CAMPUS PLANNING BEST PRACTICES

Campus Planning Best Practices

The Cal Western Law School is committed to providing the best possible urban campus environment possible. In re-imagining the campus master plan, the design team focused on five primary strategies to achieve the previously identified goals: Empowerment, Inclusivity, Social Environment, Community, and Sustainability.

Empowerment: Students, faculty, and community should feel empowered in their personal and academic lives in such a way that they feel proud to inhabit and uplift the campus in which they occupy. The campus design should promote autonomy and agency through diversity of spaces, clear and meaningful circulation, and privacy wherever necessary.

Inclusivity: Inclusion of the students, faculty and the community are essential, and can be accomplished through maintaining accessible physical spaces that are organized thoughtfully, as well as equitable access to resources for all students regardless of their identity, background, or constraints.

Social Environment: Allowing both the school and the community to share programs that are appropriate to do so while also having certain privatized areas for the residents creates a balanced social environment. This sort of balance on a campus is necessary to appease and uplift all types of people thus ensuring a strong sense of inclusivity from a social sense.

Community: Creating a sense of community in a campus involves several aspects, from safety, health, connectivity, and more. Finding ways of activating the ground floor of campus buildings to encourage connections and community formation, while also having the necessary safety systems and precautions in place is an important balance to find.

Sustainability: In pursuit of goals for the campus reaching zero net energy (ZNE) and carbon neutrality, many tactics can be employed. Sustainability strategies can be applied through careful following and application of USGBC’s LEED rating system. These important areas include water management inside and out of buildings, ensuring materials are locally sourced and low emitting, energy efficient sources, careful passive design strategies to limit the need of active sources, and many more.