The Critics' Circle

"It’s hard to think of a building that has suffered through more indignities than the Yale School of Art and Architecture," begins Nicolai Ourossoff of the newly unveiled restoration of Rudolph's masterwork A&A building in New Haven and its addition by Gwathmey Siegel and Associates.

The A&A is in top form, Ourossoff writes. Half a century later, its inclusion in the canon of Modernist greats is secure, and Yale should be lauded for choosing this route over the Big D.

And what of the addition? Enthusiasm dims...

A parallel opinion is offered by Stephen Kobasa in the New Haven Advocate, expressed perhaps a bit more belligerently and solidified in the article's title "Demolition by Design" (I guess in his view, the Big D is also a metaphoric event).

We at the Foundation are grateful to Yale for the investment they have made to the A&A's rehabilitation and understand that an addition was necessary to bring it up to speed with the demands of a 21st century academic program. We're vexed, however, by the intentions of the design team.