SCUP Excellence in Landscape Architecture - Open Space Planning and Design,
Merit Award

Duke University for Building Connections Through Landscape: Duke University Campus Drive Planning Study with Reed Hilderbrand LLC

This project rebuilds and reconceives Duke’s Campus Drive to accommodate campus expansion, strengthen connections, and better integrate the university with its natural environment.

Beginning as a planning study for a new residential/arts campus, the ecological and landscape historical significance of the site quickly became the primary conceptual driver for the design.

The jury commented “ . . . liked sensitivity of materials . . . exemplary institutional behavior . . . comprehensive big move to update the university and integrate open space . . .”

The project balances historical values with 21st century ambitions, engages the surrounding woodland in ways unimaginable when the campus was founded, builds a network of walking and biking paths, shapes new campus spaces, gives back to Durham and the region, and asserts Duke’s role as a premier university with a vision for continued advancement, excellence and sustainability.

The renewal lays the groundwork for future transportation modes, upgrades utilities, restores degraded stream corridors, provides stormwater management enhancements, and facilitates future development.

Campus Drive proceeds between the historic east and west campus through woodland and hollows, shaping the character of the campus; therefore, any change had to sensitively balance ecological and cultural values.

Duke values its reputation as a campus in the forest and this plan weaves a gradient of canopy along Campus Drive, through the new arts campus.
The university recommitted itself to restoration of its wetland networks and maintenance of woodlands. The proposed stream restoration enhances the existing restoration efforts downstream by repairing the important headwaters of the corridor.

In the new plan, buildings and landscape shape intimately scaled spaces with portals and thresholds where the relationship between interior quads and the landscape is nuanced and woven.

“The landscape architects created a scheme for a realigned Campus Drive to help our physical planning efforts and support the university’s commitment to creating a sustainable campus,” says Tallman Trask III, executive vice president.

Project Team: Duke University with Reed Hilderbrand LLC; also Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects; William Rawn Associates, Architects, Inc.; EcoEngineering; Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc., Watertown Office; Nitsch Engineering