Newhouse School 1

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Yun Xiao

Emily Francisco

4/14/2016

HOA 106

Newhouse School 1

I am writing about Newhouse 1 that is School of Communication of Syracuse University. It is a gift from Samuel I. Newhouse and designed by I. M. Pei who is a well-known Chinese American architect. I have chosen it because it is a very different style of architecture than that I have studied before such as Gothic or Romanesque. I noticed it also because Its designer I. M. Pei designed National Gallery of Art and Everson Museum that we learned in class and because it houses one of the best Communication College in the United States. I visited it on April 7th, 2016 (Thursday) and explored it from outside to inside.

It sits in a low level of ground, and it is a low and flat building. Its front door which is made of steel and glass faces Newhouse School 3 that was built in 2007. When standing in front of its front door, the left side is Newhouse School 2 which is built in 1974, and the right side faces a street. Across the street, there are other academic buildings such as the Tolley Building which is Romanesque style and the Hall of Languages which is the Second Empire style. When seeing its front door as Newhouse School 1’s front side, its back side faces Schine Student Center where holds many

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student activities such as free movies, presentations, or student plays. The street that its right side faces is one of the most important streets for transportations, and most of the school buses run on that street. Between its back side and the student center, there is a square. The middle of the square is full of grass, and people can walk on the left and the right side of the square and can walk to the Marshall Street that has various restaurants and the Education School and Business School. Thus, it is pretty much in the center of Syracuse University. The main entrance is clear to me, since other sides of this building have somewhat high pre-cast concrete walls that I clearly cannot entry. Those high walls make Newhouse School 1 look pretty closed and exclusive to me, and I felt a little bit pressure when looking at those walls because it made me feel like I could only entry this building in that glass door. However, there is another door that is also made of glass on the back side of this building. The building is made of pre-cast concrete, and it looks like brown or more like the color of mud. It has few ornaments and is very plain. All the glass windows are the same shape.

As entering this building, the floor is made of wood, and there are two stone stairs that is perfectly symmetric and connect to the second floor where the faculties’ offices are. Behind the stairs, there is a huge stone wall that has a bronze sculpture that is called “Birth of the Muses” that is designed by Jacques Lipchitz and is influenced by cubism. It is a School of Communication, and offices and classrooms are in this building, so people in Syracuse University work and study here. Just like its outside,

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