I love the American campus and will take any opportunity to experience a good one…
I had visited the Air Force Academy—which was finished in 1963 to designs overseen by Walter Netsch of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)—many decades ago, when you could still wander along the grid of the Parade Ground, feeling rebellious because you were not following the lines. Those white demarcations not only blocked out the horizontal planes, but also lined up with what I could only think of as military precision with the columns of the surroundings dormitories and class room buildings. They went on to echo in the divisions of each façade into compositions of columns, lintels, and windows that SOM was for years the master at laying out over office buildings around the world…