Here's a fun little project...Robert's Wesleyan College is one of our important clients that I tend to...they wanted to celebrate the past president's achievements by building a clock tower and dedicating it to him and his wife. The design work was my job as well as the Con docs.
So after the school rejected my cool designs they narrowed the choice down to a traditional look...I think it gravitated towards a stone obelisk vs a metal tower due to permanence and and the strong stone context on campus. The brick reveal compliments the historic brick buildings right nearby. The white glazing in the middle of the brick is a light channel we added to give the CT life at night. It is backlit milkglass with 200' of LED lights.
The overall mass is derived from a modern skyscraper like the empire state building. The brick reveal and light channel are both part of the clocks revealing or discovery process. The CT will read more simply at a distance of 300' but if you stop and sit the more subtle design elements are revealed and the viewer can further explore the stone/brick and light relations. It's a reflection of the educational process. Probably more importantly our Master Plan for the college a couple years ago revealed the need for more site accoutrements and collision spaces within the campus pathways. The CT sits at the hub of 8 buildings and right on center of the main north/south pathway.
I think this will become one of the places where all of the graduates will have their pictures taken. The goal was to create a place...I think we did it...it is a little project by all of our usual measures 8'x8' (base)x 30' high, but a huge project in terms of everyday impact at the campus
It's about 1/2 done now...the stone and cap go on next week...hopefully it actually came out the way I drew it....
