object buildings can work successfully if they are designed as focal points within the pattern of buildings and open space. Remember Jefferson’s library at the University of Virginia, and the Low Library at Columbia University.
The most straightforward way to approach the concept of community on campus is to design or transform the outdoor spaces to support human interaction. These changes might incorporate benches, paths, fences, trees, lampposts — a common vocabulary of elements that supports communal activities. If the campus already works as a place owing to the nature and configuration of the existing buildings and open space, then those buildings should be retained — renovated or transformed — not replaced.
It is important to understand the qualities that successful campus buildings have in common. When new campus buildings are added, there should be some rules of engagement concerning configuration and materials. It is not necessary to be stylistically autocratic, only that the new buildings should belong on the campus and help enhance and define the outdoor spaces. To a great extent, we are trying to create groups of buildings that define active outdoor rooms. Think of the campus as a place, a community with a semblance of order, where the new intervention shares important aspects with its predecessors.
Instead of dramatic, individual changes, seek gradual changes — a series of smaller steps that can tie the campus together and enhance its collective nature. Pursue changes that look as though they have been there, and that strengthen the sense of community and place. The American college strives to be a successful community; its communal aspect should express itself in the physical nature of the campus.
Gisolfi, AIA, ASLA, LEED AP, is a professor of architecture and landscape architecture at the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City University of New York. He is also the founding partner of Peter Gisolfi Associates, Architects and Landscape Architects, LLP, in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, and New Haven, Connecticut. His articles and essays have been widely published nationally. His book, Finding the Place of Architecture in the Landscape, expresses his ideas about architecture and landscape architecture and their relationship to setting. Contact him at [email protected]