 |
 |
 |
|
July 2009
|
Melancholia and the remaking of an icon It might be far fetched to link the recent death of Michael Jackson and the conversations it stimulated globally to the debates generated by the refashioning of the Administration Building affectionately shorthanded ‘Admin Building’ on The UWI, St Augustine campus. But what links these two seemingly disparate events together is that they are both icons, important for different reasons and equally so to the groups they have touched. The recent renovation and repainting of Admin Building, from a cool institutional duck egg white trimmed with maroonish brown to orangy peach columns, and walls of terracotta red edged in bougainvillea leaf green (my colour schema, not the architect’s or paint manufacturers’), generated a passionate conversation among colleagues about the change of appearance. The debate was sparked by an email written by one staff member who remonstrated the choice of colours. A spate of emails followed on the campus intranet. Sentiments were divided; the majority resented the colour shift for a range of reasons including the widely shared rationale that this amounted to tampering with The UWI, St Augustine branding: “it was with great interest that I looked on at the renovation of this majestic building. I was happy to note that care was taken to maintain the ‘look.’ So it was much to my horror to see the change of colour,” wrote one correspondent. “Posterity and history are important things…and the Admin Building is useful brand marketing,” added another. Amongst these utterances was concern about the consultative process by which the new colours were selected. On the opposing side were those who fully welcomed the change of colour. “… our Caribbean warmth and vibrancy as a people is reflected in the change in colours associated with one of the most recognizable brands in this country and the region itself.” Some extended the matter of branding beyond concrete and bricks to the services of The UWI: “May our offerings to our stakeholders be as beautiful as the new colours. Let us embrace and stop holding on to the past.” I did not participate in this conversation because the email chain missed me for some reason, and because I guess I was still forming an opinion. The repainting job is half finished, some of the façade is still obstructed, zinc fences barricade the new extension under reconstruction. It’s difficult to imagine its majesty while it sits there with parts like a broken limb still bound in plaster. I was more curious about how the colours infused themselves into my mood as I curved round the building each morning on the way to my own relatively new, still-tobe- named, glass and steel structure called the New Student Administration Building that has as yet to achieve iconic significance on the campus. The colour change caused me to look more closely at the adjacent buildings, to see how the new tonalities were picked up by the red trim of the nearby Dudley Huggins Building and by the postbox red roof of the old Agriculture building westward across the green expanse of field, how the warm adobe feel of rustic red and peach and green resonated with the shades of blue and green student housing complex of Milner Hall spanned by another expanse of greenery. Surrounded by leaves and by a host of flowering trees, African tulip in one season, yellow poui in the next, Admin Building begins to look like a finely crafted terracotta pot set amidst a tropical garden, the feeling of sun on faded red brick rather than the gray of cold and rainy days.
The structure we know as our Admin Building was actually completed in 1935 as the permanent home of the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture (ICTA). Established in the early twentieth century, ICTA was originally “regarded as the main training centre in the (British) Empire at which instruction covering the whole field of agriculture and agricultural science under tropical conditions can be obtained.” (Hansard) The primary purpose of the College then was for training personnel to fill positions on the agricultural staffs of the Crown Colonies and Protectorates? Along with its trained subjects, ICTA also left a handsome colonial legacy in architecture, high columns and ceilings, wide galleries and corridors, and tall windows, all of which permitted the tropical breeze to wave its way past the royal and other palms that signified its British heritage. The colours were sombre, authoritative, dignified, coolly unemotional as the building and its functions were conceived, never moving beyond the institutional whites, grays and creams that resonated the solidity of marble and stone. That The UWI has maintained the building’s façade, despite necessary interior changes, is a testament to its desire to retain the continuities of history and tradition. A building represents more than the stone and mortar from which it is made. They are vaults of memory that predate us. As Derek Walcott says “if a thought can go back for over seventy years there is hope for us yet in the tropics.” Buildings are fundamental parts of our iconic landscape, key passages in their creation in fact making them into the iconic significance they become for a country. The famous fire and rebuilding of the Red House (God forbid that it be painted in any other colour, it is after all called the Red House)—which parallels with Westminster in London and the Capitol in Washington. These are the political foundations on which we assume that the still elusive good governance will one day prevail. Institutions also attain iconic significance and The University of the West Indies at St Augustine itself has undoubtedly become one such icon in Trinidad. This is why those of us who work at UWI get so emotional when a tree dies or is cut down. Benches and classrooms have significance to individuals, and names of buildings like Daaga Hall rise up again like the phoenix from the graveyard of the old. The Admin Building has undoubtedly come to represent the UWI St Augustine “flagship” as one email respondent dubbed it or as another wrote, “…stands out as a constant and timeless feature in comparison to all other buildings that are located on this campus.” Apart from the continuous past on which it has built, its iconic significance also lies in the functions it serves—the seat of the Registry and Bursary, the main conference room where campus and university meetings were held and PhD oral defences were until recently heard, the repository where faculty went to submit examination papers, and for many years the centre of student administration. How many thousands of students, large manila envelope in hand, have mounted the front steps, nodded or not to the security guard sitting at the landing, and climbed up to the second floor to face their fate? UWI, St Augustine will turn 50 next year, another coming of age. The UWI management has engaged the campus in a discussion on a new plan to re-invigorate the site, to create an environment more in tune with the times, to offer a rewarding experience of work and study, physically as well as intellectually, to welcome its visitors with warmth. Admin Building serves as the cornerstone of the new branding and there is a natural fear that this shift in aesthetic values is more than just the re-colouring of a building. That it signals a departure of the known and familiar, of tradition and dependability. But icons are not static; they are constantly made and remade. The revamping of Admin Building requires us to refocus the lens with which we have viewed the familiar. This does not imply doing away with old forms, rather it sometimes means reinventing their meanings and adding new dimensions that did not exist before. There is no reason why this discussion on an iconic branding of the UWI related to and beyond Admin Building should be contained within the campus. It would be good for public, alumni, our present and future students to engage with us in this conversation. Despite the notion that icons are timeless, they are continuously reinvented and made relevant with each new age, like Andy Warhol’s colourful reinvention of an iconic black and white photo of Marilyn Monroe. With his death, Michael Jackson became a household word to many youngsters who had not grown up with his music. The test of his iconic significance will lie in the inspiring new sounds, dances and imagery that generations will make of his work, not only by the simple rehashing of the legacy that he has left. The debates around the painting of the Admin building are healthy, engaging us in the passion that fuels iconoclasts and traditionalists, both sides equally valuable for progress. Icons ultimately are what we make of them, what we imbue them with, not what they make of us. |
It also brought to mind comparisons between St Augustine and the other physical UWI campuses. The iconic Year of the Child mural on the face of the Mona campus administration building greets one and immediately transmits the message of Jamaican art and creativity and is the focal point of its branding. I thought of the relatively new makeover of the Cave Hill campus, its centre of gravity the manicured cricket oval and tropical pavilion ringed by buildings of many colours, designs and hues added to pick up meanings and significances for this generation of decision-makers who will leave their signature, just as the colonial empire had left its own mark on the horizon. What does the present colour change say about this generation of staff and students? What of our souls do we bring to the aesthetic space of the St Augustine campus?