Design
Designed by Alan Reiach, Eric Hall and Partners, the building included seven floors of laboratory accommodation, surmounting a double-height circulation concourse, with various facilities provided in its podium. A block containing five lecture theatres clad in conglomerate concrete and pebble-imbedded slabs is attached to its southern side. The tower’s completion in 1966 created a symbolic manifestation of Appleton’s vision for integration of the arts and sciences, with twin towers, David Hume (Arts) and Appleton (Sciences), dominating the University's Central area.
An associated teaching block for east George Square, and a Mathematics and Physics building for the ‘car park site’ on north Crichton Street, were intended to interlock at this sector. The latter project was relocated to King’s Buildings in the 1960s, resulting in the James Clerk Maxwell Building, and the succeeding project for the site, the Dental Hospital and School, was abandoned for lack of funding. The Tower was left isolated - and without a proper entrance, as this had been intended to be via connection to further construction.
Appleton Tower was built to allow first-year science students to be taught in the Central Area (p. 59). It has five lecture theatres, together accommodating around 1,200 students, and several smaller seminar and tutorial rooms. The upper floors originally housed teaching laboratories, which, with the development of more modern facilities at King's Buildings, had become outdated by the end of the 20th century.
Read more about this topic: Appleton Tower
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“Teaching is the perpetual end and office of all things. Teaching, instruction is the main design that shines through the sky and earth.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ’s sake not black—
nor white either—and not polished!
Let it be weathered—like a farm wagon—”
—William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)
“Joe ... you remember I said you wouldn’t be cheated?... Nobody is really. Eventually all things work out. There’s a design in everything.”
—Sidney Buchman (1902–1975)