St. Mary's City -- With its tidewater setting and bucolic vistas, St. Mary's College of Maryland easily qualifies as one of the state's most beautiful campuses. Unfortunately, its buildings haven't always been as delightful as their natural surroundings.
But this year, college administrators completed two buildings that for once are worthy of the idyllic rural landscape. In the process, they have demonstrated a way for all state campuses to strengthen their identities. Both buildings were designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, a Pennsylvania-based firm well-known for its ability to create a sense of place and its commitment to expressing humanist values. This month, the American Institute of Architects named it the 1994 Firm of the Year, for producing "distinguished architecture" for at least a decade.
A design collaborative that responds to the specific requirements of each commission rather than imposing one stylistic signature, these architects have developed a flair for capturing the essence of Tidewater Maryland architecture. Their buildings haven't so much appeared on the landscape as slipped into it, as if they had always been there.
With landscape architects Michael Vergason and Jay Graham, they have set a new standard of excellence -- and sensitivity -- for design work on a public campus in Maryland.
Founded in 1840 as a women's seminary, St. Mary's is now a public liberal arts college serving 1,500 students. The buildings that demonstrate its enlightened approach to campus-making are William Donald Schaefer Hall, a $16 million science center, and the Townhouse Crescent, a $4 million, 40-unit residential complex made of townhouses arranged in a semicircle.
Bohlin Cywinski Jackson designed both projects to reinforce the notion of the campus as an "academic tidewater village" -- a planning concept that college trustees adopted in 1987 to unify the 268-acre property, which borders the site of Maryland's first Colonial settlement and capital.
Schaefer Hall
Of the two, Schaefer Hall presented the tougher design challenge. With 58,000 square feet of space it is one of the largest buildings on campus, and it could have been one of the most mundane. But Bohlin Cywinski Jackson gave it pastoral panache, creating a composition that bespeaks the rich heritage of the tidewater region while accommodating the functional requirements of a modern research facility.
