Students present plans to renovate museum space

Jason Lipeles Staff Writer

As part of the Geology Department’s plans to rejuvenate Vassar’s natural history museum, six Vassar students from the architecture design class presented their potential plans to renovate the A. Scott Warthin Natural History Museum last Thursday, March 31. As one of the their three projects this semester, the architectural design adjunct assistant professor Barry Price gave the students five weeks to construct models and create intricate drawings of their ideas to renovate the museum space. Price’s goal for this project was for students to get this presentation experience and the Geology Department to have some ideas for their reconstruction of the natural history museum.

Lois Horst, the Geology/Geography Department’s Administrative Assistant, originally spoke to Price about the possibility of his students making these projects. She said, “No single project fulfilled every [requirement the Geology Department had for potentially renovating this building], but there were elements in all of them that are definitely going to be useful.” The fresh ideas included a new less-isolated entrance to the museum and moving and replacing the cases to give the museum a less cluttered atmosphere.

During their presentations, Price asked questioned and thoroughly critiqued his student’s models and drawings. “You develop a thick skin that way. If you can’t take criticism, it’s not the right profession for you,” Price said. Emily Loomis ’05 said that she appreciated Price’s intensity. “Barry really challenges us to think analytically about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it,” she said.

Price’s students enjoyed the liberty that he gave them. Francesco Galetto ’06 said, “He places the ball in your court once he give you the project. As long as you can back up what you designed with some sort of logic, he’s alright with it.”
As a result, each student’s project had unique qualities and varying themes. Chris Been ’05 wanted to “lighten the interior space” and “create a dialogue between exterior and interior walls” with the use of glass and brick. Emily Loomis ’05, a geography major, said that her goal was “to try to activate the [museum] space and bring it into campus.” She included a reading room in her model for students to congregate.

Some difficulties that the students ran into while putting together their projects included the problems of working with a pre-existing structure and more rigid criteria than usual. “There were a lot of requirements for functional things in a small space that made it harder to develop the true nature of the museum,” said Galetto.

Overall, the students enjoyed the class and the subject and wanted to pursue architecture in the future. “I really loved this class…I always planned to take these two classes at Vassar,” said Loomis, who is thinking about applying to an architecture program for graduate school. Been said that he wanted to work with an architecture company after college, study architecture in graduate school, stay a couple of years with a firm, and then eventually start his own business. It’s clear the groundwork has been set.