Article put out a couple of hours ago regarding the "Hokie Stone Rule" as non-mandatory for the construction of the Alexandria campus (which is close to new Amazon location). You can read the article here. Now, I'm not an architect by any means, but I'm not sure how I feel about this. I mean I guess, but at the same time... Anyhow, thoughts & reactions.
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it's my undertstanding that using Hokie Stone adds $$ and environmental footprint to any building project. That said, it's iconic and I hope that even though they aren't required, that the designers find a way to incorporate it into the buildings to continue the iconic VPI&SU feel on the new campus in Alexandria.
And hopefully it'll have a much stronger presence than what Salmon seems to be indicating:
What's next, we re-brand our academic logo?
please and thank you
Don't make me put /s after my posts.
I know it was /s. That's why I did it.
I almost downvoted this out of instinct
Am I the only one who likes the new logo better? I thought the pylons looked like a bar code.
I understand where you're coming from in that most people outside VT didn't even know what the pylon logo was supposed to be (hell, there are literally students at VT who don't know we have a war memorial as they stand on it...). I get the desire to make the logo something more recognizable to people who aren't already associated. My biggest issue with the new logo is not that they did it, but that they missed the mark significantly. Our logo looks cheap and silly now. The university of phoenix has a more professional looking logo. I'm in the camp that they should have just adopted the sports logo universally if they wanted something more recognizable.
I'm not allowed to downvote someones opinion, but boy do I want to
I like the new logo as well. We badly needed an update and this logo identifies our university with the athletics logo that is more widely recognized. It's also a simpler mark which is refreshing and in-line with modern design. It also finds a way to communicate that we are a technology focused, innovative school.
All that to say, these thoughts have grown on me the more I've considered the logo. Didn't like it at first
I respect your opinion, but I still think it looks like the design of one of those healthy grab-and-go kiosks you'd see at an airport.
I enjoy other people that don't think the new logo is the end of the world and not worth starting a revolution over.
That being said.....does David Wilson have a rabbit?
He used to catch them growing up. One of the reasons he was so quick east-west. There's a cool documentary floating around with him telling the story.
EDIT: From NY Times:
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/sports/ncaafootball/quirky-running-ba...
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlFz2UeFFlM
I'm humbled by your knowledge of my story, and your willingness to tell it.
David and I share a mutual respect.
Did they eat it?
You see, first you bend the logo. After that, everyone thinks it's just fine to bend the rules.
I mean, we'll probably get something like Hokie stone, but the cheap BS variety that lets you down when Amazon puts it on sale for Prime Day
FireSands.com
Is this actually a thing (I haven't tried to check yet)??
Let's face it, the first few years he was playing with Steger's roster. It's time for him to recruit and show up.
Leg for the Comic Sands font
"No interviews."
Actually, I really like this decision. I would rather keep Hokie Stone in Blacksburg more unique. I do think a mandatory feature element in Hokie Stone for every building would be cool though.
/s
I'll try to be constructive here - for me this is much more about branding than it is tradition. My O&M blood was boiling when i read the announcement, assuming they intent was *no* Hokie Stone. As I read through it some more I think the intent is to incorporate it in the design, but not make it a prominent feature, which I get. I think leaving the stone out entirely would be a mistake, but I do think they'll find some way to mix it in to the overall design and put it in strategically placed locations that will get some visibility and provide sort of a preview of what would be found in Blacksburg. In addition, given some of the architecture in the surrounding area (specifically South of the planned site) I think a hint of gothic architecture would be a nice bridge between Alexandria proper, and north in Crystal City.
I would like it to have a more prevalent presence than simply "a touchstone of Hokie Stone here."
That is what I was thinking. The Hokie Stone is the signature of Blacksburg and the main campus. Using splashes of it the Alexandria campus makes the tie, but recognizes that the Alexandria campus is an extension of Blacksburg, not a transplant. I do hope that the school architects get to weigh in to keep the building styles the same even if the materials differ.
