I doubt anybody ever called Wiess pretty and meant it.

Built in the late 1940's, as Rice University was flooded with students taking advantage of the GI bill, Wiess dormitory had more in common with contemporary motel design than it did with the rest of the Rice campus. It was harsh and geometric, with no curves to soften its lines, and few angles that strayed from the perpendicular. Thrown together quickly, Wiess was a maintenance nightmare, destined to be plagued by crumbling plaster and sagging balconies.

But as Wiess evolved along with Rice, the building's design had an unexpected strength. In the late '50s, Rice created a residential college system, focused on fostering student communities in each of the former dormitories. Wiess's layout, with broad balconies opening onto large common spaces, turned out to be perfect for encouraging a distinctive social cohesion (for better or worse). "Team Wiess" became a chant and a cheer and an identity for a reason — it reflected something fundamental about the social institution that grew up around the building.

Time also softened Wiess's appearance. As trees and shrubs grew around its walls and in its quads, and as wear cracked the bricks and skewed the sidewalks, the building gradually lost some of its original geometric rigor. The new commons area and master's house, built as part of the conversion from dorm to college, broke from the motel motif. And students experimented with their own innovations — elaborate build-ups in the rooms, old couches (which tended to end their lives spectacularly, in a flaming plunge from the third floor), a trampoline, giant inflatable pigs, the occasional portable swimming pool — to supplement the college's spartan offerings.

In the end, the old Wiess's basic limitations doomed it. It was too small for a growing Rice student population, too open to the outside for safety, and too poorly constructed to be worth saving. The new Wiess looks to be a great building, and is inspired by the original design to a remarkable extent. But for those few hundred of us who called the old Wiess home every year, it will never be the same. It will be a good Wiess, but it won't be OUR Wiess.

I never thought Wiess was ugly. Battered, yes. Utilitarian, yes. But to me it had a peculiar, stark beauty all its own. I hope these photos managed to capture some of it.

Colin Delany
Wiess '91

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