ARTH 252(S) Campuses (Same as Environmental Studies 252)

An historical study of the North American campus, primarily its educational or institutional guise, but also as found in some office and industrial "parks," concentrating upon aspects of site design, such as the fit between physiography and building location. Applying such Lynchian precepts as edge, path and node, our inquiry will be both diachronic and comparative. What happens when campuses grow, or diminish? What happens when their surrounding change, or deteriorate: What uses of space are located where, and to what extent is their spatial layout an hierarchical one? Why have some campuses few imitators (even if, as in the instance of Thomas Jefferson's "academical village," their plan has been much extolled)? Among other topics to be considered are: issues of integration within or separation from towns, accommodations to the automobile and to field sports as spatially consumptive uses (leading to increasingly spread-out plans); design as a reflection of pedagogical agenda (or even monastic tradition?); successional uses of the same building or space, especially as increasing enrollments may bring increasing specialization (of building functions); traffic as a function of buildings; campuses pretty much created all at once and campuses more polyglot, with generational changes in design and even purpose; "dead," or vestigial spaces, or buildings, such as through the demise of required chapel attendance. Major attention will be given to seminal designs and designers. Regional examples of a wise variety of campuses will be visited during field sessions.
Requirements: term paper to be submitted in three segments and preferably considering a campus (and its institution through one century). Bi-weekly attendance at ten weekly field sessions.
No prerequisites.

Hour: SATTERTHWAITE