Yale School of Architecture tops ceremonial mace with mini brutalist building

Faculty at the Yale School of Architecture have created a ceremonial graduation mace to showcase the school's fabrication capabilities through a model of its famous brutalist Paul Rudolph building.

The mace replaces a former one in use since the 1970s, according to the school, and was commissioned by Yale School of Architecture dean Deborah Berke and deputy dean Phil Bernstein to showcase the school's "twenty-first century resources", including its wood shop, metal shop, industrial laser cutters, and water-jet cutters.

"Given the pace of change in technology, we wanted something that symbolises the School's leadership in advanced fabrication methods and the expertise of our in-house fabrication shop faculty and staff," said Deborah Berke.

"The new mace showcases our abilities in design, but also in CNC fabrication methods like 3D printing, on the Commencement stage."

Director of fabrication Timothy Newton and Assistant shop manager Nathan Burnell designed and produced the mace, which combines elements made from woodworking, 3D printing, CNC technology and cast silver to showcase the technologies.

"Making helps us understand the intimacy of scale, the material implications of design, how things get manufactured, how the characteristics of certain materials need to be worked with in certain ways," said Newton.

"There is a legion of people who work through making; it, too, is a form of expression."

The mace is composed of historical symbolism from the university and school.

The cap is a 3D-printed aluminium model of Paul Rudolph Hall, a brutalist building designed by the architect that currently contains the Yale School of Architecture.

Just below the miniature building sits a model of an octagonal column. It references an original located on the second floor of Paul Rudolph Hall that was salvaged from a Louis Sullivan-designed building, as Rudolph incorporated a number of sculptural elements throughout the interior.

Four school emblems surround the column capital, while a silver cast of Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, is affixed to the shaft.

The miniature Minerva references a statue of the same goddess that overlooks the Yale School of Architecture studios.

The staff is made of ebonised ash wood and was fluted in homage to the textural, corrugated concrete walls of Paul Rudolf Hall. Produced in several sections using a rotary-axis CNC mill, it tapers from a square top to a circular base.

The pommel, or base, is covered in a silver model of a badminton shuttlecock, an ode to students converting the school's review areas into badminton courts.

The shuttlecock itself is made from elm leaf "feathers" and an acorn base as an homage to New Haven, the Elm City, and the historic Charter Oak tree of Connecticut.

The mace concludes in a bright blue point.

It made its debut at a 19 May graduation ceremony, replacing the former staff designed under then-dean César Pelli of Pelli Clarke & Partners.

Architect Deborah Berke recently won the AIA Gold Medal and spoke to Dezeen about her current philosophies, while a student centre at Yale University was reopened after a renovation by RAMSA.

The images are by Ben Piascik courtesy of the Yale School of Architecture 

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