Nope. Do not like. This is then saying that main campus and NoVa are intended to be separate experiences. Let's aim for consistency so Hokies don't feel greater or lesser for going to one campus or another. Keep design, theme, quality, everything if we are going to do this.
Whether we want it to be or not, they will be separate experiences.
You mean Blacksburg and Alexandria don't offer the same experience?
Replicate the aesthetic, the tradition, as much as possible.
You hit the nail on the head with "replicate". It will not look like Blacksburg no matter how hard you try. Gothic architecture is not financially feasible and anything these days looks more faux. Having buildings use hokie stone in modern architecture is fine but it won't be enough for the average person to be walking in Alexandria and think they could be walking in Blacksburg. It would be a xerox of the original not an extension.
Keep full hokie stone in Blacksburg and come up with new guidelines that will tie this campus together with a feature hokie stone element for every building, like the main entry perhaps.
Anyway, what you're asking for won't be possible so why push for it when it won't give you what you want.
But it IS a different experience. Why can't the architecture reflect the connection without forcing the same language when it clearly is not the same place?
Then why even be under the Virginia Tech umbrella? Might as well be amazon university if we're not going to unify it to our existing branding and traditions.
Well... it's not really been a thing prior to now. I guess it's not that big of a deal.
https://www.nvc.vt.edu/about-nvc/ncr-history
Tech has been in the region for decades and been doing fine without "unifying it to our existing branding and traditions".
True. I don't believe the Corporate Tech center in Ballston has prominent Hokie Stone. But then again, the VT sign is so big, you can't mistake the building for anything but VT.
Also, neither the VT/UVA center in Falls Church or the Architecture building in Old Town have Hokie Stone either.
I think you can be unified and correctly branded without having identical design languages. A literal mimicry of the main campus design in a setting inappropriate for such an approach will, in my opinion, actually create a weaker connection and experience than that created through a thoughtful distillation and reinvention of the core design concepts from the main campus. Just my thoughts...
I'm not saying copy and paste the existing buildings... but Hokie Stone is like our single largest building motif
I'm not too upset with this because if the architect good, they will still use Hokie Stone in a tasteful manner and will not be held to use the minimum amount as required on campus. The architect will have some more freedom and will hopefully be able to design a really cool building that still looks like Virginia Tech.
Also, shipping Hokie Stone from Soutwest Virginia would be stupid expensive. An aggregate like limestone is not usually shipped more than 30 minutes to one hour away.
I'm a prime member it should be free.
Fun fact: My vt.edu email address is still active and I STILL haven't used my Prime trial on it.
I am close to pulling the trigger. I just can't decide when the best 6 months to get free Prime will be!
Wife's birthday, anniversary and Christmas
Not to suggest something less-than-ethical, but you can create additional vt.edu alias email addresses that are tied to your existing email. Not sure if Amazon will pick up on the same physical address being used if you were to try multiple trial periods though.
How does one go about reclaiming my old vt.edu address? I had one long ago, but haven't used it since I left.
I applied to grad school and had to reactivate mine through Hokie Spa and it was an adventure. I ended up having to call them and do it over the phone since my alternate email address on the account was still set to @juno.com.
I have never felt more ancient.
EDIT: for the youngins, Juno was a free email provider with a dial-up email client for those who needed email, but didn't have internet access (in the dark ages of the 90s).
I think my alternate email may have been with the Blacksburg Electronic Village.
Edit: Holy crap, the BEV is still around! http://www.bev.net/
What is it? https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/14/13923952/blacksburg-electronic-villa...
Those all fall within 6 months of each other! And the kid's birthday is in there for good measure!
As long as this somehow ends up with The Grand Tour doing some kind of lap race on the campus, I don't care
I'm guessing it will look similar to the VT buildings in Roanoke. Hokies know that it is Hokie Stone, but I would imagine that people not associated with VT just think it is pretty stone.
via GIPHY
This article is a little confusing. Every other article Ive seen about the new VT campus says its in Arlington, Crystal city area right across from the Pentagon. Amirite?
