The Council of Independent Colleges: Historic Campus Architecture Project

Orville Dahl Centrum Buildings

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Orville Dahl Centrum Buildings (distant view, ca. 1965), California Lutheran University

Orville Dahl Centrum Buildings (three-quarter view, ca. 1965), California Lutheran University

Orville Dahl Centrum Buildings (entrance, ca. 2007), California Lutheran University

Orville Dahl Centrum Buildings (night view, ca. 2007), California Lutheran University

Institution Name: California Lutheran University
Original/Historic Place Name: Orville Dahl Centrum Building
Location on Campus: northwest side of Campus
Date(s) of Construction and Designer(s):

ca. 1960-1965

original construction Elmendorf, Jeff Jefferson A. Architect

Type of Place: Building group

Style(s) of majority of buildings: Other: Late Modern

Style(s) of minority of buildings: not applicable

Building group type: Modern

Relationship to landscape:

Ideas associated with building group:

Function:

ca. 1965	other (Communications Services Building)
ca. 1965	other (bookstore)
ca. 1965	residence hall (Mount Clef Dormitory)
ca. 1965-1985	other (giftshop; round building)
ca. 1965-1985	other (barbershop)
ca. 1965-1985	other (real estate office)
ca. 1965-1985	other (dentist's office)
ca. 1965-1985	other (motel and shops)
ca. 1965-1985	other (the Bank of A. Levy occupied one of the rectangular buildings)
ca. 1965-1985	library
ca. 1965-1985	dining hall
ca. 1985	other (Centrum Café; round building)
ca. 1985	classrooms (rectangular buildings)
ca. 1985	administration (rectangular buildings)

Significance:
Landmark designation:

none

Narrative: see below
References: see below

Narrative:
"The Centrum" is a group of seven buildings. Originally, they included a cafeteria, motel and shops, a library, a bank, a barber shop, a dentist's office, and a real estate office. In the mid-1980s, the rectangular buildings were converted into administrative offices and classrooms and the round building (formerly a gift shop) was transformed into the "Centrum Café," a local campus gathering place. The building formerly occupied by the Bank of A. Levy is now the Hansen Administration Center.

The most noticeable feature of the complex is the poured concrete barrel roofs, an expressive element of the Late Modern style of the period. These barrel forms were preferred because they did not require vertical structural support, thus allowing large, open, and unfettered interior classroom spaces. The lunettes below the scalloped forms bring a profusion of light into the buildings.

The dormitory, and a few other buildings, are ornamented with metal grillwork, in a repeating "bubble" motif, which served as an inexpensive yet aesthetic means to filter light while refracting the sun's harsher rays.

Together, the yoking of these aspects of engineering and aesthetics suggest a kind of space-age technology of the 1960s and an optimism that such forms would engender a new way of living in the modern period.

References:

I. Bibliographic sources:

[Master Plans for the Orville Dahl Centrum Buildings.] California Lutheran College Bulletin 1, no. 1 (January 1961).

[Revised Master Plans for the Orville Dahl Centrum Buildings.] California Lutheran College Bulletin 3, no. 3 (May 1962).

[Revised Master Plans for the Orville Dahl Centrum Buildings.] California Lutheran College Bulletin 4, no. 1 (April 1963).

II. Location of other data: