Hill House was remarkable for what it did and for what it didn’t do, but foreshadowed, sometimes by two, three or four decades, only then done right by others. The atrium with common spaces cantilevered out of it as lounges, a dining commons at the bottom with a fountain, and sheer walls of glass at either end, is a fusion of a nice Hyatt (vintage late 70’s when well done, Embassy Suites late 90’s done w/o a real architect) with college life. Many dorms are a lot worse! But the building does not make a list of greats, because it does not pass the livability test. The first big problem was his thinking that because he gave the residents so many lounges the bedrooms, almost all doubles, could be incredibly small; this was a tradeoff that was too extreme. To me, the building’s real flaw, though, and what forced a feeling of ‘industrial dreariness” was that it had no elevators (except a big freight elevator) and all of its stairwells were ugly, hidden, concrete, confusing (you were usually entering in a middle floor and going to another middle floor, given the dining commons in the lower level, the drawbridge, etc.) and absolutely unavoidable. If Eero had the foresight to build at least one proper, pleasant, inviting stairway (and, if he’d steal one essentially like the one in SF MOMA’s atrium -- a space one-fifth the size, so he’s got no excuse about where to put it -- oh my god!) the building would be more than a stepping stone of a great architect, but a great building. The ones at Yale, those I hear are really like prison and not even ‘near misses’ at good architecture from what I’ve seen.
