Campus architecture and planning cut across a wide range of issues, including cost, changing technologies, aesthetics, environmental impacts, and politics, to name just a few. We asked four commentators who deal with such issues from different vantage points to respond to several questions.
Carolyn W. Elfland is associate vice chancellor for campus services at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Martha J. Kanter is chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, in Los Altos Hills, Calif.
Daniel R. Kenney is a principal and director of institutional planning at Sasaki Associates Inc., an international planning and design company.
Reed Kroloff is dean of the Tulane University School of Architecture and a former editor in chief of Architecture magazine.
What is your favorite building on a college campus?
CAROLYN ELFLAND: I cannot respond to this question by naming an individual building. The soul of college architecture is not just buildings, it is handsome structures framing outdoor rooms that contribute to a unique sense of community. Since The Chronicle’s rules prohibit making a selection from one’s own campus, I will choose the Lawn at the University of Virginia as my favorite such space. The Rotunda provides a classical focal point, the pavilions are harmonious but not identical, and together the buildings frame a grand outdoor room while the gardens create more intimate spaces. Two centuries after Jefferson created this design, new urbanists are attempting to replicate his concept — a village where people live, work, and play in close enough proximity to one another to walk among their destinations.
MARTHA KANTER: The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library in San Jose, Calif., represents both a 21st-century architectural marvel and the unique collaboration of a public university and a major city. San Jose State University and the City of San Jose opened the downtown library in August 2003. The building represents the best in bridging the public interests of students, faculty members, and community residents in an urban library that is now a national model. Both partners could never have created alone this shared academic and community resource. Together they have united their interests to create a library that embodies the ideas, ideals, and values that Dr. King represented so well.
DANIEL KENNEY: The style of a building alone is of less importance than the role it plays in the physical campus framework, how well it meets its goals, and how it contributes to the overall life and vitality of the institution. For example, Harvard University’s Sever Hall, by Henry Hobson Richardson, contains all three elements. It is a “good citizen” in its location, framing its side of Harvard Yard in proportion with other previously existing buildings. Even though it represented a departure from Harvard’s architectural style when it was built in 1880, the scale, materials, and proportions of the building all have allowed it to contribute to the overall feel of the Yard. In addition, Sever Hall continues to meet its goals as a classroom building whose simple floor plan and classic spaces have allowed it to adapt to changing pedagogy.
A more modern building that is a favorite of mine is Northeastern University’s College of Computer and Information Sciences and Residential Hall, opened in 2004, by William Rawn Associates. It is sensitive to its role in framing important campus open space and in responding to its urban context in the City of Boston. The building design expresses its unique mixed-use program and, with the use of glass and street-level activities, brings vitality to its urban setting.
If I had to pick just one building, my current favorite is the James H. Clark Center at Stanford University, designed by Foster and Partners and built in 2003. The Clark Center successfully functions as a connecting building between two distinct campus environments — the historic campus and the modern medical center — providing a transition of the architectural relationships, materials, colors, and forms. It also fits within the overall framework and rhythm of buildings and spaces that are the hallmark of the Stanford campus. With a goal of fostering collaboration and interdisciplinary research, the building also breaks new ground as a learning and research environment. For example, instead of corridors, the building has external balconies that allow highly flexible laboratory layouts.
REED KROLOFF: Some of the best buildings in the country are on college campuses, ranging from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House, at the University of Chicago, to Frank Gehry’s Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve. Universities, as magnets for progressive thought, also often collect great architecture just off the campus, such as Bernard Maybeck’s First Church of Christ, Scientist, at the edge of the University of California at Berkeley. And among the greatest campuses, like those at Rice University, Stanford University, and the University of Virginia, it is best to think not of any one building but of the entire ensemble.
I have always been very fond of a number of buildings at Yale University, particularly Louis I. Kahn’s 1953 art gallery and his Center for British Art, completed in 1974, and Eero Saarinen’s Morse and Stiles Colleges. Beyond the qualities of any individual building, what I have found most satisfying about the work at Yale is the way that it embodies the spirit with which the university engaged contemporary design in the postwar period. Yale’s leadership used architecture to represent its belief in a brighter and better future, embracing that through a campaign of remarkable architecture that was reflective of and relevant to its era, and that remains inspiring today.
What are the biggest issues in campus planning and design that you think colleges will confront over the next five yearsincluding, for example, how they will have to deal with changing student populations?
