Friday, April 10, 2009

Walter Cronkite School of Journalism

The new downtown Phoenix campus of Arizona State University has enlivened downtown and introduced some new architecture to area. Today I feature the new Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, a 6 story building designed by the team of Steven Ehrlich Architects of Culver City, California. The building contains one of the most sophisticated journalism education facilities in the nation. Inside are five digital newsrooms, two media laboratories, seven computer labs, two TV studios and control rooms in addition to classrooms, meeting spaces, and a student services center. This new facility is also home to KAET, our local public television station.
The small photo shows the building from the other side. It is such a unique building I decided to give two views of it. Having this school in downtown Phoenix puts it in close proximity to major news operations including newspaper, TV, radio, and online news sources. Click on this link to learn more about the school. The site also contains a quick time-lapse video of the construction start to finish.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

What a fantastic architecture work! Both sides are amazing.

istanbuldailyphoto said...

There are always people in my country is the street. Do people in your town you no deadlock in the streets? The deserted street.

Dave-CostaRicaDailyPhoto.com said...

Istanbuldailyphoto's comment is very interesting. It is similar to the reaction that my son's friends say when they visit Phoenix from Buenos Aires: "Where are all the people?"

In Phoenix, most people drive in their cars and there are very few areas where you see many pedestrians. This is a huge contrast to people who live in major cities around the world, or even in older cities in the U.S. in the East, Midwest, or San Francisco.

People should consider that Phoenix has 4 million people today, but had only 50,000 people in 1940. The city has grown up in the automobile age, and it was not designed for pedestrians.

A perfect illustration of this is the high rise office building in which I have an office in Mid-town Phoenix. It is on Central Avenue in a major business district. The only doors to the building are on the side away from Central Avenue and face the parking garage. There is no sidewalk from the intersection where the building sits that leads into the building.

The architects obviously never contemplated that anyone would ever walk to the building from the corner where the building sits, and where there is now a light rail station. Why else would the only doors be on the back of the building facing the parking garage?

You can see similar design features in countless other buildings in Phoenix that were designed for access by cars, not pedestrians. In Europe this would be inconcievable.

Judy said...

A very modern and interesting design.

glenda said...

Neat looking building. Love your site, learn something new every day.

Anonymous said...

I do love this building too. How cool that it was named in honor of Cronkite, while he's still alive.