05
October
1995
|
19:00 PM
America/New_York
Trustees Adopt Campus Master Plan
OHIO STATE ADOPTS NEW MASTER PLAN
COLUMBUS -- The Ohio State University Board of Trustees
on Friday (10/6) adopted a new master plan to guide
development of the university through the first quarter of
the 21st century. The plan replaces a 1962 plan that was
last amended in 1978.
Trustees noted that the plan was necessary to support
the academic purposes and priorities of the university for
the next 30 to 50 years and enhance the quality of life for
students, faculty, staff and visitors. The plan includes a
framework to guide campus development with regard to land
use, open space, density of development, traffic
circulation, and linkages to the surrounding communities.
The plan was developed in conjunction with the
university's efforts to improve the quality of life in
campus area neighborhoods.
The goal of the Master Plan is to ensure that future
development decisions reflect and contribute to the long-
range concept for conserving campus resources and
maintaining a unified, efficient, and attractive campus.
Trustees directed university officials to proceed with
implementing the processes and additional planning
activities provided for in the plan.
The master planning effort was led and coordinated by
the University s Interim Master Planning Advisory Committee.
Planning services were provided by Sasaki and Associates,
Michael Dennis and Associates and Moody/Nolan Ltd.
The plan calls for a campus environment that supports
increased interdisciplinary exchanges among people and, at
the same time, reinforce disciplinary "hearths." It
recommends that to the extent that it is physically and
financially feasible, research facilities should be located
adjacent to their related academic disciplines.
In addition, "the density and location of development
will have to be rigorously managed to avoid irretrievable
consumption of limited land resources." That will mean
integrating future facilities at higher densities within
established, developed areas of the campus. Buildings will
be designed with greater flexibility to adapt to rapidly
evolving technologies and avoid obsolescence.
According to the plan, "new construction will serve the
needs of high technology and renovated space will be used
for less demanding uses."
Because of Ohio State's land-grant heritage of public
service, the campus should make the university's knowledge
"functionally and symbolically accessible to the public."
The Master Plan calls for giving greater attention to
the needs of non-traditional commuter students and high
achieving undergraduate and graduate students, providing for
distance learning and public "common areas" and meeting
places, and emphasizing safety and security in the planning
and design of each capital improvement project.
Civic structure recommendations include establishing
new open-space quadrangles and extending Seventeenth Avenue
as a pedestrian walk way past Ohio Stadium and across the
river to the agriculture campus.
The Master Plan establishes many policies. Among them
are:
-- Preparing more specific plans for districts and
subdistricts of the campus.
-- Establishing a design review board to evaluate
proposed projects to determine compliance with the Master
Plan, and ensure that the projects meet the highest
qualitative standards.
-- Avoiding the development of buildings in dispersed
arrangements where the buildings have no compositional
relationship to each other and gradually replacing or
modifying existing suburban buildings that detract from the
quality of the surrounding environment.
-- Protecting existing open space by designating a
"Green Reserve" containing The Chadwick Arboretum, Waterman
Farm, the Oval, Mirror Lake Hollow, open space surrounding
and south of Ohio Stadium, and other areas.
-- Preserving and reinforcing naturalistic landscapes
and the system of interconnected quadrangles.
-- Improving vehicular access through signs and
graphics, gateways and streetscapes, signals, directional
changes, and the geometry of intersections.
-- Making Woodruff Avenue and Woody Hayes Drive an
"academic boulevard" along which future academic and
research facilities will be located.
-- Creating visually interesting pedestrian and vehicle
corridors consisting of tree-lined streets, with buildings
that are set back a uniform distance.
-- Providing an improved and interconnected system of
paths for pedestrians and for bicyclists.
-- Erecting strategically located, well-designed
parking structures to replace surface parking along the Oval
and around the stadium and enhancing the stadium area by
replacing the parking lots with grass and constructing
buildings on the east side that face toward, rather than
away from the stadium.
-- Distinguishing campus entries through design and
landscaping and connecting the campus and adjacent community
by open spaces, sidewalks, bicycle paths, and streets.
-- Designing buildings and landscape together so that
each refers to and emphasizes the importance of the other.
The plan also contains specific recommendations to
reinforce the relationship of the university to the
neighborhoods east of High Street, and to the NECKO/Dennison
Place, Neil Avenue North, Kinnear Road neighborhoods.
According to Jill Morelli, assistant vice president and
university architect, efforts are under way to implement the
many processes outlined in the Master Plan and integrate
them with the existing decision making process at Ohio
State. District plans will be presented periodically to the
Board of Trustees for approval. The plan for the North
Academic Core area will likely be presented in November.
The text of the plan is available on the University
Architect home page on the World Wide Web. The location is
http://www.apo.ohio-state.edu/. Work is being done to place
the master-plan maps on the web as well.
#
Contact: Jill Morelli, assistant vice president and
university architect, (614) 292-4458.
[Submitted by: Von Reid-Vargas (ereid@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu)
Fri, 6 Oct 1995 16:22:51 -0400]
All documents are the responsibility of their originator.
