Not long ago, Cathy Sullivan and her husband Peter walked the halls of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and admired the intricate details of the architecture and the intimate spaces on campus.

Sullivan, a teacher from 1971 to 2009, and her husband, an alumnus, got to revisit those memories with an art exhibit dedicated to the university’s architecture and the architect himself: Paul Rudolph.

The April 18 opening reception offered a peek inside how the campus design came to fruition, and who Rudolph was as an architect.

For student Grace Galinha, the show spurred a conversation with her step-dad about how he used to deliver wood to campus during the construction phase in the 1960s. Photos showing the campus under construction were used as one of four time periods relating to the university’s development in the exhibit.

“It’s really amazing Paul Rudolph made this to be a utopian society because in the 60s there was a big revival – John F. Kennedy became president and everything,” Galinha said. “The whole nation wanted a change and that’s why Paul Rudolph envisioned this campus as a futuristic, forward-looking, new design of a utopian society for students to come together and learn.”

Other time-specific exhibits showed how culture and politics mixed on campus. It was the section student Olivia Wallett, along with Galinha, researched for the project. They were among 15 students in a senior art history seminar to put the presentation together.

Wallett and Galinha used the university’s archives to find newspaper articles and photos of people protesting on campus. It highlighted how Rudolph felt the structure of the college should represent unity and how the campus mirrored the nation in the 1960s.

However, this was not Wallett’s favorite portion of the project. Instead, she loved the piece which showed how the light is absorbed and reflected off of the concrete campanile to make colors.

Students also used reds, oranges and purples – colors Rudolph had envisioned in the buildings on campus – to grab people’s attention. It was the same mindset Rudolph had when constructing the campus. The cement would grab the light and colors and create delicate shadows. It was all part of Rudolph’s brutalist style.

The walls were also lined with quotes either by or about Rudolph.

Wallett said seeing it all come together was exciting.

“It’s amazing,” Wallett said. “We spent so much time on this throughout the year- this is our whole class- so seeing people come in and enjoy the things that we enjoyed learning about is awesome.”

Rudolph was chosen as the focus of the project in part because the college recently received a Creative Economy grant, which is being used to create an augmented virtual tour of the campus.

The exhibit is one of several events related to the campuses’ week-long “Inventing Our Future” celebration.