As a model of the city, the American campus may well be more suggestive
than the real thing; certainly it is one of America's truly original contributions
to urbanism."
Michael Dennis, Excursus Americanus
A…campus may achieve almost complete independence of buildings, but in so
doing it becomes more like a summer camp or a resort than an academic community.
To be a community requires density & proximity; it requires urbanity."
Michael Dennis, On Campus Design & Planning
…there can be cities without landscape, but landscape without density of
urban buildings and people cannot be a city."
Michael Dennis & Alistair McIntosh, Landscape and the City
Our whole culture is based on the idea of limitless resources and continuous growth,
and we have become so accustomed to the idea that we have forgotten that we live
on a finite planet."
Michael Dennis, Temples & Towns: Urban Principles for the 21st Century
The city requires both public and private accommodation, and it is architecture
that must mediate between the two related but not integrated realms."
Michael Dennis, Architecture & the Cumulative City
…it is not surprising to find most modern museums to be isolated, introverted, and
denuded versions of the ‘museum as a mechanism for storing and displaying art,'
with little regard for the public realm."
Michael Dennis, The Uffizi: Museum as Urban Design
Growing slowly, quietly maturing, modern architecture in America was like a
time bomb planted during the Enlightenment, armed during the 1920s, and set
to explode after World War II."
Michael Dennis, Excursus Americanus
…architects in our time have become very adept at servicing and delivering
complex programs, but they have also become less adept at designing—indeed,
even understanding—the public realm."
Michael Dennis, On Campus Design & Planning
Despite a continuously developing urban sensibility, however, architecture and
landscape have tended to pursue ever more autonomous, narcissistic, and anti-urban
directions, and this is inadequate to address twenty-first century issues."
Michael Dennis & Alistair McIntosh, Landscape and the City
What might be proposed instead is a hybrid architecture for a hybrid city, an
architecture of traditional rooms as well as “modern" space, of facades as well as
frames—an architecture that makes urban space as well as consumes it."
Michael Dennis, Architecture & the Cumulative City
But more than a century of destructive urban behavior has produced contemporary
architectural and urban conventions that are impotent to address twenty-first century
issues, much less for producing quality urban environments."
Michael Dennis, Temples & Towns: Urban Principles for the 21st Century
MCCULLOUGH
STUDENT CENTER
Middlebury College
SHELTER FOR
ARCHAEOLOGICAL RUIN
American Excavations
at Morgantina
KENAN MUSIC
BUILDING
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
MUSIC BUILDING
PHASE II
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
UNIVERSITY CENTER
Carnegie Mellon University
EAST CAMPUS DORMITORY & DINING
Carnegie Mellon University
PARKING GARAGE
& STADIUM
Carnegie Mellon University
EMT BUILDING
FEASIBILITY STUDY
Carnegie Mellon University
ARCHITECTURE
PLANNING
CAMPUS MASTER PLAN
The University of Texas
Pan American
CAMPUS MASTER PLAN
The University of Texas
at El Paso
CAMPUS MASTER PLAN
Malaysia University of
Science & Technology
UNIVERSITY
CAMPUS PLAN
King Khalid University
UNIVERSITY PARK
CAMPUS MASTER PLAN
University of
Southern California
CAMPUS PLAN
PROPOSAL
Texas A&M University
Central Texas
WEST CAMPUS
RESIDENTIAL PLAN
Cornell University
HEALTH SCIENCE
CAMPUS MASTER PLAN
University of
Southern California
COMPREHENSIVE
FACILITIES PLAN
Belmont Technical
College
BROAD ST./ACADEMIC
CAMPUS PLAN
Virginia Commonwealth
University
COMMENTARY
ABOUT US
CONTACT
COMMENTARY
COMMENTARY
There is a relationship between the academic ideals of an institution and the physical reality of its campus and buildings. Campus design is akin to urban design—the design and management of the public realm. The precise control of public space allows for flexibility and change in the design of individual buildings, and therefore should be the principal instrument of physical planning.
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The contemporary city is the inheritor of two divergent conceptions of space: the assertive void of the pre-modern city, with its room-like public spaces of streets and squares, and the undifferentiated space of the modern city—a continuous field in which rationalized solids are loosely deployed. As we expand our understanding of the cumulative city, we should reevaluate these apparently antagonistic traditions as potentially mutually beneficial and complementary design strategies.
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The crisis of the contemporary American city has its roots in the intersection of the French Enlightenment with the American landscape. Jefferson's delicate balance between the public and ideal on the one hand and the private and circumstantial on the other remains an evocative image as we once again anticipate an urban architecture.
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The interrelationship between landscape and the city has undergone a formal and philosophical reversal over the past 500 years, from Renaissance concepts of the garden as mediator between city and nature to current efforts to completely diffuse the built environment into a naturalistic landscape—in effect, to use landscape as a substitute for the city. This new paradigm is incomplete, however, as it fails to address the ominous urban and environmental issues we face in the twenty-first century. A more comprehensive, ecologically-based planning strategy that interweaves landscape with architecture and urban design is required.
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Unprecedented environmental and cultural problems confront us in the twenty-first century. Sprawl, and its progeny, globalization, are at once the cause and the result. Refocused technology may help a redirected effort, but alone it is not enough. Compact, more sustainable communities, a realignment of architecture and urbanism, and the reestablishment of the hegemony of urbanism over architecture will be required. In short, architecture is in desperate need of a larger civic agenda.
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The complex of urban elements extending from the Uffizi and the Piazza della Signoria to the Pitti Palace and the Boboli Gardens connects disparate parts of Florence's urban fabric, functioning at a variety of scales—from the individual building to the city within the landscape. In its direct engagement with the city's public spaces and infrastructure, this composition stands in contrast with modern architecture's prevalent disregard for the public realm of the city.
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