CAROLYN ELFLAND: I think there are two overarching issues confronting college planning and design in the next five years. The first is rising costs coupled with scarce resources, both money and land. Building costs, which are rising dramatically, are only part of the issue. As our campuses grow, building sites are harder to find, environmental and transportation issues are harder to solve, and the energy infrastructure is taxed beyond its limits.
Carolina is midway through a 10-year, $1.8-billion construction program. We are removing surface parking and replacing it in decks, to provide green space and building footprints. Energy usage will double across the board, necessitating funding for new steam and chilled-water plants, underground utility tunnels, expanded electric substations, and miles of piping and ductbanks.
Institutions that find innovative funding strategies and pay attention to ease of constructability during the design process will have more and better facilities, a competitive advantage in attracting students and retaining faculty members. Good planning and design have never been more important.
Sustainability is the other overarching issue. Colleges and universities are ideally positioned to be leaders in demonstrating the economic benefits of sustainable design and construction. They are home to some of the most brilliant minds on the planet, students are increasingly interested and asking hard questions, and campuses are miniature cities well suited to a wide variety of pilot-scale efforts. Campuses can lead in energy conservation, water-usage reduction, storm-water management, encouraging alternatives to driving alone, and aggressive recycling, to name a few examples.
Carolina has partnered with the local water-and-sewer utility to build a reclaimed water system to serve the cooling towers at our energy plants. The resulting savings in drinking water is expected to equal 13 percent of the community’s total demand. Colleges and universities increasingly will be challenged to demonstrate that responsible environmental stewardship makes economic sense.
MARTHA KANTER: Thanks to community support for a construction-bond measure to fund the first phase of upgrading our two campuses, combined with the leveraging of those funds to obtain additional state funding, the Foothill-De Anza Community College District has been fortunate in recent years to construct several state-of-the-art buildings. Three issues arose repeatedly in the extensive planning, design, and building process at Foothill and De Anza colleges, with the dramatic escalation of construction costs at the top of that list. Community colleges in California face a lengthy, burdensome process to obtain state approval of building designs, so even with rising costs built into our plans, our dollars simply didn’t stretch as far as we had envisioned. All educational institutions, irrespective of whether they must operate in a highly regulated environment, face seeing their building dollars diminished by skyrocketing construction costs.
Second, from a programmatic standpoint, the need for flexible space became increasingly apparent. Some labs must serve double duty as classrooms, for example, and we are taking care to build classrooms and seminar rooms as generically as possible in order to accommodate multiple purposes and a variety of teaching methodologies. It was also important that we construct buildings in a manner that would enable us to eventually change the interior configuration to meet changing needs without af-fecting the structural integrity of the building, something we accomplished by using as few interior bearing walls as possible. A key goal is to construct all classrooms as state-of-the-art “smart” classrooms, wired for current technology and able to be upgraded to accommodate future technology innova-tions.
The third issue we focused on is ensuring energy efficiency, both to reduce costs and to benefit our environment. Three of our buildings were constructed to meet standards developed by the LEED [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] Green Building Rating System, a national system that promotes green building practices. Our installation of solar electric and cogeneration projects, together with improvements to our lighting, air-conditioning, and energy-management systems, are reducing the district’s electricity purchases by 46 percent — more than 11 million kilowatt-hours annually — and saving Foothill-De Anza about $800,000 a year.
DANIEL KENNEY: Limitations on financial resources, both operating and capital, will continue to be the biggest challenge. Over the next five years and beyond, institutions will need to find ways to do more with less through creative planning as well as through public and private partnerships.
For example, by programming the library expansion to include both classroom and social spaces in a “learning commons,” Sasaki planners and designers helped the University of Missouri at Kansas City reduce overall space needs. At Metropolitan Community College’s South Omaha campus, the college and the City of Omaha are pooling their resources to build a combined community and campus library, reducing both capital cost and the need for staff.
A second major challenge is to understand and plan for a learning environment relevant for the future. The current model of spending primarily to construct new classrooms and labs to meet learning needs may not be the best investment. We need to consider new pedagogical trends carefully before building more structures based on yesterday’s learning styles.
For example, students and faculty members are increasingly aware of the benefits of a group collaborative approach to learning. We constantly hear students talk about the challenge of finding appropriate group-study space, particularly during the late-night hours. Technology-savvy students can increasingly afford laptops and personal-data assistants; a wireless campus will mean that learning can, and will, happen anywhere.
