Campuses I like

Campuses I Like

Recently, I was given a tour of a nearby campus by a colleague who works there and it made me think of the many campuses I’ve admired over the years. I’ve always found the American college campus to be a very special place. There are those who believe the ‘brick and mortar’ campus to be archaic, soon to be replaced by online education and other less place-based forms of education. But I believe that college and university campuses are uniquely suited for community building, human interaction and highly personalized education. Great campuses inspire tremendous educational engagement. However, the country is chock full of plenty of uninspiring and dysfunctional campuses as well.?Let me see if I can unpack the characteristics ?that, to me, make a college campus appealing, effective and inviting.

Let’s start at the macro level with both inward-facing and outward-facing characteristics. Campuses that fail, imho, are those which have ‘turned its backside’ to the local, adjacent communities. I’ve visited several campuses, both suburban and urban, that, failing to anticipate further growth, deliberately built buildings along campus edges with few or no windows, with all loading docks and trash containers on the backsides of those buildings and with no pedestrian traffic expected on that side. The local community gets only to experience service entrances, loading docks, trash compactors and bins and excessive delivery truck and garbage removal traffic. Trash, trucks and utility facilities are essential components of every building and sets of buildings, but well planned campuses have found creative ways to shield service elements, leverage below grade access and even make service functions inviting, engaging and educational.?

Inwardly, campuses I love have a coherence that’s obvious to my eye but hard to describe. Some characteristics of the coherent campus are:

• buildings built at the right scale for the environment. Appropriate scaling doesn’t preclude high rises, but environments suited for tall towers differ from lower scale building precincts. In general, I prefer more urban density with high rise buildings and considerably more green spaces in quad-like configurations with lower scale buildings. The thoughtful and coherent campus generally evolved planfully often with original, low scale, older buildings and larger and taller buildings on the outskirts of the campus. That’s not a hard and fast rule and alternatives are abundant, but whatever the layout of the campus, the successful ones seem to have evolved intentionally with deliberate intent to align building sizes, green spaces, pedestrian pathways, automobile traffic and parking, and thoughtful placement of various collegiate elements (e.g. athletic spaces, academic disciplines, student residences, etc.).
• architecture as institutional statement. I’m already hearing all the architects I know groaning, but let me try and convey what has impressed me and what hasn’t. The worst campuses I’ve visited have been more focused on showing off their ‘starchitect’ commissions than truly seeking attractive and functional buildings that collectively feel like they fit. By fit, I don’t necessarily mean that they must all look the same (how many of you are now picturing those campuses that have embraced a singular architectural vocabulary for all their buildings?). I love variety and texture and contrast, but done right, a collection of buildings can feature distinctive colors, facades, fenestration and materials, but they will have elements in common that serve as effective connective tissue. Some of the best have featured towers, roofing materials, distinctive ‘skins’ and other attributes that give balance, cohesion and familiarity to segments of the campus.?
• A campus may be made up of many different precincts. There may be several residential quads, an athletics campus, a science and tech ‘neighborhood’ and mini-campuses for various professional schools. Each can feature quite distinctive design and architecture, but done well, collectively, they make sense. They may share subtle, common features like walkway designs or campus lighting fixtures. College colors may be prominent across all sub-communities. Institutional signage and wayfinding may be universal across the campus. Institutional design standards may require trees and green spaces that remind visitors that the Law School, however distinctive, is still part of the university.

Coherence is expressed in many ways and I hope some of the architects who read this piece weigh in with more technical guidance on what enables coherence on college and university campuses.?

I’m a fan of a distinctive ‘center of campus’…a place where all paths lead to. Some campuses have centered the institution around a natural attraction like a pond or common (think New England village commons). Others have located an iconic element such as a bell tower or hardscape plaza with community seating and, perhaps, sculpture features. On many campuses, the library or the campus center/student union may serve as the core of the heart of the campus. All seem to work when that downtown area features seating and gathering spaces, walkways designed for convenient access and egress and food and beverage options that serve?to attract and retain all members of the college and university community.?

Some campuses have successfully developed ‘hub and spoke’ designs where the center of the campus may be immediately surrounded by elements focused on the undergraduate experience and with other aspects such as the graduate and professional facilities and mini-campuses logically oriented on an outer ring. Keeping the core and as much of the inner array of buildings free of roads and surface parking lots seems to enhance the beauty and functionality of the campuses I’ve most admired.?

Weather conditions obviously affect campus designs but the campus grounds are extremely important to community building, student engagement and campus aesthetics. Large outdoor spaces, with both grass and hard surfaces support crowded gatherings for various concerts and festivals. Niche gardens, seating areas and ‘hideaways’ offer opportunities for intimate conversations, quiet reflection and study. Great campuses offer a variety of options for outdoor activities and small group interaction. Some of the best urban school designs feature ‘pocket parks’ and simple but pleasant sitting nooks.?

Student Residences

Despite decades of research on best practices in residential experiences, we seem to have little agreement on whether isolating first year students or integrating them with upper-class students is optimal. Are double-loaded corridors of traditional ‘dormitory’ designs better than suites and apartments? Can residential life be effectively offered in multi-story towers? Answers vary for school to school. Thus, every campus has its own approach to the undergraduate residential experience ranging from complex and comprehensive residential colleges to simply a vast collection of apartment buildings both on and off campus. They can (an do) all work when the campus has embraced its inventory of housing often built in very different periods of time reflecting whatever form was in vogue at the time. Students will form communities in whatever model the institution features, but I’ve come to accept the fact that administrators put more energy and effort into the development of a model than students will engage in it. Candidly, I lean to simple campus housing with small (30-40 students) residential communities/corridors/houses/wings nested in modestly sized (300-400 students) buildings. The rest will take whatever shape the community prefers subject to the unique pressures and influences of the time.

Campus Centers/Student Unions

The campus ‘community center’, whatever it may be called still serves an important role on most campuses. Often referred to as the living room of the campus, these buildings or collection of adjacent buildings are most effective when they address a thoughtful considered and designed agenda. On many campuses, they serve as the administrative and services hub for the community providing centralized access to everything from bookstore to bank to barber. For other campuses, dining may be centralized in such facilities (with satellite options throughout the campus) and still others may include recreational opportunities from bowling to wall climbing. There’s no universal, right design to the campus center/student union but those that work best, from my perspective, offer small and large community gathering opportunities (including ballroom, theater and other plenary gathering spaces), wonderful spaces and places to “see and be seen”, a whole lot of food representing a wide variety of tastes and preferences, and opportunities for students to showcase and lead their clubs and organizations, interact across all identities, and celebrate their presence at their college or university.?

Libraries

The current state of affairs for campus libraries is well beyond my expertise. It seems to me that the modern campus library features great places for individual and group study, access to technologies that enhance learning and staff who assist with research. Storage of and access to books may be part of the role, but how knowledge can best be deployed seems more important than simply access to materials. I hope those with far more expertise on the library experience will weigh in with wisdom.?

Let me stop here and invite comments and thoughts. What aspects of campuses you’ve attended or visited have appealed to you? Without naming names, what campus designs haven’t worked? What aspects of campus architecture or campus design have had you wonder “what were they thinking”??

Larry