Yes, south of the pentagon right across 395 and the area goes down all the way the 4 mile run river is crystal city. All of that land is in Arlington County
The Virginia Tech graduate campus will be located in the Alexandria portion of Potomac Yard, about 3 miles south of the to-be-built Amazon HQ building in Pentagon City. An approximate address is 420 Swann Ave, Alexandria VA.
Amazon will be occupying multiple existing buildings and building a few new ones, mostly in the Pentagon City / Crystal City., Their new HQ building will be across from Whole Foods in Pentagon City at approximately 521 S 12th Street Arlington.
The "National Landing" branding describes Pentagon City & Crystal City in Arlington along with Potomac Yard in Alexandria. It was created for the bidding process by Arlington and Alexandria so they could simplify how they referred to the area in their joint bid.
Thank you!
If they want to use a design aesthetic that is in line with the area the new campus will be located, I would think parts of wrecked cars from Maryland and big motifs of hundred dollar bills are mandatory. /s (sorta)
Or they could just go with classic Roman inspired design, flush with marble, where nobody is qualified for the job they have and nothing ever really gets done.
I didn't think it was really that close to Richmond.
I swear people are just looking for something to be outraged at.
It simply doesn't matter. It's a graduate campus. People aren't going there for community, sports, or anything else that makes undergraduate what it is. A large majority of the student body will not give a flying fuck about Virginia Tech outside their specific program. Ask any grad student anywhere. There's no reason Sands should even attempt to make Blacksburg 2.0 on a patch of land in Alexandria (it's also not possible).
Not engaging high level grad students at least partially to make them feel a connection to the university is a long term mistake. Again Tech already had a poor alumni engagement record (both directions) don't make it worse by making this campus unconnected to the university at large.
This makes zero sense. This in no way should turn off 'alumni engagement.' If the majority of the building (for a cutting edge computer science campus, mind you) not being SWVA limestone and gothic architecture make you feel less connected to the undergrad campus and the university at large, I think the issue is more of a personal one than one with Sands or the university.
There is nothing that should lead anyone to believe the architecture of the Arlington campus won't be tasteful - it's already billion dollar effort. Blacksburg-like architecture wouldn't be economically feasible and wouldn't fit into the existing landscape. Does the Ballston building hinder our alumni engagement?
Incorporating Hokie Stone doesn't mean buildings have to look like the main campus. But having Hokie Stone used as a link to Blacksburg is one small part.
It also was in reference to you seeming to brush off Grad students as being part of the college at large.
(the person you replied and the person who replied to you aren't the same person)
I think you're overthinking it. You'd be hard pressed to find more than a handful of people that think the way the buildings look have any reflection on a link to main campus.
As much as it's easy to forget, grad students are people too, and people generally value human things. While VT does have what many would consider a top-5 "program" in my field of graduate study, so did at least two other grad schools I was accepted to. 100000000000000000000% what set tech apart for me was the "community, sports, or anything else" -- Blacksburg, the campus, the idea of Hokie Respect, the general feel of the university, the environment.
I don't think the new campus should seek to make Blacksburg 2.0, but there needs to be some effort to connect the feel of the graduate campus to the feel of the university as a whole, and I think incorporating Hokie stone into building design elements is a pretty clear and obvious visual way to do that.
Or the Alexandria campus students could just be people who want to further their career by getting a degree while working and will just pick the best university close by and don't care at all about being an active alumnus/ae. I have my MBA from Murray State because it was minutes from where I was living and I don't own a single piece of MSU clothing and don't send a penny more than my tuition. Tech does not need to go out of its way to make Blacksburg like community as the schools will not serve the typical 4-year-away-from-home student.
I'm not really arguing that Tech should do that. For the "people who want to further their career by getting a degree while working and will just pick the best university close by", Tech as an institution can deliver that outcome without entirely bypassing the spirit of what makes Tech what it is. The Nova campus doesn't need to be a Blacksburg-like community, but it's my opinion that it definitely should "feel" like Tech, since it is Tech. To me, that means featuring Hokie stone (maybe not gothic architecture, but incorporating visual elements) and it means continuing on in the sense of Ut Prosim and the core values of the pylons. Which is way more abstract, but I think it definitely makes Tech what it is.
