Page 21 - College Planning & Management, September 2018

Facilities CAMPUS SPACES
Outside Ideas for Urban Campuses
Urban-based institutions are often limited in the size
of their campus footprint. Initiatives and installations at
these urban campuses are optimizing outdoor spaces
to maximize wayfinding, safety, and aesthetics.
proliferate in terms of creating and maintain- ing an inviting, lively, and green space in the city. Campus officials recently described how the institution has met those challenges.
Green in Downtown Chicago
Given its urban locale, it is notable
that 45 percent, or 90 acres, of the overall UIC space is green, and officials credit
and emphasize what the master plan has guided: The long-standing plan “is inte- grally focused on open spaces, walkways, and the landscape opportunities to try to make the campus a place that’s ‘sticky,’ where students, faculty, and staff want to linger,” says David Taeyaerts, associate vice chancellor, Learning Environments and campus architect. It’s a point echoed by John Coronado, vice chancellor for Admin- istrative Services. And as Taeyaerts puts it, a sticky campus is a “24/7 campus” with activity that “builds on itself.”
The two campuses, merged about 30 years ago, are tied together with details like signage, bollards, and benches, but more fundamentally, explains Taeyaerts, by a unified design approach for landscape and buildings that boils down to frontage on the street, but “porous with a green center.”
A primary task in recent decades has been to open up the West Campus and to update and balance its 1960s Brutal- ist concrete architecture. Prevailing
B Y S C O T T B E R M A N
THE WILLIS TOWER, more commonly known by its previous name, the Sears Tower, looms large over the mature trees, diverse plantings, and open spaces of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) campus. The juxtaposition
between the setting and the skyscraper with its high neighbors is striking.
Outside ideas abound on UIC’s 200-acre urban campus, which is comprised of a main, or East, campus and a West, or health scienc- es, campus about a mile away. Challenges also
SEPTEMBER 2018 / COLLEGE PLANNING & MANAGEMENT 21
PHOTOS © SCOTT BERMAN