In 1993, distinguished New York architect Robert A.M. Stern was commissioned to design Pomona's new Campus Center. An extraordinarily complex project, it challenged the architect to provide a building that would, in its form, respect the College's original campus plan and existing buildings while also making an architectural statement appropriate to the late 20th century; and, in its function, re-focus the life of the campus community. This exhibition documents the making of the Campus Center, which opens this fall. Including rough sketches, finished renderings, models, and computer-assisted designs, it investigates the exquisitely complicated means by which abstract ideas become concrete and a work of architecture comes to form.
Stern, who was recently appointed Dean of Yale University's School of Architecture, is celebrated for the sensitivity of his buildings to their historic and contemporary contexts. Attracted to the project by the distinctiveness of Pomona's architecture and by the opportunity to work at the very center of Myron Hunt's historic 1908 campus plan, he and his associates have given the College an aesthetically distinctive building that promises to significantly enhance the quality of life on the Pomona campus.
