Slowly, however, the process of developing the first actual universities manifested itself in architecture. Lectures were held in the multifunctional halls of churches and monasteries, and in private houses as well as in the open air. The first universities were, therefore, urban institutions, as in Paris (ill. 2). Based on the cathedral school of Notre-Dame in that city, for example, many university institutions were installed in converted buildings.
Structures specifically for teaching were first erected in the second half of the 15th century, and existing churches were used for various festivities and meetings. Down to the 20th century, indeed, churches formed part of the spatial programme of most European universities.
Later institutions of this kind usually bore the title “universitates ex privelegio” and were founded by princes or by the Church, especially in the German Empire. New buildings were often erected to mark the status of these places of learning and that of their donor. Developments of this kind were incorporated in the urban realm, as one can see in the example of Heidelberg (1385).
The constant growth of universities also helped to shape the image of the city. This was particularly evident in smaller communities like Helmstedt (ill. 3), where in 1580 some 700 academics lived in a town with a population of roughly 2,500. Here, too, an existing Cistercian building was converted step by step into a college structure. Between 1592 and 1597, a new main university building was erected, called the “Juleum” after its donor. The significance of this structure may be seen not only in its imposing appearance, but in its prominent location. Other amenities scattered about the city included a university garden, fencing and riding halls, an apothecary’s shop and the professors’ houses, which also contained student accommodation and facilities like laboratories, lecture rooms and even a printing shop.
Although the university became a single built entity only later, the college type, which provided housing for students, developed as early as the 14th century. In contrast to other forms of student accommodation, however, the colleges were monastery-like communities founded by persons outside the university. In England, and particularly in Oxford and Cambridge, the individual colleges assumed responsibility for teaching. The university itself was merely the overall organization. On the continent, too, colleges were of great importance. Around 1550 in Paris, for example, the Collège de Sorbon, founded in 1257, became the central location of the theological faculty and ultimately the synonym for the University of Paris, the Sorbonne.
In many instances, colleges of this kind conducted their activities in a number of older buildings, which, in some cases, were converted and extended. The Collegio di Spagna in Bologna, in contrast, erected by Matteo Gattaponi between 1365 and 1367, was an early example of a new structure of this type (ill. 4). The symmetrical, two-storey building, laid out about a square central courtyard to which all functions are oriented, still conjures associations of monastic buildings. On the other hand, the organizational form, with arcades around the courtyard, is reminiscent of many palaces and public buildings in Italy.
New College in Oxford (ill. 5), built between 1380 and 1386, demonstrates the proximity of the college-type to a monastery. Donated by the Bishop of Winchester, it forms a united whole, even possessing its own cemetery. The spatial programme reveals certain parallels to that of Bologna, although the layout is somewhat different. In New College, one finds those elements that were to be typical of the English quadrangle system, with a striking, elaborately designed gateway tower over the entrance and a wall that clearly divides the college from its surroundings. This pattern was to remain dominant for centuries in Oxford and Cambridge; and it was later adopted in the US – around 1900 – where many neo-Gothic colleges like the University of Chicago (1893) by Henry Ives Cobb followed English models. This process of reproduction attained a new quality with the Harkness Memorial Quadrangle in Yale (1917–21) by James Gamble Rogers. Here, an enclosed space was created based on English models, with the entrance marked by a tower. Even the patina was copied. The Harkness, however, is purely a dormitory development and contains no teaching facilities.
In the Baroque period, a further university type emerged, one that acquired great importance in German-speaking countries. In this type, all subjects were gathered together in a single building. An early example of this is the “Sapienza”, the university in Rome that enjoyed the support of the popes (ill. 6). The original building, erected in 1497, was replaced from 1565 by a new structure, which was com-pleted by Francesco Borromini in 1653 and which went down in architectural history on account of the university Church of Sant’Ivo. In its overall layout, the Sapienza resembles the Collegio di Spagna in Bologna, with a rectangular courtyard and two-storey arcades and with the church on the central axis opposite the entrance. Here, however, the courtyard is flanked by building tracts only on its long sides, with the church at one end and the other end occupied solely by arcades.
