A unique lounge touches down

Members of the Morris family test the lounge at a dedication ceremony in the Anderson Hall courtyard on Sept. 1. Photo by Jeff Fitlow

Rice School of Architecture dedicates SI and Susie Morris Lounge in Anderson Hall courtyard

Charles Renfro ’89 wants you to know the SI and Susie Morris Lounge is in Susie Morris Blue.

“She picked the color of the bench! Literally, it’s the paint color in her living room,” the architect and Rice alumnus said.

It’s a detail only a select few will notice while sitting at the lounge, which was dedicated in the courtyard at the Rice School of Architecture’s Anderson Hall Sept. 1. But to Renfro, to Rice President David Leebron and to every single person at RSA, the details really matter.

The unveiling of the lounge completes a journey for the five Morris siblings — Peter, David, John, Maria Barlow and Laura Walls. Their father, the late Seth Irwin “SI” Morris ’35, was a longtime Houston architect whose love for Rice never waned. Nor did it for their mother, Susie, a Wellesley College alumna who died Aug. 19 but was deeply involved in the project that carries her name as well as her color.

The SI and Susie Morris Lounge at the Rice School of Architecture, still covered before its unveiling Sept. 1, honors a Rice alumnus and his family who have held Rice close to their hearts for decades. Photo by Jeff Fitlow

“At first she wasn’t sure she wanted to be named on it because she didn’t go to Rice,” said her eldest son, Peter Morris, a few days after her passing. “Then, toward the end, earlier this year, she said, ‘Yes, I really would kind of like that, to have my name on that too.’ I think she got excited about the whole idea as the plans came to fruition.”

Renfro, a principal at Diller Scofidio + Renfro, said he was delighted to donate his time and talent to RSA for the labor of love that so entranced Susie. “She was so spirited, so engaged and so thoughtful,” he said.

The lounge is a bench, but with so much more going for it than that simple description implies.

“I recalled the days when I was at school here,” Renfro said. “It was two years after this wing was added by (architect) Jim Stirling. The courtyard did not exist until this wing was put here, and all of a sudden this magnificent old oak tree was framed very beautifully.

“As students, we’d come out to the courtyard and marvel at its grandeur and its elegance and sort of Southern quality. And we were perplexed as to why we couldn’t be there. There was no place to sit. There was no place to congregate. So when Sarah (Whiting) said, ‘Would you like to think of a bench?’ I said, ‘Absolutely.’

Charles Renfro. Photo by Jeff Fitlow

“Naturally, we gravitated toward the tree.”

Whiting, RSA dean and the William Ward Watkin Professor of Architecture, said Susie Morris “was very interested in landscape and the outdoors, so the idea of doing something outside was pretty easy. And we realized very quickly that this courtyard was a space that just wasn’t being used much.”

While others noted the bench that wraps around the tree looks something like a U.F.O. (especially at night with lights emanating from the structure) or a topless fedora, Renfro described it as a cross between a race car and a surfboard, with high-backed seating facing outward toward the center of campus, slowly morphing into a recliner as it turns toward Anderson Hall.

From left, architect Charles Renfro, Rice President David Leebron, RSA Dean Sarah Whiting and Peter Morris take the wraps off the SI and Susie Morris Lounge. Photo by Jeff Fitlow

“Lie back, all you see are the branches of the tree,” Renfro said of his favorite spot. “It’s kind of experimental. It’s a very simple-looking form but actually it’s fairly complex. There’s structural engineering and a great deal of craft.”

He described the lounge as a monocoque structure, with its load supported by its external skin. There are minimal steel supports for the four legs, placed carefully to avoid the tree’s root system. The bulk consists of high-density, milled foam covered in fiberglass and finished with resin. Whiting noted its fabricator, Karen Atta, whose studio is in Manhattan, will visit the school for a lunchtime conversation about the project at RSA Oct. 21.

“We wanted to keep the scale of it in line with the base of the building,” Renfro said. “It aligns with the limestone base that goes around the courtyard, and of course it’s a riff on the circular cutout for the tree itself, as if the stone surround had kind of lifted up and become the bench.”

Rice President David Leebron, left, and architect Charles Renfro ’89 test the “lounge” side of the new SI and Susie Morris Lounge. Photo by Sarah Whiting

Leebron noted Edgar Lovett, Rice’s first president, paid great attention to detail as he oversaw the creation of the university more than a century ago.

“Lovett was much more deeply immersed in the architecture of the university than any president since,” he said at the dedication. “The beauty and function of the university reside in the buildings you see and the choices of materials, and I think what universities have learned over the years is that you cannot separate the facilities and structures we provide from the functions that we are asked to carry out.

“What was important for Lovett was not just that sense of large functionality. … It was down to the details of the campus that can help support and inform what the university is about and what it inspires people to do in those spaces,” he said.

“So this may, as you see, not seem like a very large project, but the life of the university resides …  in these details of thought, especially next to the school of architecture, where it has to meet a standard (the school) aspires to represent and achieve.”

“As small as this is, it actually embodies all of the principles that we were taught in the school and that I think Sarah still holds dear, a kind of merger of form and function,” Renfro said. “Neither one is going to overtake the other.”