This is the (let me get this straight) the Hiram Bradford Farmer Education Building, dating from 1960, an excellent companion to the Social Sciences Building. This is Edward Varney, that was Ralph Haver. This is 1960, that was 1959. They're both simple foursquare four-story courtyards, all brick, blocky, with breezeway entrances and open staircases, big vegetation inside, and a canvas covering. All of this makes it extremely comfortable inside and a true passive-energy refuge from the heat.

Unfortunately this one doesn't have panels like the other one does. It should probably get some.

And by the way, that marvelous old font that says COLLEGE OF EDUCATION in the top photo has been replaced, damn it, by a tonedeaf somebody.

Next up on our tour: the building with the big shoulders, the Charlton Heston-looking ediface, of course it's the library. It's the 1966 Charles Trumbull Hayden Library, designed by Phoenix architectural firm Weaver and Drover.

A big old Lincoln Continental of a building, giant hanging sun-screens on all sides of the building, battlement-slits for windows on the upper stories, and a moat. Yeah, a moat.

Presumably the moat wsan't effective in keeping students out of the library, so the administration took more drastic measures in a redesign. Library access is restricted to -- how can I describe this? You have to go to the plaza next door, down a full set of rough steps through a double set of doors under this giant sculptural thingee, into an underground concourse, then back east underground down a long hallway (and under the moat I suppose), then a few more steps back up, to push the button and wait for elevator access to the stacks.

It's the damnest thing and the longest walk. I think there should be a front door. What the hell do I know?

But I dig those sunscreens. And among the many hiding places and neglected cultural treasures in the library, you'll get the occasional lovely slab of nostalgic travertine marble, or a vertical row of brightly colored tiles in a window, or something.

Next the ASU Law Building, officially the Sandra Day O'Connor School of Law. Formerly the John S. Armstrong Law Building. Here's the floorplan:

The old AIA guide to Phoenix has this as "College of Law -- 1966 Cartmell and Rossman -- Easily the most bizarre structure on campus the building houses a 400 seat Moot Court, library, lecture halls and faculty facilities."

That circular form on that, that's the one-story Moot Court, big lecture hall. On the day of my visit it was full of embryo lawyers. The central circle is an atrium. This building is a good experiment in how to reconcile curves and straight lines and flat planes in the same place, a brave and unusual notion, with an extra degree of difficulty since the forms are tilted inward at -- what? -- 8 degree or so, which does interesting things to the interior rhythm and connections. I'd love to know what they were after.

And now for something completely different the recent and likable Lattie F. Coor -- what is it? Why do all these buildings have first names and initials now? Who the hell came up with that rule? Instead of the Turtletaub Camel Exfoliation Clinic, or maybe the Marsha Turtletaub Camel Exfoliation Clinic, somebody decided that we should observe the maximum amount of pedantry and it has to be the Marsha F. C. X. Turtletaub Camel Exfoliation Clinic. What the hell?

No disrespect meant to Lattie F. Coor Hall or to Ms. Coor. This work is from the happy house of Eddie Jones, the brave Phoenix architect who actually set up shop in the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, his employees and everything. I like this building -- very nice relationship to the pedestrian mall 'street,' a shocking and inviting void, all crisp the way it should be, with a very blue and very photogenic facade above you. And with cryptic etchings, I mean, what more do you possibly want. From the ASU web site:

Text fragments and letterforms, etched on the glass façade of Lattie F. Coor Hall, are part of the latest, and largest, work of public art on campus. Chicago artist BJ Krivanek, commissioned by project architects Gensler and Jones Studio, selected letters from several Latin-based, Native American and Asian languages, as well as numbers and punctuation marks, to represent the universal potential of language. He designed the building so the text fragments are cast on an inner, opaque wall.