College Magic

I have always found colleges to be a magical place. Even when I've lived in a college neighborhood but had no formal affiliation with the college, I've fallen squarely on the gown side of the town versus gown divide. To learn a thing or two about campus design, I picked up Paul Turner's Campus: An American Planning Tradition from, of course, my local college library.

I'm moved by Thomas Jefferson's idea of an "academical village". He designed the University of Virginia campus in a way that he thought would promote family-like relationships between students and professors. He considered such relationships with professors to have been key to his own college experience. His plan alternated houses of students with houses of professors and their families around village green. The first floor of the professor's houses was to be classroom space. But after the University opened, sharing space between the professors' families and students just didn't work out, and classes had to be held elsewhere. And now, after generations of explosive growth at the University, the academical village is but a small fraction of a current megacampus whose design has little to do with Jefferson's original plan.

I certainly don't have anything against megacampuses. These schools, typically the bigger private universities or state flagship campuses, are magic. With tens of thousands of students, many of them living on campus, they are cities in themselves. And they provide a unique educational experience. As research universities that grant Ph.Ds in their major programs, undergraduates enjoy the energy of professors and graduate students on the cutting edge of their field, and graduate students interact as teaching assistants or even teachers for the vast undergraduate population.

But the size of these schools can make it a challenge to find the intimacy Jefferson sought to foster in his design. The UK's Oxford and Cambridge Universities, however, with their division into many semi-independent colleges, may be one solution.UC Santa Cruz was designed with a modern take on this organizational system. Its several semi-independent colleges are spread out through its wooded hillside campus. The idea of course is that the experience for all will be more intimate when the megacampus is broken into these smaller units.

It seems that the book was written too soon for the design failings of newer campuses to be apparent. For example, the University of Illinois at Chicago's raised pedestrian walkways and sunken amphitheater are discussed as innovations of the 1960s to address circulation and the need for social spaces at an urban campus with a large proportion of commuter students. But these turned out to be failed elements of the design that the school demolished after the book was first published.

I would very much love an updated version of this book. My 1995 paperback update doesn't seem to have 1995 updates. We now of a strong body of knowledge about what can be achieved through campus design, leaving few excuses for further bad design. Innovation, always welcome, should be informed by the catalog of success and failure in campus design.