Page 36 - College Planning & Management, July/August 2018

Business MANAGING HIGHER ED
Building Closer Town-and-Gown Ties
Unprecedented pressure heightens the importance of effective interaction
between colleges and the cities they inhabit.
BY MICAH LIPSCOMB, SUMEGHA SHAH, AND BRENDA SMITH
“TO SUCCESSFULLY compete for the next genera- tion of students and newly minted grads, colleges
and their surrounding towns must embrace the art of place making to foster economic vitality, cultural depth, and well being,” says Beth Bagwell, executive director of International Town & Gown Association. “Now more than ever, it is imperative that campuses and their host communities collaborate to plan facili- ties—especially at the intersection of city and campus—that benefit and bolster town-gown community engagement.”
Two recent medical and health science education developments designed by the architecture firm Perkins+Will—one at Univer- sity of Miami and the other at Marshall University—are inspira- tional indicators of how the built environment can be designed to sustain both town and gown.
The University of Miami
Located at the University of Miami’s (UM) Coral Gables, FL, campus, the UHealth Lennar Foundation Medical Center opened in 2016 and is the flagship of the system’s outpatient services brand serving university students, employees, and local residents. The 206,000-square-foot building is situated at the edge of campus
on a 5.7-acre corner site that serves as a gateway to the university,
with multi-modal connections nearby including a rail station and major community roads. A canal bordering the site connects to the wider campus and to Biscayne Bay.
The site’s prominent location demanded a design that addresses both campus users’ and wider community needs. Residents of the area are welcome at any time in this place that is meant to feel like home. The landscape surrounding the Lennar Center plays a primary “first impression” role in embracing both town and gown. The landscape experience is continued to the west of the building, where the site meets the campus canal. The site design carefully worked around existing trees to maintain the character and canopy of the canal. Bold sweeping masses of mostly native groundcovers and flowering trees were incorporated along the canal banks to enhance the experience.
Entering the building, it is immediately evident that the space was designed to be an open, inviting environment. Natural daylight floods the atrium space in the form of an all-glass façade that defies the widely accepted image of healthcare facilities past. Custom artwork commands the medical center’s main entrance in the form of 244 suspended, glass-blown ibises soaring in the shape of the university’s iconic “U” logo. The delicate birds, which were crated locally, are lit by LED lights in UM’s colors of green, orange, and white. And most impressively, no two are the same.
36 COLLEGE PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / JULY/AUGUST 2018
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PHOTO COURTESY OF PERKINS+WILL