5.2 CREATING A VIBRANT CAMPUS

5.2.2 FRAMEWORK 5.2.1 OVERVIEW

The key to vibrancy and spatial success of a campus is done by connecting components of paths, nodes, landmarks, edges, and districts, and to ensure that those connections embody significant reference to the campus culture and surrounding community. This can be achieved by:

• Designing paths to connect different areas of the campus in a logical and efficient way

• Provide clear signage and wayfinding to help students and visitors navigate the campus

• Place nodes in strategic areas to promote interaction of students

• Provide seating, shade and other amenities to the space comfortable and inviting

• Highlight landmarks and make them easily recognizable to help navigate the campus

• Provide welcoming and inviting entrances

The planning analysis completed in this Campus Master Plan is based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology research from the 1960s. That research continues today and focuses on how people understand space. That understanding is embedded in the way people interpret their spatial surroundings. They structure that understanding as an image that helps organize the persons understanding of where they are and how to navigate to other locations. The value of the research has been giving insight into how that process works and what key features of the built world used to create that image.

The key features are paths, nodes, landmarks, edges, and districts. There all have specific definitions.

These elements define urban structure from their point of view of how people make sense of their environment. That understanding is never a map that exactly reflects the actual physical structure. Instead, it is a mental map representing an individual’s sense of the elements are important to them and how they relate to one another. That sense of the relationships is key to understanding the difference between physical locations that are clearly understood and legible versus locations that are confusing and disjointed. The relationships between these elements of the path, node, landmark, edges, and districts define legibility or confusion. Legible places are normatively better than illegible ones and are perceived as such.

Paths

These are linear lines of movement that are used primarily to travel from one location to another.

Nodes

Nodes are areas of intense activity that feel a bit like entering a room.

Landmarks

Landmarks are elements that can be viewed at varying distances and can act as anchor locations. Landmarks can be identified at different scales.

Edges

Edges are physical assemblies that create a wall. This wall might sometimes not allow movement across the edge. Edges can also be permeable.

5.0 Campus Structure and Quality

Districts

Districts are areas of a city (or campus) comprised of similar structures and seem like a contained and almost homogeneous pocket of the population.

5.2.3 APPROACH

To achieve the recommendations outlined on the previous page, the approach to the plan is somewhat like that of city planning. In fact, many campuses are very much cities in a more contained scale. The constituent parts of what creates the mapping of space were described above as spatial elements. The combination of elements: paths, nodes, landmarks, edges, and districts all combine to provide a strategy for an overall campus structure.

Spatial Legibility

The simple understanding of campus organization

Sense of Arrival

Entry points onto campus will be designed to serve as gateways, which will welcome people onto campus. Wayfinding elements such as public art, signage, and lighting features will articulate NWP’s identity to those arriving on campus.

Unifying Elements

The use of signage, landscape features, and/ or public art should be used strategically throughout campus as an element of wayfinding.

Access Connections

Fit

The measure of how well the spatial organization of the campus reflects its customary uses.

Control

Efficiency

Provide continuous pedestrian pathways and establish highly viable crossings at key connection points. Reinforce connections between open space and buildings on campus. Look to improve connections to existing pedestrian trails and pathways in the surrounding community.

Vitality

The environment supports health, mental and physical wellbeing, and safety.

The positive sense that a user of the campus has reasonable control over their environment and circumstance. You can think of these as “spatial rights”. The most basic right is to be in space in the first place, followed by the right to use its available characteristics and resources. The efficiency of a locale plays into its ability to be sustained over the long term. This necessarily requires a balance across several issues from the financial wellbeing of the institution, the condition of its buildings, the academic performance of its students, and the life achievements of its graduates.