 
"Designing
Campus of Tomorrow" celebrates architectural legacies,
explores higher education's needs
25
Jan 2000
By
Kathleen Maclay, Public Affairs
BERKELEY--
Increasing enrollment demands, seismic retrofitting and the
need for competitive, cutting-edge facilities lend critical
timeliness to the upcoming University of California, Berkeley,
program, "Designing the Campus of Tomorrow."
A
"long dry spell" of no new campus development at research
universities is ending, said John Douglass of UC Berkeley's
Center for Studies in Higher Education, an organizer of the
Thursday, Feb. 10, symposium aimed at campus planners, architectural
historians, administrators and design professionals.
The
program will look at design contributions of the past and looming
physical challenges of the future for institutions of higher
learning.
Symposium
participants will initiate their discussion by examining UC
Berkeley, starting with its international master plan competition
sponsored by benefactress Phoebe Hearst, and following through
to construction-guided by the Hearst Architectural Plan - of
the classical buildings that still define the core of the Berkeley
campus.
"The
Hearst Plan was an effective blueprint for the creation of a
physical campus to match and showcase the university's other
aspirations," said event co-organizer Steve Finacom of
the Center for Studies in Higher Education. The other goals
included building a strong faculty and administration, as well
as a campus with an impressive physical presence and international
reputation.
Stanford
University Professor Paul V. Turner, an authority on the history
of college and university planning and development, will address
the symposium to place the Hearst Architectural Plan into context.
Next,
participants will explore successes and failures of post-World
War II college planning in California. New campus construction
peaked in the late 1950s and early '60s with the development
of three new UC campuses and eight new campuses within the California
State University system. California's community colleges added
more than 30 campuses during that period.
"The
rapid physical expansion of UC and CSU, often on the cheap,
and in an era of sometimes brutal generic designs devoid of
any sense of region or place," said Douglass, "has
left a legacy that stands in sharp contrast to the core of the
Berkeley campus.
"Colleges
and universities are more than teaching factories, but are important
public spaces that in no small measure reflect the values of
society."
Symposium
discussion issues include what constitutes and what should constitute
a university campus and an environment conducive to higher learning,
as well as how early campus plans fit in with contemporary conditions
and future plans.
The
symposium will consider UC Berkeley's efforts to develop its
"New Century Plan" to renew and modernize facilities
for scholars and researchers at the 113-year-old campus. The
plan is tentatively set for completion later this year and will
guide UC Berkeley academic and physical planning.
Panelists
will contrast and compare challenges at UC's oldest campus,
Berkeley, with its newest, 10th campus just beginning design
and construction in Merced. The Merced campus will be part of
an 11,000-acre planned community in the San Joaquin Valley,
where farmlands are yielding to pressures of a growing population,
calls for affordable housing and development.
Gov.
Gray Davis wants to open UC Merced to students by 2004, a year
earlier than previously planned, in order to help accommodate
what is dubbed a "Tidal Wave II" of students flowing
into California colleges and universities.
Symposium
participants include :
·
UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl;
·
UC Merced Chancellor Carol Tomlinson-Keasey;
·
J. Handel Evans, president of California State University, Channel
Islands;
·
Chris Adams, a major planner for UC Merced;
·
UCLA campus architect Charles W. Oakley;
·
Stanford's associate vice provost and university architect,
David J. Neuman;
·
Harrison Fraker, dean of UC Berkeley's College of Environmental
Design;
·
Donlyn Lyndon, former chair of UC Berkeley's School of Architecture;
·
Stefanos Polyzoides of the University of Southern California
Architecture School and a leader in the "new urbanism"
architectural movement;
·
And Robert Judson Clark of Princeton, guest curator of the Berkeley
Art Museum's "Roma/Pacifica" exhibit.
The
"Roma/Pacifica" exhibit, much of which has not been
seen for 100 years, highlights each phase of UC Berkeley's development
through original sketches, documents, photos and stunning large-scale
drawings.
The
program is organized by the Center for Studies in Higher Education.
It is co-sponsored by UC Berkeley's New Century Plan, Berkeley
Art Museum, Environmental Design Archives in UC Berkeley's College
of Environmental Design, the Institute of Governmental Studies,
the Hearst Foundations and The Bancroft Library.
It
will be held in the Gund Theater at the Berkeley Art Museum
from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and is open to the public. Seating
is limited.
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