectural desires failed to be reconciled, and almost 50 years later, the building continues to constrain—campus tour-guides and users alike resent the concrete hallway that stretches across the coulee. 

The University of Lethbridge’s new Science Commons building has equally lofty aspirations. Built by KPMB Architects and Stantec in 2019, the Science Commons is a $280-million shrine to science in a period of increasing fiscal austerity. Its erection is part of an ambitious new plan to reinvent the University of Lethbridge as Alberta’s “Destination” university. 

But, is the Science Commons just another rendition of Erickson’s University Hall—a failure to merge architectural vision, administrative desires, and user needs?  

Built sunken into the coulee that defines the city’s landscape and overlooking the Oldman River from atop rolling hills, Erickson’s University Hall sought to express the prairie landscape through architectural form. Designed as if emerging from the plains and built as a “natural extension of the horizon line” (Ditmars, 2014), Erickson’s University Hall is both understated and futuristic, blending into the coulee landscape. 

In a colonial context, the blending of colonial institutions into the landscape crafts a fantasy of settler life on the prairie as something that is both a natural progression of the landscape, as well as extraordinary and progressive. In seeking to represent the prairie landscape architecturally, and in positioning University Hall as if it were emerging from the coulee, Erickson inadvertently built upon a settler nostalgia for the prairies, normalizing and naturalizing the colonization of Blackfoot land. 

Architecturally striking when viewed from across the coulees, Erickson’s unrealized university village is, today, best known by students for its long hallway and winding staircase. 

“It’s depressing,” Taylor Nieuwdorp, a recent University of Lethbridge graduate, said of University Hall. Worse, it is non-functional.

Maybe that’s why Erickson’s architectural vision for the University of Lethbridge, which was supposed to include a second hall extending further along the coulees, was abandoned in the last century. His signature building failed to meet user or administrative needs and was never used in the way that Erickson intended. He had designed University Hall to include multiple gathering places with tiered seating along its iconic hallway, where classes could be held in common areas to allow for more fluid learning environments. But the design proved impractical for actual teaching purposes. Some of these areas have been removed. Others continue to clog the hallway, students perched on them in-between classes, immersed in their phones. 

Erickson would have been heartbroken. Or, at least, disappointed. After the completion of the building, Erickson reportedly never returned to the University of Lethbridge, and the Administration chose not to involve Erickson in subsequent additions to the campus. 

Through his design, Erickson aimed to create a modern university, unrestrained by bureaucracy by seeking to create a university village where students could live and study, and ideas could flow freely in common spaces. But in 2020, his University Hall persists as an architectural space that fails to reconcile usability with administrative and architectural desires. It has not served to democratize education or create a university village. 

This tension only continues with the new Science Commons. The new building now dominates the once streamlined outline of University Hall on the coulee horizon. It has replaced the ideology of academic democratization of the past century in favour of fetishistic imaginings of scientific progress and innovation. The Science Commons dominates the horizon, forgetting Erickson’s sleek and unassuming design laid into the landscape for a new colonist character in architecture that demands to be seen. 

Architectural critic Aaron Betsky describes the Science Commons as “yet another glass-skinned structure the likes of which you could see anywhere” (2018). The building remains lit at night, eclipsing the horizon and Erickson’s University Hall from across the coulee. Administratively and architecturally, the University has replaced Erickson’s vision for a university village hub with an attempt to create “one of Canada’s premiere science facilities” (Knapik, 2019). 

And yet, the Science Commons echoes Erickson both in its lofty aspirations and in its lack of meaningful user consultation. Like University Hall, the Science Commons reflects administrative and architectural assumptions about what universities are for. Built on the premise of “Science on Display,” the Science Commons was designed to be “a celebration of science as a theatre of discovery” (Knapik, 2019). Its laboratories are visible from common areas, perhaps in the spirit of making science more transparent and accessible to those passing by.  

Unfortunately, this modern version of Erickson’s desire for open learning spaces has been met with as much enthusiasm as the impractical gathering places in University Hall had. 

Researchers working in the Science Commons describe the design as a “fishbowl,” and many resent having their work, research, and ideas so flagrantly on display. 

“At first, we were told that curtains and blinds wouldn’t be an option, owning to the Administration’s push for ‘Science on Display,’” said Fallan Curtis, a senior undergraduate neuroscience student at the University of Lethbridge, who works in the new Science Commons. “This [is] in stark contrast to demands of researchers and faculty—particularly those of us who work with human subjects and need to assure their anonymity. We had no idea what we were going to do. The Psychology Department even offered to stay in the old building to assure ethical student participation in research but were told that they weren’t allowed.” 

“Eventually, [the administration] caved [to the demand for privacy] and blinds started being installed.” 

 But the University continues to view the production of science in the new building as both a commodity and as a consumable form of entertainment for building visitors. Yet, as Curtis notes, “None of us consented to being on display. In fact, we resisted it, with force, throughout the planning stages, building stages, and well into its opening.” 

Beyond failing to account for user needs, administration at the University of Lethbridge ignored the needs of researchers and students even as the building was being conceived of. The building’s privacy violations are not limited to research. As Curtis pointed out, “You can see up skirts in certain places too, due to everything being glass.” 

Just as University Hall failed to democratize the university, neither producing the university village Erickson desired nor cultivating user friendly open learning spaces, the Science Commons is failing to meet user needs. Rather, both buildings illustrate the way architectural ideals around progress and administrative desires both clash and co-create spaces that favour administrative ideology about what university campuses are for over actual user needs. 

Newer, sexier, and more aligned with the University of Lethbridge’s current vision, the Science Commons does draw focus away from Erickson’s unrealized dream of a democratic university community to the administration’s current hyper-focus on science.

And yet, my grandfather would probably have seen the glass bowl effect of the Science Commons as being just as prison-like as the relentless concrete of University Hall, with neither design serving the intended user―instead, successfully visualizing and concretizing the priorities of the university. 

References

[1] Betsky, A. 2018. “No Line on the Horizon.” Architect. Retrieved July 16, 2020 from https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/no-line-on-the-horizon_o

[2] Ditmars, H. 2014. “Lethbridge University: The Spaceship-like Prairie School Comes of Age.” The Architectural Review. Retrieved July 16, 2020 from https://www.architectural-review.com/buildings/lethbridge-university-the-spaceship-like-prairie-school-comes-of-age/8658049.article

[3] Knapik, M. 2019. “Defining a New Datum: University of Lethbridge – Science Commons, Lethbridge, Alberta.” Canadian Architect. Retrieved July 16, 2020 from https://www.canadianarchitect.com/lethbridge-science-commons/

Lauren Morris is a recent graduate of the University of Lethbridge (BSc Neuroscience, 2020), and is interested in the ways social inequalities and systems of power are woven into institutions – including the built environment. They currently live in Treaty 7 territory, in present day Lethbridge, and participated in the WriteON 2020 workshop series.

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