The Engineering Research Center
University of Cincinnati West Campus, accessible from
Jefferson at University Avenues, Corryville;
Michael Graves; 1994-95

The Engineering Research Center (ERC) provides the grand new entrance feature of the replanned historic main campus - now called the West Campus - of the University of Cincinnati (UC), which was founded in 1819 and moved to this location in 1895. The ERC Building also represents one of the mature masters of the Post-Modern Classical Movement, Michael Graves, a graduate of the University's School of Architecture.

Beginning in 1981 the University undertook a series of campus plans intended to rethink the image, functioning, and appeal of the West and adjacent Medical or East campuses and their relationship to each other. Harvard-trained landscape architect George Hargreaves and his associates, from San Francisco, provided the flexible yet farseeing 1988 final plan - emphasizing the pedestrian experience rather than parking - into which the ongoing Signature Architect program (see 14) has been integrated. The West Campus has been re-oriented from the traditional Clifton Avenue front facing west to the eastern approach from Jefferson Avenue. Hargreaves' Sigma Sigma Commons (with Glaser Assocs.; including the Tower of Light by Machado & Silvetti; 1997-98) now provides a sculptural, open vista to the slightly off-center main pavilion of the Graves building.

Michael Graves (born 1934 in Indianapolis; B.Arch. UC 1958) & Assocs., with local firm KZF, designed the monumental but richly colored stone-and-brick Engineering Research Center as an addition to the adjacent Schneider Engineering Quadrangle. In 1906 UC's Dean Herman Schneider pioneered the "co-op system," which allows students in engineering and design fields to work in professional offices during alternate academic terms. This system has particularly benefited the University's architecture students, including Graves himself, who worked for Cincinnati's leading and long-lived Modernist firm, Carl Strauss & Assocs., while at UC. Graves' firm also designed the Riverbend Center for the Performing Arts, summer home of the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestras (1983-84; Kellogg Avenue, east of Cincinnati), as well as several other projects in the area.

The ERC consists of identical laboratory floors ringed by well-lit corridors, with efficient yet sculptural smokestacks topping each pavilion. Half-barrel-shaped copper-clad roofs and "portholes" punctuating the subtly varied brick surfaces relate to a handsome vaulted interior staircase that links the upper and lower levels of the campus. Graves' typically superb handling of materials and finishes creates a sophisticated whole. Only passage open.