Description of the plan for the building project and work program at Lake Eden beginning September 1940. Includes illustration of student studies building on front page and aerial view of the 4-winged hall on back page. 4pp made from folding a piece of paper into a booklet.
BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE BULLETIN 6
THE BUILDING PROJECT AND WORK PROGRAM
In September, 1940, Black Mountain College began construction, largely with student and faculty labor, on the first unit of a comprehensive building program on its own property. The co-operative building project- in 1940-41 of a seventy-five room modern building- not only assists in the solution of an economic problem but also constitutes, through the work program, an extension of one of the College’s educational ideas.
The idea of some manual work for students is a corollary of the College’s concept of general education. Voluntary practical activities, on different levels, have always been regarded as part of general education and as indispensable to the full development of the student. The participation by students in the present building project is, then, the fruition of a fundamental idea rather than an innovation or a change in ideology. Nevertheless, the project is of much greater scope than previous undertakings and plays a larger role in the community life.
The work program does not interfere with academic study but tends to enhance it through the general invigoration produced by intelligently varied activity. Students volunteer for three to nine hours of work, a week, depending on their schedules and their strength. Once they have signed up to work on fixed days, they are expected to appear on those days unless illness prevents. Many members of the faculty and staff also participate in the project on the same basis. Thus it is a community enterprise and provides another area for free and informal contact as well as a point of common interest.
The buildings were designed with a modern construction appropriate to non-professional workers. The program includes all types of work that the erection of such buildings on a new site entails: land clearing, road building, ditching, landscaping, digging of wall and pillar foundations, procuring of building stone, carpentry, masonry, and, at a later stage, wiring, plumbing, and other interior finishing. The designing of furniture and textiles is also contemplated.
Participation in the building program has shown itself to be valuable in many ways, the most obvious being the regular outdoor exercise that it provides. For all students it is a broadening experience. Most do manual labor for the first time. The majority, by doing the types of work that are the occupations and the means of livelihood of a large section of the country’s population, increase to some degree their understanding of society, gain more respect for skilled workmanship, and adopt a less superficial and more sympathetic attitude toward necessary hard work and toward those who perform it. The work program also affords an opportunity for the development of resourcefulness, practical judgement, and the ability to cope with certain kinds of emergency. As they do in craft work, students may learn that materials have limitations and laws of their own and that working with them requires discipline and technique. Some students attain a fair degree of skill in one or more of the types of work involved; and for most students the first-hand acquaintance with modern architectural thought and materials is a valuable experience, particularly since housing is so vital a national concern. Finally, they can see how individuals’ efforts combined into group activity can overcome difficult obstacles and change a plan into a reality.
The co-operative aspect of the program should be emphasized not only in regard to its educational benefits but also in regard to the material economy which it effects. By undertaking most of the labor itself, the community is helping to solve a pressing financial problem and is making it possible for the College to move to its own property in September, 1941. That this is so gives a seriousness and a reality to the work which no manufactured enterprise could give. One result is a strong morale, springing from a common purpose and from the satisfaction of concrete achievement.
The relation of the work program to the academic curriculum is contrapuntal rather than harmonic. There is, of course, a direct laboratory connection with Architecture, and in some degree with Art and Economics. But the main importance is in the opening of another area of activity and experience. A student’s studies may be made less rarified; but the real point is that the student himself may be made less so.
Supervision of the work program is in expert hands. The organization and management of the volunteer work crews is handled by a democratically chosen Work Committee of students and faculty; and from day to day straw bosses are made responsible for particular jobs. The well-known architect, Mr A Lawrence Kocher, who is Visiting Professor of Architecture at the College and Resident Artist sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation, designed the buildings and is superintending their erection. Mr Charles Godfrey, an experienced builder and contractor of Black Mountain, oversees all actual construction and helps instruct workers. The chairman of the Work Committee is Dr Richard Gothe, who was released by the National Youth Commission to join the College’s faculty as Professor of Economics and to make a study, under the auspices of the General Education Board, of the place of a work program in a liberal arts college. Heading a steering committee to co-ordinate all phases of the work program and the building project is Mr Theodore Dreier, Professor of Mathematics and Treasurer of the College since its founding.
The particular synthesis of the Black Mountain experiment differs in a number of respects from similar projects being tried and in use elsewhere. The College believes that the conclusions reached and the technique established may prove useful and applicable in other institutions which, on the one hand, acknowledge some truth in the contemporary cry for “practical education”, but which, on the other hand, do not wish to sacrifice any of the values of a liberal arts education. The program also illustrates one manner in which an institution, without detriment to its primary educational function, may help itself economically, and thus decrease the financial assistance which it needs from outside sources.
The architect’s sketch of the building begun in September, 1940, appears on the first page of this bulletin. Designed to make the best use of novice workers and of building materials on the property, it will cost less than half of what it would cost if built by a contractor. The ground floor, from the hillside to the terrace under the building, and the fire-tower, against the hillside, are of masonry in native stone. The greater part of the building is supported by concrete and steel columns in cantilever construction. The sheathing of the outer walls is of large corrugated sheets of Transite, an asbestos synthetic, the sections of which are easily screwed in place. The continuous steel-sash windows are of the projecting type and run almost the length of the two upper floors. The skeleton of the building is timber, with inner walls of plywood over an acoustical core. The roof is built of alternate layers of asphalt and heavy building paper, gravel-surfaced for walking and for fireproofing.
This building is the largest of the group of four shown in the plan on the back page, and contains sixty studies, ten faculty studies, and studios for the Art Department. The group of buildings is situated at the northwest edge of the lake, between the hillside and the water. When buildings and landscaping are completed, the two main wings of the group will roughly parallel the lakeshore, at a distance of about twenty-five yards. The three other units that the whole plan calls for- a second student studies building, a library, and a small building for offices- will be constructed as rapidly as finances and time permit. The first unit, together with the already existing buildings and some faculty houses to be erected, will provide sufficient space to house the College during 1941-42. As the other units are completed, the College can expand, and will be modestly quartered for a number of years. At a later date it is planned gradually to replace the old buildings (which are being remodelled for present use) by the buildings designed in 1939 by Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. This plan for growth avoids waste, since the old buildings will be used as long as it is economical, and all new buildings will fit into a comprehensive building scheme.
STUDENT STUDIES BUILDING BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE
