Taking the 'Institutional' Out of Institutional Design

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

Writing in College Planning & Management, Tim Culvahouse emphasizes some of the design practices and concepts campus planners could learn from the hospitality industry:

The challenges are significant. Campuses have grown incrementally over many decades, during which time changing architectural fashion has diluted the sense of campus unity and identity. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, dormitories and other campus buildings were often conceived more as riot-control devices than as places of comfort and nurture. And, as is always the case, expectations have risen faster than budgets.

Even the best campus planners and architects, immersed as they necessarily are in the familiar patterns of institutional design, rarely have the tools they need to address these heightened expectations. But their colleagues in hospitality design do. Design for hotels, resorts, spas and wellness centers, restaurants, and the like is steeped in the principles of a welcoming architecture and in the planning, construction, and budgetary efficiencies of an industry that has always depended on getting the most gracious bang for the buck. What are some of the things that campus architecture can learn from hospitality architecture?

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA - "Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats"
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"