By Ryan E. Smith

Yale was built to last, but not forever. After more than 60 years of wear and tear as centers of student life, many of Yale's residential colleges are showing their age. With the "50 percent" drawings for Berkeley's renovations now nearing completion, Yale is getting its first glimpse of residential college life in the 21st century.

Reflecting an aggressively creative design process, Berkeley's renovations promise to be an innovative model for the rest of the colleges to follow. Using necessary physical repairs as a springboard for more radical programmatic changes in the college's use of space, Yale aims to reinvent the entire residential college system.

According to Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72, chairman of the Yale College Housing Council, "We've shifted out of the old way of doing things where we make a list of what's wrong and how we can fix it. We're looking at the college as the way it could be."

The challenge is to create a college of the future out of its present structure--certainly no easy task. As luck would have it, though, Berkeley makes the perfect guinea pig. No sprinklers. No disability access. No improvements since its construction by John Gamble Rogers in 1934. No problem.

Identified as one of the four colleges most in need of repair--along with Branford, Saybrook, and Timothy Dwight--by a comprehensive campus-wide review by the firm Herb Newman, Berkeley leapfrogged to the top of the list when donors came forward to fund the repairs.

When students become reacquainted with their home in August 1999 after a year of construction, they will notice more than new windows and furniture. If all continues as planned, Berkeleyites will come face to face with a reconfigured basement. They will find cooks in the dining hall preparing food-to-order right in front of them. And when they retire for the evening, none of them will go to sleep in a bunk bed.

More space, less waste

When talk turns to the Berkeley improvements, the buzzword is "flexibility." After 60 years, many aspects of Berkeley are outdated. "We wanted flexible spaces that would allow each generation of students to readapt them," University Planner Pamela Delphenich said.

In a happy coincidence, simply through compliance with fire code regulations, rooms in Berkeley will actually gain more flexibility. According to Delphenich, providing a fire door in every room will allow students to change a suite from a double to a triple with the opening of a door. "We realized that it was an opportunity that should not be missed," she said.

While the college will be housing as many students after the repairs as before, changes in the layout of the rooms will prevent two students from ever being in a small bedroom, eliminating the need for bunk beds. According to Stephen Kieran, JE '73, whose firm Kieran, Timberlake, and Harris is drawing up the Berkeley plans, the goal is to "not only offer more variety, but less density in bedrooms." Sweetening the deal will be phone and faster Internet connections in every student room.

Kieran has had plenty of time to devise solutions to such problems, being himself a Yale graduate. "Having experienced and lived in these places, it is certainly something I think about," he said. "The problems are still the same: a lot of people moved off campus for [better] living arrangements then too."

Other elements of Berkeley's metamorphosis could also have been anticipated by Kieran during his stay here in the '70s. "The basements were never intended for substantial occupiable spaces when they were designed in the '30s," he said. As requests for student activity centers have accumulated over the years--a buttery here, a weight room there--space has been allotted as it was available, and not according to any rational plan. That is all about to change.

The idea, according to Lawrence Regan, Senior Architect of Project Management, is to reclaim unused space and concentrate all student activity into one unified area, so that "they become a little more than the sum of their parts." Berkeley's shops--their darkroom, printing press, music rehearsal areas, and more--will all be located together in Berkeley North, and might even be air-conditioned. "The idea is to gather all these in one area with walls that can be moved, so they can expand and be contracted," Kieran said.

One, two, three

The biggest single change will occur in Berkeley South. The underground squash courts will be replaced by a two-story, multi-purpose activity room, to be used for everything from lectures to theatre productions to basketball games, Kieran said. The activity room will be overlooked by an informal lounge and snack area, which in turn will be bordered by student kitchen and laundry facilities. "While people are doing their laundry, they can sit out in the lounge area and eat," Kieran said.

Logically, the bathroom will be moved nearer to the multi-purpose activity room. And in an effort to increase the openness and amount of natural light in the basement, Kieran explained, glass walls will be added to many of the shop rooms, and the central corridor will be moved to one side.

Jeff Thorn, BK '99, member of the Berkeley Renovations Committee, was especially excited about this alteration. "I think the architects have obviously put a lot of thought into the best way to open the college up to student use. The basement hallways right now are dank, dark, and uninviting," he said.

The third major area that will undergo extensive changes is every Yalie's favorite gripe: the dining hall. The servery--where cooks prepare and students are served their food--will be increased to almost four times its current size. The traditional cafeteria serving method will be replaced by `scramble style,' with islands for self-service and cooks who make food to order.

In fact, Kieran added, "We've been able to set up a sort of breakfast bar, which may be offered during extended hours." This would give students access to food even while dining hall workers prepare for the next meal or late at night. Other possible transformations to the dining hall include a small balcony at the end of the room--providing additional seating and smaller tables--and air-conditioning.

Swingers

None of these extraordinary changes would be thinkable, however, if Berkeley College was not going to be emptied during the year it will take to complete its facelift. Berkleyites will relocate to a new building, to begin construction this summer. "It allowed us to do some things that we could not have done otherwise," Joseph Mullinix, vice president of finance and administration, said, including the changes to the servery. In addition to increasing the total cost of the project through frequent starts and stops, the Berkeley overhaul minus the swing college would almost triple the time necessary to complete the work.

The new dormitory will begin construction this summer, replacing the building currently at 20 Ashmun St. As Yale renovates one college after another, displaced Yalies will be housed in this temporary dormitory during the construction. Afterwards, the building will likely be used for graduate housing.

The real challenge, according to Berkeley Dean Lawrence Winnie, is to maintain a tight college spirit while in the swing space. "We need to remain a community," he said.

