Visitors to Ohio University next spring will be greeted by the round atrium of the new lecture hall and a Bicentennial Park stretching 3.5 acres to celebrate 200 years of higher education in Athens.
The park, besides recognizing OU's history, will acknowledge the affect the school has had not only on alumni, but also residents of the city, including renowned artist and architect Maya Lin. She has designed a landscape sculpture to be the dominant display in the new park.
The piece, which is "personal and subtle," will be more of a landscape than a definite structure and is a distinctive Maya Lin piece, university spokeswoman Leesa Brown said.
Drawing from her days as a resident of Athens, the piece pulls from Lin's experience with a computer science class she took. From an aerial view, 21 rectangles form a representation of a computer punch card, Kotowski said.
The rectangles — each measuring 24-by-14 feet — will become gathering places for students to sit and study, he said. Fifteen rectangles will be depressed 16 inches into the ground so that students may sit inside and lean against the wall. The other six will be raised 16 inches above ground level.
Although the surfaces of the rectangles will be grass, the sides — made of pre-cast concrete — will display poetry written by Lin's brother and express memories of Athens.
"This is a history piece," Kotowski said, "and we're trying to leave a legend."
Lin, born and raised in Athens, is most known for her design of the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. She currently has sculptures or pieces of architecture on display across the country, including at four other universities.
Lin was an immediate choice to design the Bicentennial Park not only because of her talent, but also her connections to OU, Brown said. Her father was the dean of the College of Fine Arts and her mother was a professor of literature in the 1950s and '60s.
The cost of the park and the sculpture will be divided among several groups, said John Kotowski, assistant vice president of facilities planning. The Percent for Art Committee — a state organization that requires 1 percent of state funded buildings be dedicated to public art — will fund Lin's commission and the materials needed for a total of approximately $350,000. Additional funds to make up about three-quarters of a million dollars will be used to develop and landscape the areas around Lin's artwork.
The money gathered from the committee includes 1 percent of the costs of Grover Center, Porter Hall and the new lecture hall.
The office of facilities management is waiting to receive bids from several contractors who will be assisting Lin on constructing the piece. Kotowski said he hopes work on the project will begin in July and be completed in October. The park will be dedicated in May once the grass has grown strong.
"We hope she will be here for the dedication," Brown said.
Some of the other landscape ideas for the park include a sidewalk around the perimeter. A portion of the sidewalk — from Grover center to the new lecture hall — will become a timeline of Ohio University presidents for the last 200 years, Kotowski said. Spaced proportionately to time served, each president will have a square running alongside the sidewalk.
Another tribute to the university's history will be in planting 46 new trees, many of which will be part of the Elm Grove. Early in the school's history, students would walk through the elms on College Green on their way to commencement services. The trees were removed when most had elm disease.
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Katie Primm
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Blue print for the University Bicentennial Park provided by Ohio University Facilities Planning.
