Masonry Magazine March 1967 Page. 23
Square Doughnuts
Project: Revelle College Residence Hall
Architects: Tucker, Sadler & Bennett, AIA
Coming Right Up
General Contractor: Nielsen Construction Co.
Masonry Contractor: D. F. Etchings
It's refreshing and encouraging to find that today's University students, despite their apparent preoccupation with protest, have retained the old fashion college humor tradition of applying apt nicknames to most everything about the campus.
At the University of California at San Diego, for instance, the Revelle College Residence Hall Unit II is under construction. To the UCSD students, however, they are the SQUARE DOUGHNUTS.
And you know, that's a very appropriate nickname because each building contains a central atrium (the hole) surrounded by a square building.
Certainly the architects and engineers, Tucker, Sadler and Bennett, A.I.A., of San Diego, were not thinking Square Doughnuts in designing the buildings. They arrived at the configuration because they wanted to eliminate long corridors and a hotel atmosphere so as to achieve a better relationship of rooms, light and ventilation.
One building will be six stories, the other four. Each floor will accommodate 64 students which has proved to be an optimum group for college living, being similar to a fraternity or sorority house. Rooms are further divided or arranged in groups of five surrounding a study area and a lounge for television, meetings and other social activities.
Load-bearing concrete block walls with cast-in-place concrete floors provide the principal structural elements.