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At SCUP–47, the awards jurors took the time to make several presentations about themes and trends they observed among the awards applications. We captured the remarks of three jurors on (handheld) video. These are the remarks of Victor E. Sidy, Head of School and Dean, Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, served up from YouTube. An organizing slide from his presentation is also shown below. (Click on them to see a larger version.)

He shares juror observations, using examples from award recipients and from those which did not receive awards (not each project illustrated in this talk received an award) about some of the best new trends and campus buildings this year.

A Summary Slide

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At SCUP–47, the awards jurors took the time to make several presentations about themes and trends they observed among the awards applications. We captured the remarks of three jurors on (handheld) video. These are the remarks of Cathrine Blake, Associate Director/Landscape Architect, Stanford University, served up from YouTube. Some of the slides from her presentation are also shown below. (Click on them to see a larger version.)

She shares juror observations, using examples from award recipients and from those which did not receive awards (not each project illustrated in this talk received an award) about:

• Sustainable landscape planning;
• Transit Transitions; and
• Urban campuses.

Some Summary Slides

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At SCUP–47, the awards jurors took the time to make several presentations about themes and trends they observed among the awards applications. We captured the remarks of three jurors on (handheld) video. These are the remarks of James Goblirsch, Vice President, HGA Architects and Engineers, served up from YouTube. Some of the slides from his presentation are also shown below. (Click on them to see a larger version.)

He shares juror observations, using examples from award recipients and from those which did not receive awards (not each project illustrated in this talk received an award) about:

• A new baseline for sustainability;
• Learning space evolution; and
• Community space.

Some Summary Slides

Installation artist Jessica Stockholder wants pedestrians to feel like they're "walking through an animated film." It may seem a bit strange, but getting to see this installation is something to which we are looking forward. Does anyone do this on campus?

Taking a trip through Chicago's downtown this summer will be like reeling time back to the 1980s, or perhaps visiting a laser-tag arena. Artists at this very second are laying down bright, neon hues at the buzzing intersection of State and Adams, and when the painting's all done the block should look like an IED went off below the Culture Club tour bus.

The bold redecorating of the Loop is being performed by Jessica Stockholder, a canon-altering presence in the world of installation art who teaches at the University of Chicago. Her "Color Jam," running from June 5 to September, splashes building facades and sidewalks with so much bright purple, green and orange that pedestrians will think they're "walking through an animated film." [end quote]

This blog post by Steven Litt of The Plain Dealer, notes that Case Western has narrowed the design field for its new landmark facility to four firms. Litt shares his provides insights into the challenges and issues of this new urban building and its placement among landmarks:

The site presents enormous physical and conceptual difficulties. It's irregular in shape. It includes a large underground parking garage, which serves Severance Hall and the Kelvin Smith Library. And it's surrounded by buildings in a variety of clashing styles, with oddly shaped outdoor spaces around them.

"We recognize that the building has to hold its own against some very prominent neighbors," Campbell said. "It's a tough problem to solve."

Severance Hall and the Cleveland Museum of Art are neoclassical, and date from the early 20th century, although the museum's expansion, designed by Raphael Vinoly, takes inspiration from the Brutalist architecture of Marcel Breuer, who designed a prior museum expansion in 1971.

The Kelvin Smith Library, designed by the Washington D.C. firm of Hartman Cox in the early 1990s, is a bland, post-modern neoclassical building. Nearby on Bellflower Road, there's Frank Gehry's explosively sculptural Peter B. Lewis Building, clad in shiny stainless steel.

The schizophrenic environment in part symbolizes CWRU's uneven and uncertain approach to architecture and campus planning in recent decades. The University Center represents an opportunity to pull everything together -- but it won't be an easy task.

Don't miss out on joining nearly 1,500 of your colleagues and peers at higher education's premier planning event of 2010, SCUP–45. The Society for College and University Planning's 45th annual, international conference and idea marketplace is July 10–14 in Minneapolis!

Click on the title, Road Diets: Making Streets Slim Down Is Good For Pedestrians, Businesses And Even Traffic, to access the resource described, below.

SCUP headquarters is in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where the city is engaged in changing some downtown streets, using bulb-outs. From our first-hand experience with one of the streets - before, during, and after the change - this really works.

When a road diet is applied to a road with at least four lanes overall, it often removes one lane in each direction. The space made available by eliminating these two lanes can be used for creating a dedicated left-turn lane, as well as sidewalks, parkways, bike lanes, or a dedicated right-turn lane. Surprisingly, eliminating one through-lane in each direction does not result in a proportional loss of car-carrying capacity, and the addition of a dedicated left-turn lane (and sometimes a dedicated right-turn lane as well) helps reduce congestion. Adding turn lanes in this manner can also decrease accidents, because it results in fewer lane changes and better visibility for on-coming traffic. All of these benefits are useful in explaining road diets to skeptical traffic engineers, or reluctant business or community members.

Don't miss out on joining nearly 1,500 of your colleagues and peers at higher education's premier planning event of 2010, SCUP–45. The Society for College and University Planning's 45th annual, international conference and idea marketplace is July 10–14 in Minneapolis!

Click on the title, First Look at NYU Tower Plan, to access the resource described, below.

Some say that Boston and New York are the toughest places for planners, in terms of the town and gown relations about development. We can't decide. Got any other nominations?

NYU considers the new tower a crucial component of its ambitious expansion plans to add six million square feet to the campus by 2031—including proposed sites in Brooklyn, Governors Island and possibly the World Trade Center site—in an effort to increase its current student population of about 40,000 by 5,500.

The tower is also one of the most contentious parts of the plan because the University Village site received landmark status in 2008 and is home to a Pablo Picasso statue. The three existing towers, including one dedicated to affordable public housing, were designed by Mr. Pei in the 1960s. The 30-story cast-concrete structures are considered a classic example of modernism.

As well, we've located the official NYU fact sheet (PDF) on the proposed tower, which will be of interest to many SCUPers. It's an 8-page document with plenty of renderings.

Over the past decade, Singapore has courted foreign universities with subsidies and partnerships, and showered aid on promising overseas students. It aims to create an education hub for students in Asia who want an international degree but may not have the income or the grades to study in the West. It has targeted an enrollment of 150,000 foreign students by 2015, up from about 80,000 currently.

These ambitions mirror the rapid growth in global education. The number of students studying abroad rose to 2.7 million in 2005, up from 1.3 million a decade earlier, according to a study released in September by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The most popular destination is the US, followed by Britain and Australia.

But Singapore's program to reverse this flow by outsourcing world-class education to its shores has run into trouble.