The Aronoff Center for Design and Art/DAAP Building
UC West Campus, Clifton Avenue
southeast corner M.L. King Drive, Clifton;
Peter Eisenman; 1988-1996

One of the most controversial yet acclaimed works of architecture completed in the mid-1990s, the Aronoff Center for Design and Art consists of both an addition to and renovation of UC's existing College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) facility. Eisenman's solution to the complex and demanding program admirably suits its functions: to house the College's diverse activities efficiently and to stimulate both new questions and new answers concerning the role of the arts in the fragmented world of the late 20th century. In the process, it embodies the excitement and all-absorbing creative lifestyle of both faculty and students.

Peter Eisenman (born 1932) and his N.Y. firm were chosen in 1988 through a "credentiality" process in which a short-list of prominent American architects presented, not a specific proposal for the immediate program, but the principal's experience, current concerns, and, above all, future directions. Eisenman's constantly evolving, cannily cutting-edge, and intellectually probing persona supplied a stunning kick-off for UC's Signature Architect program (although Graves' ERC and several other new buildings were actually completed earlier). The long incubation process between the initial project and completion of the building allowed computer-graphic technology and the construction industry to catch up with Eisenman's vision.

Working with local firm Lorenz & Williams - such partnership is a condition of the Signature Architect program - Eisenman produced an entity that integrates the existing red-brick dogleg Modernist blocks, constructed from the 1950s through the 1980s, with the armadillo-like new wing. Inward-turning, the long, low building sheathed in faceted sherbet-colored panels barely emerges from its landscaped setting at one of the major entrances to the campus.

The Aronoff Center has proven an effective home for the College. The twisting spatial spine between the old and new wings includes a monumental staircase also used for design critiques or "juries" and a popular cafe-atrium, and links the DAAP library, art gallery, computer labs, and public auditoria at the east end, with access from a multi-story garage. The underlying steel structure is virtually denied (except deceptively as infill at the entrances and a lighting grid beneath the atrium skylights), while the ubiquitous late 20th-century cladding materials - interior drywall and EIFS (Exterior Insulation and Finish System) - are celebrated in this Deconstructivist manifesto for the millennium. Public areas open.