Last month marked the completion of the 2000 square foot addition to the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, funded by the Freeman family and the University. The new wing adds a seminar space large enough to seat 100 people, a curator’s office, an examination/preparation room for exhibits, and an art storage room. The construction costs totaled $800,000.
Lee Osborne, an architect from Smith Osborne Architects who was responsible in developing the design, claimed that while the Freemans wanted the wing to blend with the original building, they wished for the new addition to be more Asian-inspired.
“Blend is a difficult word,” Osborne said. “We do want it to blend with the house, but not to the extent of copying the style of the old Victorian house. We want the house to be ‘quiet,’ a subtle building that is Asian in context. It should be understated but not clash with the house. That’s why we use subtle colors.”
Besides the coloring, there are many aspects of the new wing that are stylistically East Asian. Osborne first intended to install a roof with concave arcs made of wood, the main construction material in East Asian architecture. The cost restrictions led them to settle with a factory-made conventional roof with copper-clad curved elements along the ridges of the roof.
“Curved elements are reminiscent of Chinese architecture, and Japanese too,” Osborne said. “This certainly cannot be found in American architecture.”
The seminar room, nicknamed “The Great Room,” is lined with Douglas Fir panels and finished with a white paint to evoke the architectural style of Japanese rooms. Extensive glass windows are installed on one of the walls, providing a view of the Japanese Garden.
“There will be additional landscaping done to the garden, probably around next spring,” Osborne said. “We hope to plant Japanese cherry trees, flown straight from Japan.”
The west wing of the center was constructed based on a winning design by Stephan Wasilewski ’04 created as the final project of his Architecture II class, taught by Professor Martha Añez.
“We were guided through the project like any design problem: asked to confront the critical problems and develop an elegant solution,” Wasilewski said. “The primary difference [was] that one of our designs would lead to actual construction.”
Students focused on different aspects of the building, but all had to wrestle with issues of accessibility, which was one of the deficiencies of the old building.
“Previously, the exhibition space was used to hold seminars and lectures as well,” said Program Center Coordinator Shirley Lawrence. “In the end, we just had to make do with whatever space we had.”
The new wing, however, has already been gathering critics. Jaesung Ryu ’06, who works at the center, expressed the concern some students and visitors have about the mismatch of style between the new construction and the old building. While the old house has a quaint atmosphere, the new wing has a clean, modern feel. Visitors will also quickly notice the different carpet patterns and doors in the new wing.
“The design is kind of dull, in a sense, and it clashes with the rest of the center,” Ryu said. “But there are always pros and cons; extra space is always good. The view of the Japanese Garden from the seminar room is [also] marvelous.”
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