2006 PALLADIO AWARDS
New Design & Construction
WINNER: Chael, Cooper & Associates P.A.
Gateway to the Past
PROJECT: McKean Gateway & Marshall and Vera Lea
Rinker Building, Rollins College, Winter Park, FL
ARCHITECT: Chael, Cooper & Associates P.A., Coral
Gables, FL; Maricé Chael, AIA, principal in charge
GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Lamm & Co., Orlando, FL
STONEWORK (MCKEAN GATEWAY ARCHES): Barbara
Tattersfield Design, Winter Park, FL
When Rollins College sought to transform the nondescript
main entrance of its Winter Park, FL, campus into a more
formal public face for the school, it turned to Coral
Gables, FL-based Chael, Cooper & Associates. The
resulting McKean Gateway and Rinker Building both
reflect the college’s predominant Spanish-Mediterranean
architecture and realize its long-standing desire for a
formal entrance to its campus.
Rollins was founded in
1885, making it Florida’s oldest recognized college.
Located a few miles north of Orlando on the shores of
Lake Virginia, its 70-acre campus is lined with oak
trees and characterized by stucco and Spanish
tile-roofed buildings inspired by the work of renowned
Florida architect Addison Mizner. Notable additions over
the years have included Ralph Adams Cram’s Knowles
Chapel (1932), James Gamble Rogers’ Olin Library (1986)
and the Cornell Campus Center (1999), which was designed
by Boston, MA-based Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson &
Abbott. For years, the college’s de facto main entrance
– where the campus meets Winter Park’s main north-south
thoroughfare, Park Avenue – had been identified by
nothing more than a low marker that college Vice
President and Treasurer George Herbst describes as
“resembling a tombstone.”
So, in 2002, in conjunction
with a city-wide beautification program that included
the enhancement of Park Avenue – which was being
orchestrated by the town-planning firm with which Chael,
Cooper & Associates is affiliated, Dover, Kohl &
Partners – Rollins set out to turn its inconspicuous
front door into a grand entryway.
“The college,
throughout all its years, has never had a formal
entrance,” says Herbst. “So this project was the result
of our desire to have an appropriate point of arrival at
the college. We considered numerous options. Years and
years ago there was some thought that it should arch
over the roadway, but that just seemed inappropriate.
Then the question becomes, ‘What do you do on either
side?’”
In order to come up with a satisfactory answer to
that question, Chael, Cooper & Associates presented the
college with multiple design concepts, including
obelisks, trellised pavilions and a three-story building
with a corner tower. “Our approach was to give them
several alternatives,” says Maricé Chael, AIA, principal
in charge. “It began with two small obelisks and ranged
to the more ambitious, which was a substantial building
on the corner. What actually came out in the end was a
hybrid of those two ideas.”
After reviewing the
architect’s proposals, Rollins opted for a pair of
triumphal arches and an adjacent building to house
administrative offices. In order to ensure public
consensus for the design, the college went so far as to
commission a full-size model of one of the arches. “That
was quite fascinating for people – that a college would
actually construct in advance, out of wood, what it was
going to build,” says Herbst. “A few things came from
that – we set it at a slightly different location and we
increased the size a bit, because it was difficult for
two people to walk through the arch.”
“From looking at
drawings alone, a lot of people thought it was too big,”
says Chael. “What we wanted was a scale that wasn’t
overpowering but still terminated the axis to Park
Avenue – yet intimate enough so that two people could
walk side by side and not feel overwhelmed. The initial
model made it clear that even though everyone thought it
was overly monumental, it actually had to be slightly
bigger in order to feel right – taking into
consideration the scale of the avenue and the pedestrian
scale.”
In conceiving the arches, the design team looked
both to the Rollins campus and to campuses beyond Winter
Park. “We took it out of the architectural context of
the campus – the use of finials, the use of scrolls,”
says Herbst. “But we also looked at a number of other
college campuses – one similar to this, although it’s
made out of a totally different stone, is on the campus
of the Indiana University.”
Like Indiana University’s
Sample Gates, the McKean Gateway is composed of two
asymmetrical triumphal arches topped with finials
highlighting the center axis. The McKean Gateway finials
are also abutted by scrolls that, moving away from the
finials, are extracted to a single line. The color and
dimensions of the marble were meant to be in keeping
with the stone of Knowles Chapel. Stonework was provided
by Barbara Tattersfield Design, of Winter Park. Each
arch is adorned with two light fixtures from Ball & Ball
Lighting, of Exton, PA.
The arches were completed in the
first phase of construction. The second phase turned the
focus to the Rinker Building, which would rise on a site
adjacent to the McKean Gateway that had previously been
occupied by an automobile repair shop. The biggest
challenge in its design was a limited timeframe; the
program and design had to be produced within a
four-month period. “Marshall and Vera Lea Rinker made a
quick completion date imperative for giving the college
the funding,” says Chael. “In order to do the quick
turnaround, I did a lot of the detailing myself and
incorporated the hand drawings into the more technical
CAD drawings. Based on my hand drawings, I worked
together with Castlestone [Orlando, FL], which produced
3-D drawings as their shop drawings. It was done in a
very compressed period of time.”
Today, the 10,000-sq.ft.
Rinker Building houses the school’s admission and
financial aid offices. Laid out in an L-shaped plan, it
features stucco walls, a Spanish-tile roof and Roman-esque
arched windows. The building’s decorative cast-stone
elements were fabricated by Castlestone. Along with the
arches, the Rinker Building acts as the gateway to the
college – where prospective students get their first
impressions of the college. So far, thanks to Chael,
Cooper & Associates, those impressions have been
decidedly positive. – Will Holloway
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