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Update on Brown's classical Nelson Fitness Center

7:14 PM Thu, Sep 22, 2011 |
By David Brussat    Email this author |   Email this entry

Here are a couple of shots I took this morning of the brickwork going up at Brown's Nelson Fitness Center, which is expected to be completed next March. Even though it's difficult to judge the architecture of a building at this stage of construction, my worst fears that the setbacks would not be deep enough on the facade seem to have been unfounded. So far, it looks as if this building will be a remarkable addition to the Brown campus. Too bad it's an athletic building too far from the campus's main quadrangles to offset some of the damage done by modernist academic buildings in recent decades.

The brick crisscross patterning is called "diapering," though no one seems to know why. Does anyone know? Any speculation? C'mon!

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Robert A.M. Stern, with partner Gary Brewer, seem to be doing a fine job here.

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 Tags  Architecture Brick Brown University Gary Brewer Providence RI RAMSA Robert A.M. Stern

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Andrew said:

Not sure about the etymology of the term "diapering" but I wonder if those mortar joints could get any wider? Gone are the days when Italian masons laid the brick walls of Providences buildings with motor joints so thin you'd think they weren't there. Contemporary brick curtain walls (or nowadays they're more like rain curtains) just can't have thin mortar, nor are their masons that could probably do it...

Link | September 23, 2011 8:20 AM
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David Brussat said:

My first apartment in Providence was in a grand old house on Benefit whose bricks were so tightly laid that they almost seemed to have no mortar, nor any need for it. A few years ago the brick was sloppily repointed. (The address is 283 Benefit.) Nowadays so much brick looks stamped out. Not so with the brick on the new Brown fitness center, which seems if not quite handmade then at least not stamped out.

Link | September 23, 2011 9:04 AM
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