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With its stark, outward sloping aluminum walls, the futuristic Teaching Center, at the heart of the new Science and Engineering Quad (SEQ) on Serra Mall, looks more like something dreamed up for a successful start-up than tradition-bound academia. Begun in the mid-1980s, the SEQ is a complex of buildings, freestanding arcades and walkways that brings related disciplines geographically scattered across campus to one site to foster interaction and cross-fertilization of ideas.
In 1986, a $40 million gift from alumnus and Silicon Valley pioneer William Hewlett revived the university's original plan to build a second quad alongside the first. However, the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, which caused millions of dollars in damage on campus, and the indirect-cost controversy put the project on hold. Not until 1993, when Hewlett's partner, alumnus David Packard, attended the dedication of the new Green Earth Sciences building, did the plan regain momentum. Standing on the building's back courtyard, Packard looked across a drab landscape of deteriorating postwar engineering buildings and decided that something had to be done. A year later, Hewlett and Packard donated $77.4 million to launch the $120 million project that will help ensure the university's leadership in science and engineering into the 21st century. University Architect David Neuman was determined to restore the spirit of the original campus plan of interconnecting quads, yet build for the present. "We want buildings that are of Stanford, not just at Stanford," he said. "A disorderly campus affects everyone, if only subliminally." The architectural competition for the SEQ's design was won by James Ingo Freed, a partner in the firm Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners, who had recently designed the much-acclaimed new main library in San Francisco and the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
The Teaching Center, which opened at the end of March, is the anchor of the SEQ. Its exterior shell of aluminum, limestone and granite has a curved west facade. Designed to replace the outdated, squat Physics Tank, which was demolished in August 1997, it has two large lecture halls with rotating stages that enable instructors in biology, physics and chemistry to set up "backstage" while another class is in progress. It also has three smaller classrooms, all crammed with the latest in high-tech audiovisual and multimedia systems, designed to be user-friendly to even the most technophobic instructors. Next door is the new Statistics Department building. In contrast to the Teaching Center, it is more conventional, with red tile roof, recessed windows and limestone walls. "An interpretation of the [Main] Quad, not a copy," according to Olivier Pieron, co-program manager for the SEQ project. Opened in February, it houses offices for faculty, graduate students and staff, as well as a computer lab and a 49-seat classroom. Under construction are the Electrical Engineering building, with a triangular glass entry and skylit atrium, and the McCullough annex, which will house the Laboratory for Advanced Materials and the Center for Materials Research. Both buildings are scheduled to be completed next year. Lisa Trei For more information visit the TCSEQ's website at http://www.stanford.edu/dept/registrar/tcseq/.
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