Thorvaldson Hall (Chemistry)

Saskatoon Campus - VR

FTLComm - Saskatoon - Sunday, November 4, 2001

Begun just as Saskatchewan was becoming an actual place the province established its provincial university on the river banks above the Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon. For almost a century it has been growing and developing from an educational instutution to a training operation and corporate research facility. What the university is and becomes is reflected in the buildings and surroundings that make up this sprawling operation. Saturday morning with the clear sky and low sun some one told me how they liked the stone buildings that seem

to be the main theme for the campus buildings. My love for Saskatoon's university has never been very high having gone to school in Regina and seen the school in Saskatoon a presumption and often to arrogant for normal mortals. My reply was that I didn't like it. That was just my bias speaking because alone in the car I looked at that same building a little closer, noted the Norman Castle look that seems to have filled the architect's minds as they designed these buildings. As I drove away the thought of what they were trying to say or express in these designs made me wonder.

This building not more than a few decades old is made of similar material as thoses created lifetimes earlier still has that Norman look, in fact this one is ready to be used to fight off invading Regina rebels from its fortified windows. But, I am wrong, the buildings, their position and interaction with each other is remarkable and so I set to work to create for you a tiny tour of just a very small portion of the University. I think that this "virtual tour" will give you enough information to see what I mean and then some.

The map on the right as four diamond shaped dots in the centre of four cirlces. From these four locations I created four QuickTime VR panoramas. You begin on the top left circle and as you swing around watch for your cursor to change and you can click on a "hot spot" that will take you to the next circle and so on. Each panorama is linked back and forth so you can see this portion of the campus as it looked at 11:45 Saturday morning. If you do not have QuickTime download it this tour alone is worth the time and effort to install this remarkable technology on your computer free. I would enjoy hearing from you because projects like this are time consuming and I need to know if you find them valuable or are the simple regular pictures sufficient to tell the story.