It's my opinion that it's good to make that connection be clear, and to let people be as involved in the university community and the mission of the university as they want to be -- but don't effectively make the decision for them by foregoing any sort of connection to the Blacksburg campus.
We can probably agree that people have different reasons for picking different schools. There's a spectrum here, and we were on opposite ends of it. For me, being part of the broader university community was important, and for you it wasn't. Granted, spending five years working full time on a PhD is very different than getting an MBA at night while maintaining a career. And there's a huge difference between going to a school in a small town in the mountains compared to going to a school in a densely populated area in the shadow of the nation's capital that also just happens to be across the street from global tech powerhouse's second corporate HQ.
The campus community was important when I was picking my undergrad in engineering (as I saw it as my career base and pretty much next 40 years), but not as much so as my graduate degree, which I saw as auxiliary to my career path (the little extra to get to management). I decided at the time to apply to the major universities with the best engineering programs rather than the smaller engineering specific universities because I wanted to become more than just an engineer with my 4 years. I don't think the graduate student population is as concerned with all of that. Can it be offered and available, yes, but the focus should be on attracting professionals and career networking.
Maybe the Alexandria campus can keep the communal feel of Virginia Tech's main campus with a slew of people who are only coming by for classes and head back to busy lives rather than staying immersed in that community. Keep the architecture on the modern side in order to convey the message that the education will be on the forefront and pushing the boundaries and pepper in the Hokie Stone to remind students of the traditions and cornerstones that make a Tech degree mean something more.
I agree with so much of what you're saying. I just also tend to think that there is something immensely special that comes with being a Hokie that I really hope isn't lost entirely on those who opt to do a degree at the new location.
It's an interesting conversation to have, as I did my bachelors at a smaller PUI closer to home that was largely a suitcase/commuter school, and there was no sense of what it meant to be a student there. The university was also in the beginning phases of implementing an incredible growth plan, and there were people around who felt that the university didn't do enough to tie new development and opportunity into the vision of the institution as a whole -- and I clearly got that sense when I was there. In the 8ish years since I graduated with my BS, it's only evidently gotten worse, and outside of two or three people, I really didn't maintain any personal connection with the university. Tech has been the opposite of that.
The real answer to what you're saying is that both are true. I completed my masters in Sydney, Australia at the University of New South Wales and I loved it. One of the best decisions I've made. The program was amazing. Living in Sydney was amazing. Being close to the beach was amazing. I am immensely proud of getting my masters there, but I am a Hokie through and through. Being a Hokie is immensely special but for some graduate degree seekers it will always be a second home and that is not going to change if the Alexandria campus is full Hokie Stone. More to the point, there is nothing wrong with that.
I know this is true because I have run into people that graduated at VT from Blacksburg with a masters and loved it but called their undergrad university home. One time I ran into a guy decked head to toe with VT clothes: hat, t-shirt, shorts. I saw him and moved to say "hello". We had a good chat about VT, football games, etc but it was very clear what he said shortly after I said "hello" was true, "I only went there for my masters though, I did my undergrad at Northwestern."
Hokie Stone at the Alexandria campus is not going to change some graduate students mind when it's not changing them at Blacksburg.
Question: there's a rock quarry in NOVA (Bull Run) right? Would it be possible to find some Hokie Stone there??
From vt.edu HOKIE STONE
I am sure they could get a stone similar out of the Quarry in question, but it wouldn't be the right look. It would also probably be really expensive.
As someone who had to live in 100+ year old red brick buildings for 4 years at Tech I am gonna say this is not that big a deal...
VT has six campuses:
Blacksburg
Hampton Roads
NOVA
Richmond
Roanoke
Southwest
Only one has (EDIT a majority of its) buildings made of Hokie Stone. This is a non-issue.
VTCRI has Hokie Stone
Judging by pictures the building has some Hokie Stone but is mostly brick, and there's a lot more to the Roanoke campus than Fralin, right? There's other buildings that don't incorporate Hokie Stone at all, IIRC.