The poorly planned landscape of UH has no theme, Stephen Fox, architectural historian and Rice University adjunct architecture lecturer, said.
"As troubling as I find most of the buildings, the design of the landscape is even more underperforming at the University of Houston," Fox said.
Fox said the campus can be improved if the UH System Board of Regents and administration hire a master landscape architect to reconsider the planting, paving and shaping of public space.
Fox said the University has struggled to recover from the growing pains of the 1960s, when UH became a public institution and enrollment increased.
At the time, the board decided UH needed a new master plan that focused on parking and cheaper buildings.
"The University we are left with in the 21st century is a result of the vision developed in the ’60s overlaying the original vision of the ’30s," Fox said. "Elements like the parking lots on the north side of Elgin (Avenue) and along Calhoun (Road) over time have seemed less desirable uses of that real estate."
The ’60s plan for the University rejected the notion of coherent, continuous public spaces, because the campus was not originally a single piece of property like Rice University, Fox said.
Many of the outdated UH buildings will be redesigned and put to better use in order to give UH a contemporary feel thanks to the new master plan, David Irvin, associate vice president of Plant Operations, said.
Irvin said that in designing the master plan, he and his team were making the best of the outdated ’60s look and taking the current layout of buildings and landscaping into consideration.
"This campus is young and very diverse," Irvin said. "Maybe a diversity of buildings is a good reflection of this campus. We felt it would be a more urban experience that is more reflective of Houston if we had buildings that spoke to each other, instead of turning their back on each other."
Irvin said he has worked with a master landscape architect for the past three years to try to redeem the older, uninspired buildings by creating new spaces.
The Science and Engineering Research and Classroom Complex joined the old Science and Research 1 building to give purpose to a no man’s land, Irvin said.
New construction projects, such as Calhoun Lofts and Cemo Hall, a lecture and classroom building for the C.T. Bauer College of Business, should also help shape public space, he said.
When new buildings are constructed, 1 percent of their budgets are required to be used on campus art.
Sculpture senior Shane Maberry said he thinks the sculptures placed on campus so far have been mediocre.
"It’s just a lot of metal things welded together," Maberry said. "They’re not good enough to stand on their formal qualities alone."
He said he believes the problem is that the art does not relate to anything going on in the building.
"It seems to be unrelated to anything we care about, and absolutely the opposite of what we are taught to make in sculpture," Maberry said.
He also said he would like to see artwork that is more contemporary in nature, since that is what his professors are teaching him to make.
"The art here is safe, neutral, it says nothing and it’s old," Maberry said.
Sculpture senior Daniel Claus said he has the same opinion.
"All of the sculptures seem really outdated," Claus said.
Claus said the art piece he likes is the illuminated unfurling scroll of words adjacent to M.D. Anderson Library.
"It’s conceptual, it’s dynamic, it’s universal and I’d like to see more of that," Claus said.
