U of M School of Architecture celebrates centennial

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Plenty of homes, factories, warehouses and other buildings in Minnesota are older than the University of Minnesota School of Architecture. But, just maybe, those designed by students admitted since 1913 will endure long after many others have crumbled.

The school celebrates its 100th year this weekend with a look back at the work done by its 5,600-plus graduates and faculty members. Their designs hardly fill the skylines of the Twin Cities and suburbs, but try imagining the area without them: no Lake Harriet Bandshell, no Mill City Museum, no St. Paul Central Library and no Riverside Plaza.

Renee Cheng, head of the U of M School of Architecture, sees the century mark as a good time to survey the past and acknowledge the price that current and future students will pay to become architects: $130,000 for seven years of tuition for an in-state resident.

When it was founded, the school was one of about a dozen in the nation. Before the school’s founding, the U of M’s first graduate with a major in architecture was Walter Stone Pardee, in 1877.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology claims it has the oldest U.S. school of architecture, having opened its doors in 1865, according to the school’s website.

This weekend, the good stuff will take center stage. A Saturday slide show to be shown at the  reunion gala at The Depot in Minneapolis will review the landmark buildings School of Architecture grads and faculty have designed in part or whole.

Professional high points for the university’s architecture grads range from the Kingdom Tower in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to the street scene on St. Anthony Main.

“We imagined it like the movie ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’” Cheng said. “What would the world be like if the University of Minnesota architecture school was never in existence?”

The theme of the weekend is imbued with a bit of an insider wink. The “100” logo for the centennial is built from overhead schematics of the floor plans of the three buildings or building phases the school has occupied since 1913. U of M graduate Kai Salmela designed the logo.

School instructor Adam Marcus and some of his students commemorated the anniversary in three dimensions, designing a sculpture consisting of 100 computer numerical control-routed plywood ribs held together by more than 8,000 colored No. 2 pencils. “Centennial Chromograph,” which represents major epochs in the school’s history, is on display in the school’s courtyard at Rapson Hall at 89 Church St. on the university campus in Minneapolis.

Surrounding the sculpture will be selections from the last 100 years of student design drawings.

This spirit of creativity is a theme that runs through the school’s history. Jack Poling, an architect with MS&R Architects’ Minneapolis office, said this stood out when he chose the U of M for his master’s work. He graduated in 1986.

“I came to the program because it was very highly regarded and rated and more design-oriented,” he said.

It’s a feature students pay more for every year. In 1916, the School of Architecture’s first four graduates left campus after paying about $200 a year for classes. Now, an architecture education — which takes seven years including undergraduate work — costs between $130,000 in tuition for a state resident to $155,000 for a nonresident, according to the school’s online tuition calculator.

Referencing a recent Architecture Magazine survey, professor Jim Lutz said the average starting salary for a licensed architect is about $59,000 in the nation.

Cheng said the university helps balance the cost of school against future compensation through fellowships, streamlining licensure and internships. Still, it’s not ideal.

“It used to be that students could earn enough over the summer to pay for the tuition and graduate without debt,” she said.

This weekend, it’s likely that the bad news will be lost amid two days of local architecture tours and parties. Why not? An institution’s centennial only comes around once.

See below for a slideshow of the “Centennial Chromograph” sculpture: