Community Architect Baltimore: Morgan Business School, an expression of the New Morgan University

Baltimore AIA tops out their annual event schedule with a Design Awards gala in which good architecture is celebrated through design awards, whether the buildings are designed by local architects and built here or elsewhere, or whether local buildings are designed by architects from elsewhere. The new Morgan Earl Graves Business School received the Grand Award. The BBJ expanded the discussion to the overall status of Morgan in an article titled "More than 'just an HBCU': How Morgan State is transforming its campus and its academics" published this Friday.

Below the announcement from AIA:

Graves Business School, award submittal photo by Tim Griffin

AIA Baltimore and the Baltimore Architecture Foundation honored the best of Baltimore-based design at the 2018 AIA Baltimore Excellence in Design Awards Celebration hosted at Center Stage on October 19.
The Grand Design Award went to Morgan State University Earl G. Graves School of Business & Management, designed by a team of architects that included Ayers Saint Gross (Executive Architect), Kohn Pederson Fox (Design Architect), and KPN Architects, Inc. (Associate Architect). The jury, made up of a distinguished group of Pittsburgh architects, commended the way the project underscores how architecture reinforces the institution’s mission and aspirations, while offering high quality design that is publicly engaging and of service to the broader community. (AIA)

In March of 2016 when the building first opened I wrote an architectural review about this project for the BBJ. Here my review:

When a Baltimore University spends $80 million to build a 138,000sf facility for 1,500 students one should take notice, especially when the building sits on a new addition to the campus, is highly visible from one of Baltimore’s arteries and has been designed by the high profile team of Baltimore based Ayers Saint Gross Architects and Kohn Pederson Fox headquartered in New York City, known for signature architecture around the world.

View from Hillen Parkway (Photo Philipsen, 2016)

What was rising along Hillen Parkway, across from Morgan University’s main campus, looked extremely promising, when the structure with the sharp bow was just a steel skeleton. But when finished last year, it did not place Baltimore on the map with an instantly recognizable architectural landmark. Certainly a notable building, it nevertheless did not set a new standard or shake this city out of its conservative preferences.

The let-down comes in part from the fact that the daring shapes are clad in those all-too-frequent timid beige tones, in a misguided attempt to blend in. From a distance, the result is creamy mush. The daring pointed confluence of the concave façade along Argonne Drive, intersecting with the straight one along Hillen Road, is really dramatic close up, but gets lost when seen from only a block away. Not only do the shapes visually merge for their too similar colors, but the volume of the pointed shape is too light and skimpy for the lofty height it reaches due to the rapidly sloping terrain; too jacked up, the cheap metal clad façade becomes one with the sixth floor much further back, clad in matching stone panels with the same vertical slot windows.

“People have had perceptions about this institution that limit the way they see it. We’re not just an HBCU. It’s time for Morgan to rise up and flex its muscles. It’s important for people to realize that Morgan isn't limited in what our students can accomplish or the value we can provide to Baltimore City, and more widely." (Morgan President Wilson, BBJ 10/26/18)

This new building, the Earl Graves School of Business, occupies a triangular footprint whose volume is largely hollowed out in favor of an awe-inspiring and pleasant, but very space consuming, atrium. A suspended trading floor hovers over the commons like a spaceship with an ominous dark eye peering into the space, more a symbol of the power of markets than of welcoming architecture.

Graves School lobby (Photo Philipsen, 2016)

The interior connectivity makes milling around, exploring the building by criss-crossing the atrium in various directions and discovering the learning spaces, an uplifting experience. There are great lecture halls, well appointed seminar rooms, and plenty of comfortable gathering spaces carved out circulation space.

The building is best where it consists mostly of glass and steel on its southwest point. The access to the front door under the tall portico flanked by the row of airplane wing shaped columns is very powerful. With different colors for the steel siding and the stone panel siding, Morgan’s School of Business building could be as exuberant as KPF’s very similar business school in Tempe.

Together the new Jenkins School for Behavioral Science designed by HOK architects, which is now complete just west of the Earl Graves Business School,the two structures boldly claim and define the new Morgan West Campus, proving the university’s commitment to architecture. Some even say they wished that the architecture department would have a building as expressive as the business school.

The AIA website also includes a list of other award winners.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

The review was modified for the Wilson quote and in the last paragraph to reflect the current state.