By this time, the spatial programme had changed, though: teaching spaces and lecture halls had come to replace the students’ rooms, with living spaces for the professors on the upper floors. Even if was not possible to accommodate all requisite facilities in the Sapienza – there was no space for students’ rooms or a library, for example – the idea of a university in a single building exercised an
ever greater fascination. In the middle of the 18th century, Giovanni Battista Piranesi drew up a plan for a huge, concentric complex: an all-embracing university with teaching spaces, a library, residences, a church, a riding arena and a theatre. It proved impossible to build a structure of this kind, though, in view of the rapidity with which requirements changed.
In Vienna in 1873, a further attempt was made to create a single academic building. In this case, Heinrich Ferstel, adopted the type of the Baroque palace as his model, with nine courtyards, including an arcaded central quadrangle. The increasing numbers of students and subjects soon necessitated further buildings, however.
In Germany in the 19th century, a new form of technical education came to vie with the traditional university: this was based on the model of the French polytechnic school, as can be seen in the example of Karlsruhe (ill. 7), erected between 1832 and 1835 by Heinrich Hübsch. The structure accommodated five faculties, including a school of building.
Hübsch designed the three-storey, T-shaped symmetrical structure in such a way that, in the event of an extension, the staircase would retain its central position.
Although the simplicity that had characterized the design of earlier technical universities was lost in the 19th century, other elements kept their importance: the way different specialist realms were grouped together, the concentration on lecture halls without student or professorial accommodation, and an imposing, elaborately designed central staircase.
The increasing social recognition of places of technical education can be seen in the fact that the qualifications to be gained there were recognized as equal to those of universities, that students were able to obtain a doctorate, and not least that such places were given a grand design. This trend is evident in Gottfried Semper’s Swiss polytechnic institute in Zurich (today, the ETH), erected between 1858 and 1864 (ill. 8). In addition to the teaching of technical subjects, a philosophical-economic department was set up, thereby embracing the classical ideal of education. All this is reflected in the building itself, which stands on a promontory above the old city centre, dominating the urban image from afar. As in other great university buildings of this period, Semper outwardly adapted the concept of a Renaissance palace. Internally, however, he deviated from this model by creating two internal courtyards and a staircase on the central axis as Hübsch had done in Karlsruhe.
Prestigious structures for universities of technology like that in Zurich and for universities like the one in Vienna reflect not just a striving for social recognition; they were sometimes used as demonstrations of national power and the annexation of territory, as in Strasbourg after the Franco-Prussian War. The monumental architecture of the Kaiser Wilhelm University erected in that city by Otto Warth (1879 –84) was seen as a demonstration of German cultural supremacy and was regarded as an affront by the French.
The introduction of new fields of study in the 19th century – not just in the natural sciences, but in the arts and humanities – inevitably led to a further extension of the old universities. Large libraries and technical laboratories (the latter housed in separate buildings for safety reasons) were created in many locations. New structures were either planned on a single site, as in Strasbourg, or were spread over the urban area in accordance with the old principle of the city university. The late-19th-century enthusiasm for history manifested itself both in the creation of history seminars and in the adoption of historical building references, as in the Philips University in Marburg. Its neo-Gothic auditorium structure, erected between 1873 and 1891 by Carl Schäfer, was created on the site of a Dominican monastery that had been used by the university since its foundation. Similarly, Josef Durm’s “reconstruction” of the Old Hall of the Ruprecht Karl’s University in Heidelberg in 1885 – 86 showed little respect for the Baroque building dating from 1712 in which it was housed. Instead, it refers back to an earlier structure and to the heyday of the city and the university.
