When I was an undergraduate at Rice University, I was a member of one of the dorms, Wiess College. In 2002, Rice University tore down the origianl Wiess College and built a new one. The original building had apparently deteriorated too much to contnue to safely house students. . In the more than 20 years since demolishing the original Wiess, the University has left that plot of land empty. That’s not entirely true—in 2020 Rice plopped several “provisional campus facilities” or PCFs tinto that gap. Apparently this was a response to COVID, but I think a nearly univeral experience with temporary buildings on campus is that they have a tendency to become permanent. The PCFs are still there over two years later. I bet they’ll still be there ten years from now, unless some rich alumnus comes with a plan for a new structure in that spot and a big check attached.
The PCFs are silvery tent-like cuildings, with pointed arch shaped ends and doorways, which gives them a hint of Islamic architecture, but what I mostly take away from these buildings is a powerful nothingness. Rice decided that to prevent these buildings from crushing the souls of the students, decorations (commissioned from such artists as Hedwige Jacobs, Royal Sumikat, Allison Hunter, Jasmine Zelaya, and quite a few others) should be installed. I was walking by the cluster of PCFs and noticed Everybody Loves the Sunshine by Robert Hodge.
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