Project in Detail

Morse and Stiles Colleges

Morse and Stiles Colleges at Yale University, built in 1960-62, were among the last works undertaken by Eero Saarinen before his untimely death at the age of 51. They are the product of Saarinen’s conviction that he could both connect to the legacy of Yale’s ten original 1930s residential colleges, and renew it in contemporary terms with the materials and methods of his day.

The design of the complex, which occupies an irregularly shaped, angular site, was inspired in part by the winding streets and medieval towers of such Italian hill towns as Sam Gimignano. At the same time, it was created with an eye toward other Yale buildings, including its most prominent neo-Gothic neighbors: Payne Whitney Gymnasium, designed by John Russell Pope, and the Hall of Graduate Studies, a work of John Gamble Rogers, both dating from 1932. Two irregular sloping courtyards surrounded by four-story crenellated housing blocks, each anchored by a tower, provide the formal references to the residential college tradition. The two colleges are bifurcated by an elevated walk that frames an extraordinary view to Payne Whitney Gymnasium tower, fusing the composition to this important landmark at the edge of the Yale campus.

The poured in place concrete and stone walls simultaneously reference the historical type and redefine it in terms the 1960s craft, labor and construction economy. The same effort to renew the past continues through the major spaces of the interior. In the great dining halls of the two colleges, Saarinen used intersecting diagonal concrete trusses to provide conceptual and visual continuity with Yale’s collegiate gothic halls, while introducing an altogether new structural form. By looking both backward and forward, Morse and Stiles embody the genius and ambivalence often associated with Saarinen. They establish connections to history while assertively renewing and reinvigorating it with innovative form and detail.

Our work at Morse and Stiles Colleges, the final phase in a campaign by Yale to renovate its twelve residential colleges, seeks to extend the trans-generational dialogue that Saarinen initiated. A benchmark study comparing Morse and Stiles to Yale’s other renovated colleges suggested three major thrusts to the renewal: student housing, student life, and landscape. Most important among these initiatives is the complete reconfiguration of student housing from stand-alone singles into suites. A late-1950s student survey suggested students overwhelmingly favored singles, leading Saarinen to propose plans composed solely of single rooms. This survey failed to take into account the fact that the larger context for this preference was not for singles, but rather single rooms within suites. This divergence from the Yale norm has been a significant cause of the dissatisfaction felt by students assigned to Morse and Stiles during the past fifty years. The new plan reconfigures the living quarters into a mix of suites and singles that mirrors the rest of Yale, providing an important supportive social structure missing in the 1960s design.

The renewal of the landscape combined with the interior renovation and addition of student life space continues the narrative of transformation. Courtyards are important to student life at Yale, used for informal play, conversation and study. While the volume of the Morse and Stiles courtyards suggests distinct programmatic uses and areas, the continuous slope of its grading undermines informal use. The interventions in the courtyards use new site walls to terrace the court, flattening out a portion of the upper lawn for recreation. The site walls then negotiate the grade down to the main entry and dining hall. At the base of the dining hall, a new water feature cascades down to a wooden terrace that extends from the dining hall, floating above a waterfall cascading from the site wall above. Storm water is retained in a cistern below and supplies this new site feature, now referred to by students as “the beach,” a favored place for dining and wading.

To attain parity with Yale’s other colleges, a substantial 25,000 square foot addition was inserted within the crescent courtyard between the colleges to house activity spaces. Integrated with the original Saarinen structures, it is a continuation of the landscape that cascades into the lower levels of Morse and Stiles through the new entry lobby. The whole sequence is conceived as a unified experience, moving through a series of exterior to interior spaces, beginning with a newly terraced courtyard, through the transformed dining hall and common room, down into the new sunken courtyard and culminating in a new underground theater. It adds to the existing colleges by extending landscape into, under and through the architecture.

A new sunken courtyard in the addition is an analog to the original courtyard above, with student activity spaces organized about it. It serves as a lobby to the new theater and connection to fitness, dance, exercise, music practice, art studio, and computer rooms. The existing rooms in Morse and Stiles are nearly all irregular in profile with rectilinear circulation spaces, while in the addition the opposite holds true, with rectilinear rooms and irregular circulation. Daylight enters the spaces through skylights, gently washing the board formed concrete walls. The passages around the courtyard are also day lit, with sloping ceilings formed by tree wells that pass through the addition and allow new trees to take root below.

In upgrading and expanding the existing Saarinen rooms we engage in a conversation of renewal for our own time. Saarinen’s original below-grade common rooms, which he referred to as “rathskellars,” are provided with natural illumination through skylights cut into the original triangular ceiling, and are enlarged to include snack areas, art exhibition space, and game rooms. The libraries and dining halls are also fully renovated, with a new shared servery for the two colleges. Outside a new steel and wood bridge on the passageway to the gymnasium traverses the sunken courtyard. The new structure appears to flow beneath the existing one, with the concrete underpinning flanking the addition expressed in furniture-like blocks of concrete, picturesquely composed with slatted wood patches to reveal and order the junction of new and old.

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