We must rethink how we plan and invest in buildings to accommodate such changes in learning patterns. For example, institutions that focus on maximizing the efficiency of their building-space ratios may need different standards that specifically program more informal and spontaneous learning spaces.
REED KROLOFF: One of the biggest issues is, unfortunately, one of the least glamorous: maintenance. Far too many universities have programs of “deferred maintenance,” which is essentially institutionalized neglect. The result is terrible decay on campuses nationwide. Colleges and universities have made brave and significant investments in architecture and planning over the years. Now it is incumbent upon them not to let that heritage slip away needlessly.
There are other issues as well, of course, as universities change to meet contemporary challenges. I am particularly interested to see how larger institutions come to terms with housing more of their students on campus. They have a wonderful opportunity to create communities of learning to replace the sterile dormitories of the past. We are struggling with the same issue at Tulane University and have a wonderful success story in the Willow Street Residence Hall, designed by Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects of Atlanta, which houses several hundred students in four different communities.
It is also going to be interesting to see how urban universities in postwar, postindustrial cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas make a presence for themselves on satellite campuses that need to bear the impression of university life but also exist in nontraditional campus settings. Arizona State University has an ambitious program underway in downtown Phoenix, more than 10 miles from its main campus in Tempe.
What is the biggest mistake in planning and design you have seen a college or colleges make?
CAROLYN ELFLAND: I believe the biggest design mistake colleges can make is to focus on the requirements of the future building occupants rather than all the stakeholders. The result can be design errors and suboptimal use of funds. Many future occupants are moving from inferior space and rightfully see a new facility as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet their program needs. In order to achieve the optimal design, they must understand the importance of the requirements of other stakeholders, such as heat-recovery systems for energy conservation. This is best accomplished by having all the stakeholders at the table at the same time so that each can gain an appreciation for the needs of all the others. A fully informed group usually will reach a good decision.
The other alternatives are poor: Campuses can burn out project managers by requiring them to conduct shuttle diplomacy, they can provide additional funding, or they can retrofit later at a much higher price.
The biggest planning mistake is similar — defining the scope and the participants too narrowly prior to beginning the process. Many campuses, including my own, have examples of mediocre buildings in the wrong places, the result of past campus-planning processes that consisted of little more than defining capacity at build-out, selecting building sites in a vacuum, and having no design guidelines.
Carolina’s 1960’s X-shaped high-rise residence halls, unfortunately, are not unique. A comprehensive campus plan must include many detailed subplans: pedestrian connectivity, service access, utilities, environment (especially, but not solely, storm water), transportation. Planning and design must give consideration to everything from academic linkages to adjacent neighborhoods. Carolina’s latest campus plan, completed in 2001, took three years and included over 500 meetings. A campus plan is an intricate web, but the best plans are not designed by a solitary spider.
MARTHA KANTER: Without a doubt, the biggest mistake is when administrators and architects neglect to include the end users of buildings in the planning process. Our expert faculty and staff members work in these buildings every day and know firsthand the needs that must be addressed. To state the obvious, the buildings are constructed for the education of our students. Each of these groups must be integral to the planning and design process from start to finish.
DANIEL KENNEY: Suburbanization of the American campus has been the single biggest mistake in the last 50 years. This pattern prevents colleges from achieving many of the goals and principles that they hold dear: student-faculty engagement, a vital collegial atmosphere, a high quality of campus life, and a sustainable environment.
While some colleges are creating a pedestrian environment by removing roads from the interior of the campus and locating parking selectively at the edges of the campus, administrators and board members of other institutions insist that students and faculty members be able to park at the front door of every building. That approach amplifies parking demand, surrounds every building with parking lots, creates distances between uses that are no longer reasonable walking distances, and provides a physical environment that is inhospitable and uninspired. Sometimes the center is all but lost in a sea of parking. On campus after campus, we’ve learned that building more densely is not only sustainable, but it creates a more vital, intense, and engaging college environment.
REED KROLOFF: This one’s simple: value engineering, an oxymoron of the construction-management trade. The term supposedly refers to a process of balancing design intentions with budget realities, but in practice is too often a way for contractors to leverage their own bottom lines. While it is critical for architects to manage their budgets wisely, universities are too often willing to listen to the poor advice of project managers whose backgrounds do not qualify them to make design-related decisions. That results in decisions that compromise both the design intent and the longer-term value of a building. College and university buildings are generally not short-term investments and must not be treated as such.
http://chronicle.com Section: Campus Architecture Volume 52, Issue 34, Page B28