Page 20 - College Planning & Management, October 2017

Facilities CAMPUS SPACES
At First Glance
Campus exteriors provide the initial impression of any college or university.
These outdoor spaces can impact recruitment, retention, town/gown and
alumni relationships and much more.
BY SCOTT BERMAN
WELL-DESIGNED AND -EQUIPPED OUT- DOOR spaces can help achieve a number of things, such as providing practical, contextual
solutions; attracting more use to targeted areas of a campus; and reaching out to surrounding communities.
Guiding outdoor areas toward those kinds of objectives and others can entail subtle, incremental changes or major design and construction projects. There are many examples of spaces making
a tangible difference, including the new Manhattanville campus of Columbia University in New York City, Black Hills State University in Rapid City, SD, and Philadelphia’s Drexel University, among others.
New York, New York
Columbia’s Manhattanville complex, a few blocks from the uni- versity’s main campus, is in the midst of a construction program that is remaking a 17-acre site. Project designer Kimberly Cooper, associate of landscape architecture firm James Corner Field Operations, says a guiding principle of the project is a campus
that “opens its doors out to the community,” and is engaged in “interaction with its community,” as opposed to an urban campus secluded and separate from its surroundings.
The master plan seems to not just comply with, but also to embrace and even celebrate, city zoning rules that require public
20 COLLEGE PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / OCTOBER 2017
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