Be careful

Mixing cars and campuses can be dangerous. Please be careful.

Building a healthier community

Physical activity is one of the important ingredients of a healthier community. Princeton University is copying the bike rental programs of larger cities (NYC, DC, Minneapolis) with an on-campus bike rental system. The program, started in 2014, encourages students to be active. And, in a sense, it makes the entire community a little more accessible since it expands the distance that students can easily cover.

The changing face of libraries

The campus library is undergoing a dramatic change as physical books are taking a back seat to digital indices and search resources. So what happens at the campus library? It the new design for Temple's main library, Snøhetta wants to make it "a new social and academic heart for the campus." It will be interesting to watch as they transform the neighborhood (below) with the reality of this new vision. But it is interesting to see that their renderings include a winter scene, which represents a substantial portion of the academic year in North Philadelphia.

Campus water parks

Sorry that I missed this when it first came out, but earlier this fall the NY Times ran a feature on campuses adding water parks as amenities for students. Amazing.

A trio of Cook Scholars in the news

The campus is still abuzz with discussions of yesterday afternoon's GH Cook Scholar presentations  by 3 outstanding landscape architecture students, Rebecca Cook (no relation), Michelle Hartman, and Jessie Woods. So, it should come as no surprise that these three made the newspaper today with their research-backed visions for the campus.

Smart Campus folks

Last week in Santa Barbara, I met some very interesting folks that I either didn't know or didn't as well as I do now:

• Johannes Schöning - has written about augmented reality and Angry Birds
• Jeremy Crampton - Intell mapping, Bringing Foucalt to the Bluegrass
• Joaquín Huerta Guijarro - Spain, new remote sensing technology
• Carsten Keßler - VGI in education, linked data, semantics
• Michael Scott - Vulnerability, Caribbean

Of course there were plenty of folks that I already knew too, but we'll save that for another day.

The Princeton Campus Plan: Challenges, Successes, and Lessons of Implementation

Fall 2009 Lecture Series
Department of Landscape Architecture

Natalie Shivers, Associate University Architect for Planning, Princeton University

Wednesday, October 28, 3:55, 110 Cook Douglass Lecture Hall

The Princeton Campus Plan: Challenges, Successes, and Lessons of Implementation

The talk will focus on the Princeton Campus Plan, completed in 2008, one of the most comprehensive plans ever developed by Princeton University. The University's major planning challenge is to accommodate growth on the diminishing available land on campus in an integrated and holistic way that respects and reinforces Princeton's defining characteristics as a university and a community. Created by architects and planners Beyer Blinder Belle with landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh and other consultants, the plan views the campus as a web of interconnected systems and makes recommendations regarding policy, architecture, infrastructure, landscape, and the environment. The talk will also look at the plan one year later and evaluate how it has survived challenges of fiscal constraints, design changes, community concerns, and institutional practices.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Natalie Shivers is the Associate University Architect for Princeton University and managed the campus planning effort for Princeton, working closely with Beyer Blinder Belle and its consultants on the development of the campus plan. She is currently working on implementation of Princeton's campus plan through public approvals of various aspects of the plan, as well as the development of specific projects. Previously, Natalie was director of campus capital planning at the University of California-Los Angeles where she oversaw the development of strategic master plans and coordinated their implementation in the design and construction of new buildings and renovation projects on the historic 419-acre campus.

A graduate of Yale University, Shivers earned her master's degree in architecture from Princeton. She has worked in Los Angeles for several architectural firms and held positions at three entertainment corporations -- Paramount Pictures in Hollywood, the Turner Entertainment Group in Atlanta and 20th Century Fox in Los Angeles -- where she oversaw design, construction and rehabilitation projects at the studios. She also spent two years as an architect/project director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, DC.

Cincy campus

The University of Cincinnati campus has gotten a fair amount of attention for its design work. Unfortunately, my only recent visit was during a winter break when there was no activity at the activity centers. The campus was impressive but hard to assess as a social space - which is a pretty fundamental concern with a campus design.

A new book provides a closer look at one of the new areas on campus: Moore Ruble Yudell: Arc of Interaction | Joseph A. Steger Student Life Center/University of Cincinnati, Edited by Oscar Riera Ojeda. The Joseph A. Steger Student Life Center is at the heart of a series of impressive projects including a Morphosis building and a series of Hargreaves landscapes that contribute to the campus' famous Main Street. not unlike the campus, I haven't had a fair chance to review the book, but the PDF ad they have posted has enough photos to seriously entice readers and demonstrate the uniqueness (if not the intrinsic value) of this campus design.

Princeton is underwhelmed by campus plan

The Princeton Packet reports that the town and gown relationship is being strained a bit by the latest proposals for Princeton's campus. In particular, PU wants to move the Wawa and Dinky station to make room for a transit neighborhood. As a minor note they mention the added sustainability features:

Other environmentally friendly university efforts call for a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The university also plans on expand the number of “green roofs,” which entail covering the roofs of structures with energy saving plants.

Elsewhere in the watershed, Cranbury will make a cameo appearance on TV tonight.

Fountaindean

The guest blogger (and UCLA Assistant Dean) at Buildings and Grounds offers up some thoughts about campus fountains.