Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Foust Building

Hello everyone,

This is my first post on my blog for the class HSS 105-03.


On Thursday August 27th we met in front of the Foust Building on the UNCG campus to take a closer look at this fascinating building. Now it is called the College of Arts & Sciences, but it used to be the Administration Building. It was the main building on campus and was decorated with numerous American flags.


The Foust Building is the oldest building on campus. How can you see that? What are the features of this building? It looks a lot different than other buildings on campus, but why is it so different?


The first thing that attracted my attention were the round shapes (circles) in the front of the building. The front looks very classical, I associate it with the Roman style of art and architecture. There are two main towers in front of the building and two little towers in between on the roof. As you can see on the photographs the roof is gray and the building is made of red/brown stone. When I compare this to other buildings around campus, the color of stone of Foust is darker. Also lighter colors of stone (mainly white) are used in the front, especially to accentuate the round shapes.

After a while it became clear to me that mainly round shapes are used in the front of the building and mainly triangles at the back. This is very contrasting.

Let's talk about the windows. The windows are noteworthy. All windows are organised in pairs of two. Around the windows the color green is used in combination with red (green is also used just under the roof). This is a strange combination, two total different colors. It really accentuates the windows. The windows are shaped as rectangles.

As you can see in the pictures, the shape of the building is not a rectangle or square, because the front and the back of the building stick out a little.


Two other things that are obvious are the star things and the ventilation. The star things turned out to be earthquake ties. They go through the building all the way to the other side. These ties make the building stronger so they can resist to a possible earthquake.


When I compare this building to other buildings, Foust is lacking chimneys. Most of the other buildings that are located on College Avenue have those. When looking to the similar context the front of Foust Building is facing Spring Garden Street and one side faces College Avenue. Hardly none of the other buildings on College Avenue are located like this. Furthermore, as said before, the color of stone of Foust is darker and the building can in no way be seen as a square or a rectangle, where most buildings in the near environment are.


It is hard to imagine that every building was shaped like Foust Building at the beginning of the 20th century. Campus must have looked pretty in those times!



A pair of windows


The front that sticks out


The back that sticks out



The front view, amazing!!



1 comment:

  1. great observations on this post. i like your sense of trying to understand architecture as you write about it. work to make sure that you have accurate information about the building (foust, for example, has chimneys, but many other buildings do not). i know in your email that you mentioned you were having trouble posting photos to your blog...and i hope you are taking measures to overcome this challenge. i can only think that your annotated images would help your readers even better understand your observations. keep up the good writing and analysis.

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