If you know how to listen, you can hear Trinity University’s buildings talking to each other.
And no, not in a spooky way. It is October, but that means it’s Humanities Month, and this year’s theme at Trinity is “Building,” in both an architectural and humanistic sense.
Trinity’s architectural legacy speaks volumes about its storied past and promising future, says Trinity art history professor Kathryn O’Rourke, who also heads Trinity’s burgeoning architectural studies minor and just delivered an impassioned speech about Trinity’s architectural legacy—and that of the humanities—at the unveiling of campus’ newest building, Dicke Hall.
“When you look at Dicke Hall, and notice the wood paneling and those beautiful metal light fixtures, you realize that they recall works that we have in the older buildings,” O’Rourke says. “Through the scale of the building, and in the way it shapes exterior spaces, Dicke Hall talks to Chapman, Halsell, and even to the north wing of CSI [the Center for the Sciences and Innovation] in a very conscious sort of way.”
There’s no one better plugged into this structural conversation than O’Rourke, whose speech also made a point to explore how Dicke Hall, which will now house the humanities on campus, represents Trinity’s emphasis on the interdisciplinary aspects of those humanities.
“Architecture is a point where sustainability, art, design, and education all meet. It's inherently interdisciplinary. It's also about the sciences, insofar as architecture is concerned with physics, math, engineering, and construction technologies,” O’Rourke says. “All of our architectural history tells us that buildings express values, ideas, and priorities.”
Dicke Hall, in addition to being a state-of-the-art new home for the humanities, is part of a larger conversation about the priorities of Trinity’s campus moving forward, O’Rourke says.
Dicke Hall is emblematic of a potentially new phase of Trinity's architectural history
For starters, it’s the first new building that Trinity has built since applying for and receiving historic district status. “Certainly the pursuit of the historic district designation was the most emphatic statement that the University has made to date that the architectural history of campus matters,” O’Rourke says.
Next, Dicke Hall may represent—O’Rourke suggests—the start of an entirely new era in campus architecture.
The first of these eras began with Trinity’s initial construction of lift-slab buildings under architect O’Neil Ford, whose many decades of work on the campus is the chief reason Trinity has historic district designation in the first place.
O’Neil Ford (left) with Trinity President James Woodin Laurie looking out over the Skyline Campus.
Ford made a point to work with the challenges of his surroundings, namely using campus’ iconic cliff face as an organizing element in the landscape, with buildings oriented with views toward downtown to firmly connect and root the University in the city in which it sits.
The following two eras included the burst of investment and activity following the acquisition of the Chapman Trust, “when suddenly there was more money to build with, and Ford’s designs became more historically evocative,” O’Rourke notes. This was followed by the new “Northrup” Era, beginning around 2000 (think big buildings with expansive glass windows, steel beams, and multi-story atria), which culminated in the completion of CSI this past decade.
Trinity's campus master plan lays out a bold, vibrant vision for the future of campus.
Now, Dicke Hall is the start of what O’Rourke speculates might be a fourth phase. She is quick to point out that she doesn’t have a crystal ball to say what this era will hold, but she says the University does have a campus master plan that’s been informing and guiding campus designs for the past five years. Trinity’s current campus master plan is the first of its kind since the first Ford era.
The current plan, which is now being revised, has prioritized establishing a northern gateway, smoothing the pedestrian corridor through the core of campus, developing a new wayfinding program through signage for better navigation of campus, trading two existing parking lots with intramural green space, and housing improvements.
An overhead view of the Beneski Parkway, which serves as a new northern entrance to campus.
Revising the master plan, O’Rourke says, allows the University to take stock of what it has accomplished in the last five years and revisit proposals and approaches to make sure they align with the vision for the University going forward. Doing so is particularly important in light of the lessons learned from the winter storm of 2021, the experience of the pandemic, and Trinity’s ambition to be among the top 25 best liberal arts colleges in the nation.
“If the master plan is going to be a living, vital guiding document, it's extremely powerful because it helps [Trinity] avoid making arbitrary decisions,” O’Rourke says. “If there are values and principles that are clearly articulated in the master plan, then every decision going forward gets run through that list. We get to ask, ‘Does this [proposal] meet our values?’”
In the context of this master plan, Dicke Hall’s completion represents a particularly strong statement about the value of sustainability.
“Encouragingly for me, Dicke [Hall]was designed and built with a real eye toward environmental issues, toward sustainability and committing to climate goals,” says O’Rourke, pointing toward Dicke Hall’s mass timber design having a lighter carbon footprint. “That’s something that students are really concerned about and attuned to.”
Dicke Hall signals a both Trinity's commitment to a sustainable future, as well as a reaffirmation of the Humanities
And finally, Dicke Hall’s completion represents another emphatic point in Trinity’s ever-evolving academic legacy: that the humanities themselves matter just as much to Trinity now as they ever have, and that Dicke Hall’s architecture represents a reaffirmation of the importance of these fields as a cornerstone of a liberal arts education.
“Part of why we support the humanities and the liberal arts is because they are how we build up a citizenry that really is capable of engaging with major issues and problems in our country,” O’Rourke says. “This is something that O’Neil Ford, going all the way back to his commencement speech in 1967, was also thinking about: big issues of civil rights and environmental preservation. In his speech, he talked about Trinity as a place for expressing difference, being different and embracing difference. Ford actually referred to [Trinity] as the ‘university of positive, progressive protest.’ And so when I talk about the campus, I really emphasize his links between architecture and social issues, because he engaged with civic matters, which we prepare our students to do as well.”
O’Rourke says she hopes that the completion of Dicke Hall ends up being more than an echo of Ford’s vision, but rather a “full-throated” statement that the Humanities will continue to matter at Trinity.
Dicke Hall's classrooms invite collaboration and scholarship from students in the Humanities fields
“It is very exciting and encouraging that the University has devoted these resources to the humanities in this way. I'm so proud of and thankful to my colleagues, particularly my faculty colleagues who have worked so hard to make this possible, and all of the people who've worked so hard to make this happen, including the donors,” O’Rourke says. “We should absolutely celebrate this moment, but my hope is that the success of Dicke Hall is only the beginning. Because the humanities are widely under threat in the United States, this support is going to have to be sustained over the long run.”
If Dicke Hall could talk, O’Rourke has a strong vision for what these walls would need to say about the humanities at Trinity:
“We need to say, the humanities are the heart of a liberal arts education, and they always have been. And we need to say we're not afraid of that tradition,” O’Rourke says. “We need to say, ‘Yes, an education in the humanities does prepare you for a lifetime of good and important work in the world.’”
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