Robert R. Herring Hall, Rice University

Although Herring Hall was originally built for the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business Administration, the business school was expanded and relocated in a larger facility, the Jones Graduate School of Management Building, designed by Robert A. M. Stern. Herring Hall will house departments in the School of Humanities. (Remodeling was occuring in this empty building when I took the photographs in March 2003.) Designed by the Argentine-born architect, this building was only the second to be designed by an architect who was not a Rice alumnus (Anderson Hall, the architecture building designed by James Stirling, being the first). Since the 1980s Rice has made a practice of hiring signature architects. (See Rice University Index of works on this site.)
The building is located on the south side of the Great Square with the courtyard (the indentation below) being aligned with and the same width as the courtyard opposite (or on the north side of the Great Square) at the Rice Memorial Center.
		The courtyard and loggia The building is a broad "U" shape with the courtyard in the middle of the "U." Like many of the buldings at Rice (see especially Lovett Hall and Herzstein Hall), the proportions seem very elongated with relatively narrow ends.
Campus-side entrance (north side) With the exception of the decorative masonry, Herring Hall, though a post-modern building, doesn't seem to allude to earlier campus architecture. (However, the brick and stone comprise a decorative skin, since this is a steel-frame structure, not masonry.)
		The long north side seen from the west
Left and center: the long south side and entrance; right: the west end with diagonal, criss-cross brick patterns and a cantilevered pointed bay window

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