I knew it as sitting among wheat fields, but giant (and thriving) milk-dairies have sprung up in their place. Formal gardens, with palms and other non-native ornamentals, fill up a couple of outdoor courts. The rubble stone and roughly cast concrete construction have in the meanwhile seen the concrete painted (with care) two shades of blue, no less.

And yet it holds. 

Perhaps because it was about how the learning, living and eating could coexist simply, beginning in the courts and rooms without roofs and gardens which are also rooms...the building itself only a way to give these rooms their sense of enclosure. 

Often times, architecture seems to be intolerant to weathering due to modifications and changes (among other things), and as architects we despair about this sort of disrepair. I assumed this would be the case with my father’s work as well. But I was genuinely surprised how little the changes outside (fields to dairies) or inside (raw exposed concrete becoming blue) mattered. Somehow in this instance, the architecture has been able to absorb it all.