Exterior Decoration

Outram believes that the exterior decoration on a building should relate the building to the various communities and cultures that form its context. For example, the columns of Lovett Hall's arcade relate that building to the historical community of scholars, with the series of capitals depicting scholars; to Texas, with the capitals featuring chaparrals and lone stars; and to the emerging culture of Rice, with the capitals depicting a lonely student battling the twin distractions of companionship and athletics. In the same way, the exterior decoration of Duncan Hall places it into context.

Main Entrance

The main entrance, facing Lovett Hall, carries several themes. First, the centerline of both the entrance and the Main Hall are aligned on Lovett Hall's arcade. The columns carry an iconographic representation of Outram's river valley - representing both the building itself and the culture of computational engineering carried out inside the valley. Above the large arches of the arcade are moungings for medallions commemorating four historical figures from the history of computational engineering. These four heads both echo the scholars' capitals of Lovett Hall and terminate their march. Finally, the entire wing is fronted by a spacious, two-story arcade that carries on the architectural traditions of earlier Rice buildings while deferring to Cram's Beaux Arts plan for the campus.

The arcade snakes its way from east to west across the building. Occupied interior space encroaches on its height in each wing, taking it down to a single story in height. It cuts through the southwest wing, creating the physically separate space for undergraduate computer labs. Similarly, it cuts north through the west wing to isolate the Dean's offices from the central body of the building. The north-south portion of the arcade lines up on the front of Abercrombie Laboratory to accommodate a planned arcade extension that would connect the buildings at both the first and second floor. At its western extremity, the front of the arcade aligns with the front of the Chemistry Building.

The Other Wings and Their Columns

The four other wings all fit a common plan. Each wing is five bays across and two bays deep. Because the wing end is broad, the roof line is broken down to emphasize the five smaller bays. The outer bays have a pitched tile roof. The middle three bays have paatios - the two outer bays have inaccessible patios at the fourth floor, while the central bay has an accessible patio at the third floor. The result is to break down the bulk of the wing into a series of distinct and smaller spaces.

On each wing, the columns flanking the central balconay are decorated with icons in glazed brick. The decoration in glazed brick is intended to reflect and reveal the interior, particularly the Main Hall. On each wing, the icons read, from bottom to top, as water, earch, air, and fire. Each wing has icons drawn from a different culture.

• On the Southwestern wing, the icons are drawn from Mayan culture. The water symbol is a turtle, the turtle that carries the earth on its back. The earth symbol is a diamond for th maize field. The sky symbol is a series of diagonal stripes, the sky bands found at the top of many Mayan temples. The fire symbol is a set of vertical lines that represent the bundle of sticks used to start a fire.
• On the Western wing, the icons are drawn from Greek mythology. The wter symbol is Poseidon's trident. The earth symbol is a set of six spots, the pomegranate seeds that bound Persephone to spend six months on earth and six months in the underworld. The spoken messages require air. The fire symbol is the thunderbolt of Zeus.
• The northern wing is drawn from the Neoplatonic iconography of the Renaissance. The water figure is a simple wave. The earth figure is a square turned on its diagonal, the cubic room-figure of Renaissance architectural theory. The air figure is a spiral, reminiscent of gas boiling off from liquid. The fire figure, on top, is a simple triangle, reminiscent of the flame.
• The eastern wing draws on images from Vedic mythology - symbols found in Indian, Iranian and Islamic architectural iconography. The water figure is the Khumba, or water bowl. In Islamic architecture, the Khumba often occurs at the base of a column. The earth figure is the Pipul leaf from Mohenjo Daro. It is an iconographic predecessor of the Lotus leaf. Above the Pipul leaf is an icon for the "subtle body," an abstract idea conceived in the eye, spoken by the mouth and made concrete by the hand. The fire figure is the Cakra, the wheel of fire.

Interior Decoration

The building's interior decoration takes three forms: the shapes and colors of the structure itself, the patterning of the terrazzo floor and the ceiling of the Main Hall. Each merits brief explanation.

Shape and Color

The interior is constructed largely of inexpensive, manufactured materials. The walls are sheetrock and fiberglass-reinforced, cast gypsum. The structural concrete is exposed in many places. The ceiling is a simple, lay-in, acoustical tile, set at a forty-five-degree angle to the building's grid. The balustrade rails are made from steel pipe. The only "natural" material found in any quantity is the wood of the doors.

To dress up the interior and imbue these inexpensive materials with a deeper meaning, outram uses both shape and color. The column yokes, where a round column metamorphosizes into a cage of four square columns, stand out because of their curved surfaces. The eye refuses to believe that the smooth and changing curve of its corners is simply gypsum. It looks more expensive. The color changes on the yoke to ensure that the eye "reads" the curves. Similarly, the smooth, round columns of the West Hall deceive the eye. They are built from sheetrock. The mind is prejudiced to think of sheetrock as rectangular and flat. When confronted with this curved application, the immediate assumption is that some more sturdy and expensive material was used.

All the surfaces of the interior are colored from the floor to the ceiling. Outram uses color to make your eye "read" the curves and twists of the interior. However, it is important to understand that color is simply another arrow in the quiver of his architecture of ideas. He selects colors to convey larger ideas; each choice is frautht with symbolism.

• Each floor has a characteristic color, matching the scheme of the exterior. Thus, first floor is blue, for water. Second floor is green, for earth. Third floor is red first breath. The clearstory is yellow for fire.
• The long expanse of ceiling is broken by the two halls into eight large rooms. The ceiling in each room has a different color.
• The natural wood doors are stained abergine, the color of shadow.
• Slab edges, bridges and the stairs have a blue wave beneath them. This shows that each floor rests on the river's shore and is thus, prime river-front property.
• The balustrade rail has four colors. The structural members are anthracite and yellow, recalling day and night or time. The green grid is set in a blue cage, suggesting land surrounded by water or space. Together, they juxtapose space against time.

Color is intended to convey meaning and to provoke thought. These are a few examples, to tease your mind. As you walk the building, you can search for others. This is precisely as Outram intends. The interior should stimulate thought, both conscious and subconscious.

Floor

The public areas of the first floor are emblazoned with a terazzo floor that depicts the river valley. It starts in the West Hall, the dancing floor at the head of the canyon (see The Republic of the Valley). Here, the rivulets of water that flow down the stairs from the high balconies mix together on the sandy floor to form the river. The waves flow eastward down the canyon toward the delta. As the river passes under the bridge of appearances, it takes an almost cubist turn through ninety degrees. It enters the delta from the north between the lecture halls, forms the classical three fingered "goose's foot" and flows into the broken infinity of the ocean.

Superimposed on the valley's image is the hypostyle. This is most apparent in the Main Hall, but it occurs along the entire floor. A particularly noticeable "column scar" occurs just inside the west entry.

Ceiling

The ceiling of the Main Hall is a vault, roughly fifty-five by seventy-five feet. The mural found there encodes a myth titled "The Birth of Consciousness." At first glance, it seems that the flower in its center must hold the key to its meaning. Look, however, directly east of the flower to find the small black spot. The spot is nothing.

However, nothing has a dual - that which nothing. You will find it opposite nothing, to the west. Once nothing notices its dual, thy begin a random conversation, which you can see running between them. This conversation leads to self-awareness, begetting consciousness - the flower in the middle.

The flower is the primal energy event, akin to the "Big Bang." Around it, the universe forms, creating both space and time. As matter coalesces into the twin planets, seemingly made of cinder block to shw their solidarity, it forms day to night in a boat made of papyrus reeds. It is falling apart, probably due to its ancient construction.

This entire depiction of these ideas is carried in the center of the raft of migration (see Entablature). You can see the raft's outline, with its structure of logs that surrounds creation. The raft rides on the blue ocean, beyond which lies chaos. The corners of the raft carry crystalline mountains, which condense the sea-vapors evaporated by the sun to form the rivers flowing out to the corners.

Like many artists, Outram has produced multiple explanations for this work. In particular, the curious reader might consult his "Outline of an Iconography" and "The Log of the Navigator."

To produce the ceiling, Outram drew it on a single A1 sheet of paper. The draawing was photographed to produce an eight inch by ten inch color positive, which was scanned at 1200 dpi. This produced a file of roughly 750 megabytes of data. The image was enlarged, using Live Pictures software, into 225 panels, each two by eight feet in size. These were printed into vinyl using a 12dpi Scanachrome printer. The vinyl was then wrapped around curved acoustical tile and bolted to a standard ceiling frame. Installation took just two days.