PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE
Campus
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   I often have referred to a quotation from David Starr Jordan, speaking at the end of the university's second decade: "It is said that Rome was not built in one day, nor Stanford in a century; but it is being built, quietly, honestly, steadfastly, stone after stone...." I usually have used this quote in its metaphorical sense, referring to the steady building of our academic programs and intellectual legacy. Little did I realize five years ago that I would be so heavily engaged in building Stanford quite literally stone by stone. Questions concerning the future of universities as physical spaces are looming, as I suggested earlier. Alas, for better or for worse, the actual format of the university is anything but virtual.

As measured by expenditures, even adjusted for inflation, we are in the most intense period of construction in the history of Stanford University, including its founding. During the decade of the 1990s, we will spend close to $1 billion on physical renewal and new facilities. This unprecedented level of expenditure is the result of a combination of calamity, opportunity, and responsibility.

The calamity, of course, was the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. It forced upon us $250 million of restoration and seismic upgrade work. The good news is that when that work is completed, we literally will have rebuilt the oldest buildings on campus from the inside out, making them much safer and more useful. As we have done seismic retrofitting, we also have renovated buildings for programmatic needs, including adding the networking vital to new technologies. Seismic upgrades on all of the oldest campus buildings made of unreinforced masonry will be completed by the end of the decade.

The opportunity has come in the form of many generous gifts: from Hewlett and Packard, Gates and Allen, and others to fulfill Stanford's long-held dream of a Science and Engineering Quad; from the Cantors, Christensens, Freidenrichs, Halperins, and McMurtrys for the Stanford Museum renovation; from the Basses, the Packard Foundation, and two anonymous donors for the Center for Clinical Sciences Research; from the Schwabs for the business school's Residential Center; from the Bing, Braun, Lane, and Pigott families for the Restoration Fund; and many more.

The responsibility comes in exercising good stewardship--maintaining the physical endowment that has been handed down to us and, then, renewing it as needed to meet the changing nature of teaching, learning, and research. During the current construction cycle, between 1996 and 2000, approximately 71 percent of all expenditures will be for the restoration, renovation, renewal, or replacement of existing campus facilities. Only 29 percent is for added space. Included in these expenditures are approximately $90 million devoted to correcting deferred maintenance items that were identified in 1994. By the end of the decade, accumulated maintenance, safety, and code issues will have been corrected in virtually all of the central campus buildings. What do these figures say? That Stanford is not engaged in unbridled expansion and thoughtless spending. Rather, it is pursuing carefully planned and managed work with a clear purpose: the physical renewal of Stanford University's infrastructure for the future. Here, I believe, we are in a strong position relative to our competitors. The trustees have greatly helped by concluding that the plant is an important part of our investments and therefore allowing an additional 0.5 percent of endowment payout for support of the long-term capital budget.

When I came from Chicago there was lots of speculation about what I would bring with me. Apart from twenty-six years of education provided me by my colleagues and students, I brought an interest in and commitment to competitive architectural design. I remember when, in my first meeting with the university's excellent architect, David Neuman, he told me that Stanford did not use design competitions for choosing architects and that the university president had no role. Subsequently, I changed both features. While the Latin proverb says there is no disputing about taste, the Latin proverb is wrong. Aesthetics are an appropriate subject for debate, and many will disagree with what has been happening at Stanford over the last five years. While the credit goes to the architects, I shall be happy to take most of the blame.

The first of the buildings that resulted from the choice of an architect through design competition is the Allen Center for Integrated Systems. The architect is Antoine Predock of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The restoration of the museum, with addition of a new wing, was entrusted to James Polshek of New York. James Ingo Freed of Pei, Cobb, Freed in New York is responsible for the new Science and Engineering Quadrangle, the first quadrangle to be built next to the Main Quad in accord with the original nineteenth-century plans of Frederick Law Olmsted. In addition to the quadrangle as such, Freed has designed the new building of the Statistics Department; a new classroom building, the SEQ Teaching Center; a new building for the Electrical Engineering Department; and a laboratory annex to the McCullough Material Sciences Building.

Tanner, Leddy, Maytum & Stacey, of San Francisco, were awarded the new graduate student residence on Campus Drive that will be named for former Stanford president Richard W. Lyman. Stanford's Spanish-Mexican architectural heritage will find a new expression in the residential center for the Graduate School of Business for which Ricardo Legorreta Arquitectos, of Mexico City, was selected. The most recent choice was London-based Sir Norman Foster and Partners for the Center for Clinical Sciences Research building.

By the turn of the century, I hope, Stanford will have a campus second to none, not only in its beauty, but also in its functionality.