Q&A Sept/Oct 2007 with Michael Wilkes – Room to Grow

Wilkes

Outdoor walks around campus on a nice day are among the strongest memories people have of their college campus, not the hallways or classrooms inside buildings, according to Michael Wilkes, FAIA, principal and CEO of San Diego, Calif.-based Architects Delawie Wilkes Rodrigues Barker. Yet, when developing a master plan for a new college campus or planning new buildings and renovations for an existing site, planners and school officials often forget to leave room for open spaces, such as pathways, patios and green areas, where students, faculty and staff have an opportunity to connect with their surroundings.

It is also important for a master plan to allow a university to evolve with new buildings that show their time and place in a school’s development and still honor the traditional aesthetic of the university.

Wilkes spoke with School Construction News from his office in San Diego.

Q: Why is a master plan important for a college campus? How is it more than just a building plan?

A: Let’s start with the fact that, when you master plan, you should think about the different layers of complexity that are present today and might be present in the future.

Perhaps one of the most overlooked parts of a master plan is the open space. While there are urban campuses and high-rise buildings, that’s a different type of master plan. The kind we’re talking about thinks about the buildings and the spaces they create and about the pathways, highways and byways. Some areas have broad avenues where the students pass through the campus through quads or patios, and then there are smaller byways and little alleyways and nooks between buildings.

The design of the buildings is also part of the master plan: where they should go, how they best relate to each other, their heights and how they shadow these pathways and open spaces. In a northern climate, you want to get as much sun as possible on the pathways, so that in the winter months, they’re as warm, comfortable and friendly as possible. Conversely, in warmer climates during the spring, summer and even the fall, there can be extremely warm days in excess of 85 degrees. These campuses like to use arcades, places where students can walk in shaded areas on warm days.

Q: What are some other important aspects of master planning?

A: Open spaces are important, pathways are important, the type of pathway is important — how it responds to the climate of the region — and how the buildings create alternative pathways that are either sheltered or more exposed is important.

The height and bulk of buildings can be very important, as they can cast shadows and create areas that are not inviting.

Another important part of master planning is understanding that not every space can be a large, grand space. The smaller spaces adjacent to buildings or between buildings are nice places to create garden rooms. These rooms are very intimate spaces where three to four students can study, or a single student can study and feel comfortable, as opposed to being the only student sitting on the lawn in the middle of a large quad. The idea is to create as many of those spaces as possible.

Part of college life is our social experiences with our colleagues, and so they should have places where students can sit with their friends and talk, either about class subjects or just social topics.

The architecture on a campus should also define which buildings are the primary or signature buildings and which buildings are supporting buildings. Every building should not scream at you that it is the most important building on campus. These buildings are the signature landmark elements that give you direction as you wander around campus. They are an instant reference point, in terms of wayfinding, for new students and transfer students who have just arrived on a campus and don’t know it that well.

Master planning isn’t strictly about determining the most efficient route for the utilities — the water, the power, the sewers. Those are an important part of a master plan. Having access to them over time and knowing where to put the plant, if it’s a central plant, is very important. But the reality is that a master plan should create a campus that enhances the student experience and facilitates learning.

Q: How can the design of a campus impact how students, faculty and visitors experience their surroundings?

A: One of the first things is to create as many opportunities as possible for students and faculty to interact. The most common and historical way is faculty hours with a note posted on their office door, but if there are places in a building where hallways become wider or there are sitting areas where students can study in between classes, a faculty member can pass by and enter into a discussion with a student and the discussion becomes a learning experience for the student.

The things that architecture can do are obvious: it can create WiFi connections so students can study at any point on campus and it can provide excellent classrooms with the right sightlines and acoustics. Less obvious elements are spaces around buildings for students to study outside the classroom, but still within the university environment, and environments where learning is promoted.

Q: Is there a good time for a college or university to develop a master plan?

A: There are very few new campuses that commence from raw land. Any campus can go back and develop a master plan, and instead of having a stream or trees that govern the design of a master plan, the existing buildings and utilities become both constraints and opportunities.

There is never a time when you shouldn’t be thinking ahead and master planning for the future. Think about buildings and the way that they talk to each other in terms of their sizes, colors, textures and materials. Perhaps the worst situation would be to have no master plan and have each architect design a building that is in the current fashion, rather than something that complements the other buildings that are there and shows the evolution.

Many campuses, such as Harvard University or Stanford University , in their core areas of campus have distinct architectural styles. You would want to maintain a very honest and cohesive design that complements those styles. You don’t want to copy existing buildings, because a building should reflect its era and what students and faculty needed during that time.

The 80,000-square-foot School of Leadership and Education Sciences building at the University of San Diego features arcades around the perimeter, which provide shaded areas on warm days.

Q: What are some of the challenges that planners face when creating a cohesive campus layout?

