About Our Logo
Around the turn of the last century, many American schools of architecture and design, in the manner of the best schools abroad, assembled collections of plaster cast copies of some of the world’s most renowned examples of art and architecture. Set before students as timeless standards of quality design and good taste, these life-size copies became models upon which a solid foundation of design education was to be built. Indeed, students were asked to sketch them, to draw inspiration from them.
The sculptural relief of a scroll, housed within Seaton Hall, testifies to the heritage we in the College of Architecture, Planning, and Design at Kansas State University share with this educational legacy. Thought to be produced in a style prevalent in late 19th century America, this scroll (or volute as it is sometimes called) still appeals to us today for its ability to encapsulate the entirety of the design experience. Its underlying logarithmic spiral gives order to robust foliant forms, thus suggesting the wedding of rational thought to free expression as the basis for good design. Its use as a building ornament harkens back to the very roots of classic architecture in that the original purpose of such ornament was not merely to decorate and render things with a more human scale but to throw into high relief the construction methods by which the building was pulled together from different materials using a variety of tools. And its leafy details, symbolizing the energies of creation and growth, evoke the importance of the land upon which we build.