|
|
|
21st Century Meets Ancient Ancestry at Kalmanovitz
|
|
|
A bird's eye view of the Ovila portal at the entrance to renovated Kalmanovitz Hall, including the building's rooftop sculpture garden.
|
|
|
When the University of San Francisco’s new home for humanities and social sciences opens for classes at Kalmanovitz Hall this fall, students and visitors won’t have to look far to draw a connection between the building’s 21st century transformation and its historical roots in ancient Western civilization.
Two classical architectural portals, one Renaissance (1575 A.D.), the other Romanesque (1075 A.D.), will greet visitors as they approach and enter the renovated building from the center of campus.
Once part of the monastery of Santa Maria de Ovila in central Spain, the Renaissance Ovila portal, along with the rest of the monastery, was part of media mogul William Randolph Hearst’s collection. The monastery was never rebuilt, but the portal was reassembled in the old de Young Museum. It and a Romanesque portal from northern Italy, depicting Adam and Eve speaking to the snake near the Tree of Knowledge, were donated to USF by San Francisco’s de Young Museum.
The portals were offered to USF in 2002 at the time the museum was about to be demolished in preparation for a total renovation. The 30-foot-high Ovila portal will be the centerpiece of a new, outdoor amphitheater situated between Kalmanovitz and Cowell halls. The 16-foot-high Romanesque portal will be installed as a freestanding sculpture inside the Kalmanovitz Hall atrium.
USF art and architecture Professor Tom Lucas, S.J. is working in consultation with experts from the de Young Museum and the architectural scanning nonprofit CyArk to restore and reassemble the Ovila portal, stored for years as individual stones. Cutting edge laser scanning technology allows CyArk, known for its work on historic sites around the world, including in Italy and Egypt, to scan the massive stones accurately to within a few millimeters, create 3-D images that can be assembled digitally before being transported to the site, and design braces to secure the portal to the outer wall of Kalmanovitz Hall.
“It’s a very complicated architectural jigsaw puzzle,” Fr. Lucas said. “All of it has to be engineered in a way so that when the next earthquake comes it doesn’t fall down and is preserved.”
The Romanesque portal, which is much smaller, will be held in place by a built-in metal frame.
Fr. Lucas hopes to involve students in the final stages of the portals’ installation, using photos taken while the work is underway and by accessing CyArk’s archive as a study tool. “It’s going to be an introduction for students to brilliant technology for architecture and restoration work,” Fr. Lucas said.
The Ovila portal is scheduled to be installed this fall, with the Romanesque portal assembled in time for the August opening of Kalmanovitz Hall.
- Originally posted Aug. 12, 2008 - 
 Back to Top
|
|
