Life After Love

Walking past Rudolph Hall as we neared the “end” of last Spring semester, one could still feel a sense of discomfort at the sight of its disemboweled studios lit as if for a crit day. It was a time when its daily rhythms could still be felt pulsating within us, making us crave and miss everything from morning coffee runs to Atticus to the sound of Loria elevators, whose unreliability you no longer begrudged.

Today, having endured yet another pandemic semester, and worn down whatever nostalgia for a pre-pandemic world outlasted the summer of 2020, we invite you to reflect on the ways the imposition of social distancing protocols in Rudolph Hall has reshaped your understanding of the landscapes, real and imagined, contained within. How, if at all, has the building’s infelicitous return to a postcard state of Julius-Schulman-1960s realness, transformed your pre-pandemic understanding of its spatial make-up, its social undertones, and the architectural ideals embodied in its fabric?

The way this building tends to make us feel is often obscured by its pungent iconography. Taking this newly regained sense of estrangement as a starting point, we encourage introspection on how its spaces make you feel, think, and operate, and what it is that you’re missing, if anything.