A: Parking is one of the most challenging aspects. Almost every student has a car and, in many ways, parking and moving the students who do not reside on campus and providing them with a way of immersing into campus can be difficult.

The students who live in on-campus housing experience the campus in a different way than off-campus students. Frequently, off-campus students are not as involved in many of the social aspects that are an important part of your collegiate career and they don’t get the same opportunities to join in study groups, which is a central thing for students because we all gain knowledge from our peers. Creating something that allows commuter students to come on campus and get immersed is important.

It also depends on the project, because some campuses are more urban than others. Some have unusual sites with topography changes, such as hills, so those factors dictate the importance of the design. Campuses that are more urban require master plans because you need to know how to preserve the open spaces, highways and byways, and at the same time plug in new buildings at strategic locations that don’t interrupt the open spaces and the overall character of the campus. The worst situation would be to have a suburban-type campus with large greens that dissolve over time and become buildings. Ultimately, you would just have buildings with streets between them or sidewalks.

Q: Do the space restrictions at urban campuses force planners to build up rather than out?

A: You do see quite a few campuses now that have buildings that are five to eight floors in height. Those tend to be schools where their land constrains the growth of the campus and they want to keep the students and the faculty close together.

Q: How far into the future does a typical master plan anticipate the needs of a university?

A: If a school has a fixed amount of money — for instance a community college district may have a bond that is for a specific number and type of buildings —the master plan might only be for the expansion that the bond issue will fund. That master plan might be five years or 10 years worth of projects. Ideally, a master plan should look at 30 years and if it is a brand new campus, it might look at 50 years.

Campuses are changing. The big change is the Internet and online classes. More frequently now, even the conventional universities are providing online classes and podcasts of classes. For that reason, there may be fewer classrooms over time. But for the foreseeable future, I think there will always be students and faculty on campus. It’s part of the traditional learning process. There are core classes that are essential to have in a classroom setting because certain students learn not just from hearing, but also from seeing, doing and other modes of learning.

Q: How do planners anticipate the way a campus might change over time?

A: The way you do that is by building flexibility into the plan. You always want to have options. Sometimes it’s designating the location for a building but not actually defining which building will go there. You can define height, square feet, the building footprint or an entrance from a certain side, but it might be 10 or 20 years before that building actually materializes, and by then, the building’s needs may have changed.

Q: How has the movement toward environmental sustainability affected the master plan process?

A: Site design is a very important part of energy conservation and sustainability. A building that is designed to take advantage of the direction of wind and sun is very important. Fortunately, sustainable design has become expected on academic projects. I don’t have any current academic projects that are not expected to be at least LEED-certified.

It’s relatively easy now to specify sustainable materials since major manufacturers of almost every product and building component make their products sustainable and recyclable. It’s much more common than people are aware of for architects and engineers to specify recycled or sustainable products.

Landscape architecture is a very important part of master planning and sustainability, as well. It is part of creating the open spaces and the image of the university. It would be a little strange to see palm trees at Notre Dame University , while campuses in Florida would be very different without palm trees. Part of that is creating the individual character but also complementing the regional environment with plants that are regionally appropriate.

Landscape architecture is used to create garden rooms or accentuate the various pathways that people use throughout campus and the large open spaces. Good landscape planning creates more trees and more shrubs, which are an important part of a sustainable environment. Schools are also using bioswales, which is a way of filtering water before it goes into the aquifer or before it’s captured and sent into a storm system.

Q: Does a master plan dictate a specific architectural style for several years or does it allow different styles to flourish on a campus?

A: Both. There are some campuses where multiple styles would not be appropriate. If you take a traditional university, you would want a type of architecture that complements that style, but at the same time, at some point you’re so distant from the core of the campus that there is no longer a need for the style to continue to replicate something that may be less relevant today than a more contemporary style. Some campuses have different neighborhoods and each neighborhood has different criteria for a design. That can be a very good thing because instead of having a very large campus with one homogeneous style, each neighborhood is different and more interesting. Colors and materials begin to make an important difference.

Q: How does a master plan help a college campus relate to the rest of the community?

A: That’s the $1 million question. In some cases, campuses are isolated and tend not to have immediate edge problems with the community, but other campuses are bordered by older neighborhoods with families that have lived in the area for 40 to 50 years. The fringe edge of a campus is typically where student apartments, fraternities and sororities are located and that edge condition is frequently an area of conflict. It’s a conflict where families that have been there expect to continue with the lifestyle and the amenities of the neighborhood, and yet they’re changing as students move into those neighborhoods.

Some universities have mini-dorms, houses with six to eight people living in them, adjacent to campus, which can create traffic, parking and noise impacts on the neighborhood. It’s not uncommon for campuses to resolve traffic problems through improved street design, improve the edge of the campus with landscaping, but it’s different once you move into the private zone, the zone between the community and the university.