Science & Engineering Precinct at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL

This campus project received a SCUP 2009 Merit Award for Planning for a District of Campus Component. The jury said “ . . . they are very clear in articulating their goals . . . stands above others . . . pretty clever phasing . . . very well thought out . . .” "Many project requirements were considered and five options were prepared. The boldest and most transformative one was chosen to integrate classrooms and labs, promote interdisciplinary thought, and encourage a collaborative, engaging culture . . . The plan transforms the area from a suburban, car-oriented environment to a pedestrian and transit-oriented area by incorporating passive open spaces into a cohesive new landscape and pathway system." Project Team: University of Alabama, and HOK, with Earl Walls Associates now Xnth. The University of Alabama Campus Master Plan is available on line here.

The Power of Place on Campus

What are the "sacred" spaces on campus, the spaces "that have great power and importance to the campus community?" Earl Broussard argues that many already exist, they just need to be recognized and supported.

So how do we create sacred spaces?

In fact they already exist all over campus — but they must be recognized, maintained, and supported. Commuter campuses can also identify and create their own transformational spaces, but administrators must first envision their campus constituencies as "thought communities" — academic villages and places of enculturation. Otherwise their campuses will convey no more special meaning than a collection of office buildings.

First, university officials must identify spaces that have great power and importance to the campus community. A place's character is often recalled with affection, and a strong sense of place supports our sense of personal identity. For that reason, familiar features are often fiercely defended. In-depth surveys of existing students and alumni, interviews, and mapping can help define existing on-campus sacred spaces. Do people feel at home? Is there a sense of place? Are they transformed? Survey work should be coordinated with facilities and fund-raising officials at the university to identify, analyze, and protect special places on the campus.

Once these places have been identified, it is essential to reinforce their function and develop their storylines.

Evolution of Office Spaces Reflects Changing Attitudes Toward Work

From Frederick Taylor, one of the first people to actually design an office space, in 1904, through the invention and wild breeding of the office cubicle, to more recent spaces which encourage sociability while trying to maintain at least a perception of privacy, this Wired magazine one-pager is interesting and informative: "Since the dawn of the white-collar age, office designs have cycled through competing demands: openness versus privacy, interaction versus autonomy. Here's a brief history of how seating arrangements have reflected our changing attitudes toward work."

The Burnham Plan Centennial

We know many SCUPers are already following this with great interest. "Make no small plans," you know:

When Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett collaborated with the Commercial Club of Chicago in 1909 to create a dramatic vision for the greater Chicago Region they took on the task with vigor and sustained commitment. The Burnham Plan Centennial group is made up of organizations that include the Adler Planetarium, the American Planning Association, and the University of Chicago. Visitors can get a sense of their work by clicking on the "About the Centennial" section. Here they can learn about upcoming events and lectures sponsored by member organizations, their staff members, and their press releases. Moving on, the "Our History, Our Future" area includes links to the complete original 1909 Plan, along with links to the "Virtual Burnham" project at Lake Forest College and information about current exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago. Finally, the "Learning Resources" area is a gem, and visitors can view classroom resources, a bibliography of books and web publications on the Plan of Chicago, and a kid's portal. [KMG]

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300% Over Budget?

Ouch. It's not hard to imagine the angst of being involved with the planning of this project:

For starters, what was supposed to be a $40-million project — with a $26-million contribution from the philanthropist Eli Broad, an alumnus — was at one point estimated at a whopping $160-million, according to the university’s president, Lou Anna K. Simon. The university’s associate provost for academic services, Linda Stanford, told the News that the design was being changed and that it would indeed end up “close to $40-million.”

This is a nice review of the restored Art & Architecture Building at Yale University, written by Michael J. Crosbie. You should be able to read it all, but to enjoy most of the images you'll need to be an Architecture Week subscriber:

The Yale Art and Architecture building in New Haven, Connecticut, designed by legendary architect Paul Rudolph and completed in 1963, is now close to how its architect intended it to be, after a 45-year journey through celebration, fire, indifference, and abuse.