This is exactly what Thorn has doubts about. "It's probably as good as can be hoped for," he said. "Even if they put a spa in each room, it's still going to lack a lot of the residential college feel. Having a section of Commons as the college's designated dining hall is nothing to be thrilled at."

They don't make 'em like they used to

The problem that made these radical solutions necessary, according to Associate Provost Lloyd Suttle, was simple: "Yale, for 30 to 40 years, has just used up its buildings. We have to fix them. We cannot maintain the excellence of Yale's programs if we do not keep its buildings in good condition."

If it seems that Yale's facilities need to be renovated all at once, there is good reason. Much of the campus was built at the same time, and so now the new buildings are naturally coming to the end of their life cycles. The University took no steps to avert this crisis of deferred maintenance, however, until recent years. "For a long time, Yale's funding for academics took precedence over renovating facilities," Mullinix said. "It was a period in which many institutions didn't reinvest in their facilities."

President Richard Levin, LAW '74, made restoring campus buildings a top priority when he became Yale's top officer in 1993. Building improvements weren't just reprioritized; the method for conducting such facelifts had to be rethought. Previous attempts at renovating residential colleges have been anything but comprehensive--Ezra Stiles and Morse recently got new windows and sprinklers, but as Mullinix said, "If you just replace system
by system, you're not going to get the same re-
sults as renovations on a major scale."

The Herb Newman consulting firm conducted intense area studies of Science Hill, Payne Whitney Gymnasium, and the residential colleges to determine where need for overhaul was most pressing. More importantly, the firm developed a comprehensive master plan to tackle the massive job of renovating the colleges.

The decision to comprehensively restore the colleges demanded an equally strong commitment to paying for it. "You have to set your priorities, not to raising money for the endowment, but to raising money for buildings," Suttle said. This is evident today, as the University enters the third year of a 10-year plan to eventually rein in to the budget all $50 million of yearly building expenses.

And while the crumbling state of the buildings forced some structural renovations, University Planner Pamela Delphenich explained that programmatic alterations, such as those planned for the Berkeley basement, could be made with little extra cost. The completion of changes both structural and programmatic was made possible when Robert Bass, BK '71, and his wife, Ann, offered $20 million to renovate Berkeley.

Berkeley is clearly an experiment in redesigning college life, and it remains to be seen how much other colleges slated to be remodeled will follow its lead. According to Kieran, some of the opportunities available in Berkeley are unique. "By the time Berkeley was built, they were already thinking about student activities," he said. That means that the basement is free of utilities, which are instead located in a sub-basement.

The guiding principles behind the Berkeley plans will be present in later college blueprints as well. The concepts of concentration and flexibility will be common threads throughout every college's renovations, though these principles may be implemented in different ways.

But to respect and celebrate the differences between residential colleges, Yale is hiring different firms for each college, except Branford and Saybrook, since they are connected. "We don't want a cookie cutter solution," Mullinix said.

`An embarrassment of riches'

In an attempt to receive as much input as possible on the renovations--an effort representative of a desire to rebuild the colleges from every possible angle--many committees have cropped up to advise the project. "It's been an embarrassment of riches in opportunity," Berkeley Master Harry Stout said. "Every voice is being sought."

Calvin Hwang, BK '97, president of the Berkeley College Council, said that the group has taken a substantial role in the process by creating a renovations committee, even though only current freshmen will be affected by the changes. "I actually am envious, as are a lot of other people," he said.

According to Thorn, while the architects have been very careful to seek student input, Berkeleyites have not shown much interest. "The student response has been pretty minimal. When we sent out a college-wide e-mail with questions about the renovations, only 20-plus students bothered to respond," he said. Still, Dean Winnie asserted that students have made some important contributions to the process, including plans to change the course of the current, convoluted path into the college from Cross Campus. And it will ultimately be up to the students as to what shops fill up the new spaces in the basement.

The new math

It takes money to make changes, and even the usual process that Yale usually follows for finding funds has been redesigned. Mullinix estimated that each college will cost $30 million to renovate, of which $20 million will come from alumni gifts and $10 million from loans. Finding that much money in donations is never easy, and it is that much harder when donations do not culminate in a new building which may be named after a contributor, he said.

Due in part to a clear plan of attack and the high priority placed on college improvements by the Administration, current efforts at raising funds have succeeded where past ones have failed. As part of its current $1.5 billion capital campaign, "...and for Yale," the University has raised more money for renovations than Cornell and Stanford combined, according to Executive Director of the Association of Yale Alumni Eustace Theodore, PC '63.

The comprehensive nature of the renovations has appealed to many alumni, Mullinix said: "We're not asking you to buy 3,200 feet of pipes. What we're asking for is a total rebuilding of the college."

And alumni have answered the call for help from their homes of old. "People have very fond recollections," Vice President of Development and Alumni Affairs Terry Holcombe, SY '64, said. Fond enough to prompt Robert Bass and Ann Bass to donate $20 million to the Berkeley project. "That got Berkeley first on the list [of colleges to be renovated] and got us moving along quite rapidly on the rest," he said. Branford has since found two donors to fund its repairs and chosen the firm Perry Dean Rogers and Partners for its architects.

Hedging bets

Kieran is confident that his model will be successful. "I think it will be a real showcase of what can be done to revitalize the residential college system and bring it into the 21st century," he said.

If the University's gamble works, then Berkeley will provide a capable lead for the other colleges to emulate. If the daring plans and controversial swing space fail to please, however, it's back to the drawing board. At this point, just about everyone is placing their bets with Kieran, especially Dean Winnie, who said that these changes will unlock the best in the residential college system: "When we come back, this will be a magic place."