What a university should be.
It’s academic week here! After the sheer architectural awfulness of UCSF Mission Bay profiled earlier, take a look at Stanford in Palo Alto, CA.
The apocryphal story has it that Leland Stanford, his fortune in nineteenth century US rail secure, offered a large chunk of it to Harvard as an endowment. When this scruffy looking Californian was refused so much as an audience with the Dean he left in a huff and gave the dough to create Stanford in Palo Alto instead. His creation has become one of the very greatest schools in America, rivaling Harvard for academic excellence. (As an alumnus of the School of Engineering at University College, London, I have no axe to grind, and hereby proffer humble apologies to the many Harvard alumni reading this, just in case. I will be quite happy were our son to attend either of these great American schools – or both!) Today an engineering degree from Stanford is as certain a guarantee of fame and fortune in Silicon Valley as there is.
The architecture and environment could scarcely differ more from the horrors of UCSF. Just look:
Everyone at Stanford rides a bike.
George Segal’s sculptures off the main Quad.
The Hispanic Studies building.
A place to think.
Contemplation.
Cloisters off the Quad.
Proving modern architecture can be sublime.
The Belltower.
Now which would you or your child rather attend?
All snaps on an Olympus C5050 and a Panasonic G1 with the 9-18mm Olympus MFT lens.