One of the most iconic architecture school buildings in the world, the object of a love-hate relationship with those who have known it, has found new repose amid a complex mixture of adoration, restoration, and exhilaration.

The restoration of Rudolph's masterwork, and the addition of an adjoining building for the art history department, are the work of New York architect Charles Gwathmey, a former student of Rudolph's who actually worked on the original building. The $126 million effort was guided by Yale's architecture dean, Robert A.M. Stern, who as a Yale student in the 1960s gave tours of Rudolph's concrete castle of architecture.

Nurses Organize Around the Planning Table

After a conference in 2005, a bunch of nurses got together and decided to create some reosurces to enable better input from nurses into the design of health care facilities.So they created the Nursing Institute for Healthcare Design (NISD). We have to wonder if this kind of initiative might work for other professionals with an interest in ther design of the built environment?

First of all, nurse leaders are being invited to the table, and the chief nursing officer is now considered one of the executives of the hospital. So now, instead of a director of nursing, there are chief nursing officers who are considered higher-level executives making higher-level decisions. They get to the planning table and don't have the information and preparation they need because we didn't have anything about healthcare construction in nursing school.

Through the online resource they can be inspired by knowing that there are nurses out there who are knowledgeable and could be a resource on this subject. “NIHD Connect” is where we pull together basic healthcare design and construction information—articles, videos, books, and links—we find about such topics as patient room design, hospital unit design, noise in the work place, and safety features. A lot of those design features deal with patient safety and infection control. You know, my mother knows you should put the sink by the door, but is this being done everywhere? So by reading some of this basic information about healthcare design and construction, the nurse leader will be equipped so she or he at least knows what to advocate for at the planning table. Or, if something doesn't ring true, they know where to go and dig deeper into the topic.

Oberlin: Where does the nurse-designer collaboration process need improvement?

Hayes: I think architects still have a tendency to discount the nurses' views, and sometimes that is because the nurses may not be giving the best answers. For example, I might ask a nurse at one hospital and they might tell me one thing, and then I ask a nurse at another hospital and she tells me the complete opposite. So if the architects are not getting good answers from the nurses, they may decide not to pay attention to them and only include them as a courtesy. And the problem may be that the nurses are telling them different things because of the way they are using the space or because of a lack of knowledge that, yes, you do need to put the sinks by the door.

The Serious Matter of Informal Learning

From the January–February–March 2009 issue of Planning for Higher Education, this "SCUP Links Blog" post provides an opportunity for you to share comments or additional resources/links about the focus of the article, The Serious Matter of Informal Learning, v37n1, pp. 18–26 by Peter Jamieson. You can read the entire article here [LINK TO COME], in Planning for Higher Education.

The article "blurb" reads: From the development of learning spaces to a broader understanding of the entire campus as a learning space.

[ABSTRACT TO COME]

Note that this issue of Planning is the second of a two-part themed volume with the overall title, Student Life. The first part was published in October 2008. Assembled, the two parts will be available later in 2009 for purchase as a single PDF document for your quick and easy reference.

How the City Hurts Your Brain . . . And What You Can Do About It

A new body of knowledge is beginning to support an understanding that the presence of some sort of "nature" - like the open space of a campus(?) is "surprisingly beneficial" for your mind and its ability to learn and remember:

In a study published last month, Berman outfitted undergraduates at the University of Michigan with GPS receivers. Some of the students took a stroll in an arboretum, while others walked around the busy streets of downtown Ann Arbor.

The subjects were then run through a battery of psychological tests. People who had walked through the city were in a worse mood and scored significantly lower on a test of attention and working memory, which involved repeating a series of numbers backwards. In fact, just glancing at a photograph of urban scenes led to measurable impairments, at least when compared with pictures of nature.

"We see the picture of the busy street, and we automatically imagine what it's like to be there," says Berman. "And that's when your ability to pay attention starts to suffer."