WRIT TEN BY
Marc Kristal
PHOTOS BY
Taggart Sorensen
ARCHITECTS
Specht Harpman
www.spechtharpman.com
PROJECT
Doyle Hall
St. Edward's University
Austin,
Texas
Hidden Potential
Specht Harpman celebrates the uninspired
architecture of a 1960s dormitory.
“We got them to understand that from
a campus-history point of view, it’s
not good to rip things down because
they’re unfashionable.”
Louise Harpman and Scott Specht have a talent
for sniffing out hidden possibilities in unpromising situations. It came in handy when they
were engaged to convert Doyle Hall, a men’s
dorm at St. Edward’s University, in Austin, into
faculty offices and to append a new building
that includes classrooms, additional offices,
and a dean’s suite. Doyle—a three-story, beige-brick box from 1960 facing a similar structure,
Premont Hall, across a poorly defined, under-used outdoor space—had fallen out of aesthetic
favor, and the campus master plan called for its
demolition, which the school initially favored.
But whereas St. Ed’s saw only an unlovely
midcentury-modern relic, the architects—who
appreciated the building’s massing, materials,
and proportions—argued for Doyle’s preservation. “We were able to show that the building
has good bones,” Harpman says.
The typology, Specht says, also represented
part of the university’s architectural legacy.
“We got them to understand that, from a
campus-history point of view, it’s not good to
rip things down because they’re unfashion-
able.” Accordingly, the architects updated
Doyle’s cooling and communications systems
and artfully exposed some of its structural
elements, notably the rippled, poured-concrete
ceiling slab. “To the trustees, we said that really
shows evidence of its making,” Harpman recalls.
“They could connect to that.”
Completed last fall, Specht Harpman’s
new wing, which extends toward Premont Hall
to form a semienclosed courtyard, recasts
elements of the old building in an elegant
contemporary idiom, a gesture that’s at once
compliment and complement. “A series of thin
concrete columns worked their way around
Doyle, and we picked up on the rhythm of the
bays that they formed,” Specht says. “We used
very deep, long columns and stretched them
up to the full height of the building to create
a porch in front.” The new concrete structure
trades the original’s beige-brick infill panels
for glass, cement board, and an aluminum
solar-shade system. On continued on page 36
The sunshades (top and left) were manufactured by
Austin American Awning using stock parts. The pattern
on the red wall (above) was achieved with CNC milling.