In addition to the various forms of university that had developed over the centuries, a further type emerged in the US, namely the campus university. This differs in two respects from the European tradition: it is embedded in nature far from “the corrupting forces of the city”, and it is laid out in a very spacious form. The University of Virginia, begun in 1817, is not the first campus type in America, but it is notable for its high architectural quality (ills. 10, 11) – and for its outstanding founder and planner, President Thomas Jefferson. This neo-classical development consists of a main building reminiscent of the Pantheon in Rome, with a library and a central rectangular lawn flanked on each side by colonnades with five two-storey pavilions. These were to contain a teaching space on the ground floor and two rooms as a professorial dwelling above. The central open space was not just a typical feature of American villages; it was a dominant element of the planning of Washington, DC, with its central mall. Described by Jefferson as an “academic village”, the layout in Virginia reflects an old ideal of learning, comprising a close community of teachers and students. With the erection of the Humboldt research university in the 19th century, this ideal maintained its influence, as did the spatial concept of pavilions on a landscaped campus.
A modern interpretation of the campus type may be seen in the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago (ill. 13) designed by Mies van der Rohe from 1938 onwards.
From the end of the 19th century, the American campus universities were increasingly engulfed by the expanding cities. In addition, new subjects were introduced, like economics and journalism, which had strong links with the urban centres. The US ideal of separating university and city thus became partially redundant. As a built means of establishing a new relationship between the two, University of Pittsburgh erected a skyscraper designed by Charles Z. Klauder, the so-called “Cathedral of Learning” (ill. 9), between 1926 and 1937. Although skyscrapers were regarded as the typical building type of America in the 1920s and as symbols of modernity and success, this structure was controversial in the US. The idea was nevertheless adopted in Moscow with the erection of the Lomonosov State University (1949 – 53) by Lev Rudnev. With this building, the skyscraper university became the ideal in the Soviet Union.
In the 20th century, the numbers of students increased to such an extent that it was no longer adequate just to extend existing institutions.The underlying principles had to be rethought. In designing facilities for several thousand students, modern urban planning concepts were applied. On the new Sapienza building in Rome, the Città Universitaria designed by Marcello Piacentini under Benito Mussolini in 1932, stand the words “studium urbis” (ill. 12). The buildings of this university are characterized by the stark monumentality and stone facades of Italian rationalist architecture. Like the Kaiser Wilhelm University in Strasbourg, though, it was also a demonstration of the power of the Fascist regime.
The 20th century saw the creation of smaller technical colleges as well, such as Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus in Dessau (1925 –26).
But although this was of immense importance in terms of architectural history, it scarcely offered a solution to the problems of contemporary university construction. In the 1920s and 30s, few university buildings were erected in the Weimar Republic. Other areas, such as housing, were regarded as more important.
After the Second World War, the spatial problems of universities increased even further, especially with the rapid growth of students that occurred again. In 1950, some 110,000 students were enrolled at universities in the Federal Republic of Germany. By 1960 the number had risen to 215,000. In addition to the extension of existing facilities, new universities were founded. The megastructure was developed and assumed various forms – clusters of buildings, as designed by Horst Linde for the University of Constance, which opened in 1966; and symmetrical, strictly ordered layouts, as planned by Hentrich, Petschnigg und Partner for the Ruhr University in Bochum from 1963. The megastructure offered not just scope for later extension. It also provided an opportunity to unite all realms of study in a single location, thereby attaining an old ideal with modern means. For reasons of space, these megastructures had to be erected outside urban areas, however, so that the old link with the city was lost once again.
The University of Bielefeld by Klaus Köpke, Peter Kulka and others (1971–76) is a good example of the megastructure system. It consists of a large, two-storey hall 240 m long flanked on both sides by high-rise slab blocks that contain the individual specialist realms. The hall itself houses the assembly space, the foyer to the various faculties, a refectory, lecture spaces and a library. A workshop character was deliberately created instead of the prestige structures of earlier centuries. That is also evident in the layout: one end of the hall is occupied by the main lecture space as a symbol of university teaching and assembly; the other end is deliberately designed as a profane sports and swimming hall.
This exodus of the university from the urban centres matched the concept of a city with a separation of functions and designed for the use of cars. In the meantime, however, the extension of universities in the inner cities has become common practice again.
New buildings are being erected, and more and more existing structures are being converted in their form and function. An example of this is the state university for design in Karlsruhe, which moved into the Karlsruhe-Augsburg industrial works, dating from 1914–18. The complex was converted in 1993–95 by Schweger + Partner, and in this way, the practice of the university in its early years has been adapted again (ill. 14).
