By Brian No, Special Writer
Is the traditional inward looking college campus a thing of the past? That was the question several prominent architects and planners tried to answer at a panel discussion at Princeton University on Tuesday.
Panel members spoke on the changing nature of college campuses in light of the university’s recently released 180-page campus plan that will guide the school’s growth over the next decade.
”The monastic view of campus life has dissipated,” Denise Scott Brown, principal of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, said. However, Ms. Brown added that desire for an open or closed campus oscillates over the years, and that it was wise for campuses to be designed for both points of views.
Much of the discussion centered on the “edges” of Princeton’s campus as the university continues to expand. Most notably, panelists addressed the planned arts and transit neighborhood around the intersection of University Place and Alexander Street.
Most controversially, plans call for relocating the Dinky station nearly 500 feet farther south and creating a new transit hub and arts center for the university and the community.
”This is a university that is very much preoccupied about what is happening around its edges,” Henry Cobb, founding partner of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, said.
The architects and planners also agreed about the tensions present between colleges and their host communities when a school expands.
Frances Halsband, founding partner of R.M. Kliment & Frances Halsband Architects, said that people who live near colleges don’t want to be “nibbled at the edges.” She also maintained that colleges must have clear edges.
”You have to know that you’re walking into a campus and that you’ve arrived,” she said.
Robert Geddes, who was the first dean of Princeton’s School of Architecture, said, “For me the key to understanding what campuses are about is to understand the relationship to their communities. The campus is a cumulative place built over time and an inherently collaborative place.”
Nevertheless, Mr. Geddes also questioned the need for an open campus and said that town-gown relations should occur primarily along the edges of campus.
”Princeton is a very quiet place, where coming together for conversation is the essence. Conversation is the method of the humanities, and that’s what this university is about,” he said. “I think the university should stand, in some way, apart and should be a place for contemplation and thought.”
Mr. Geddes added that he wished one day that the university and the town could live in harmony.
”My hope is that one day I will come in and I will see them hugging,” he said.
The scholarly panel discussion also featured Guy Nordenson, professor of architecture at Princeton and founder of Guy Nordenson and Associates, and the talk was moderated by Neil Kittredge, partner of Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, which was the firm who led Princeton’s campus plan.
Members of the community were also in attendance, including members from Princeton Future and former Princeton Borough Mayor Marvin Reed.
