You are here

School of Architecture

-A A +A
1971, Ford, Powell and Carson

By the 1950s alternative currents within the modern movement increasingly saw region, site, and natural materials as relevant parameters. Texas regionalist architects, led by David R. Williams of Dallas and O’Neil Ford, reached back to the mid-nineteenth century for vernacular models that, as they interpreted them, combined responsiveness to climate, site, and orientation with a respect for available materials. It was therefore appropriate that O’Neil Ford’s firm, Ford Powell and Carson of San Antonio, was commissioned to design the College of Architecture Building. Firm designers Ford, Chris Carson, and Richard Flatt sought to make it regional and modern at the same time. The building is composed of articulated brick prisms, two squares in plan that overlap at the point of the elevator core, rise to a height of ten stories. The building reflects the need for bigger scale and greater density in a major institution while retaining brick as the building material for the campus.

The School of Law (1970, Harrell + Hamilton Architects; Howard Schmidt and Associates, consulting architects) pays homage to Ford in its use of slender, deeply recessed window openings beneath segmental arches in the complex’s dark brick walls, suggesting that architecture has an obligation to protect its inhabitants from the rigors of the South Plains climate.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.
×

Data

What's Nearby

Citation

Gerald Moorhead et al., "School of Architecture", [Lubbock, Texas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-02-LK17.5.

Print Source

Buildings of Texas

Buildings of Texas: East, North Central, Panhandle and South Plains, and West, Gerald Moorhead and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019, 387-387.

If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.

SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.

,