5.1. School Campus

Aus Pattern Language Wiki

Within Pedestrian Sanctuary zones, place school campuses, distributed according to need.


05 1 01 School Campus.jpg


Problem-statement: School campuses too often turn their backs on the surrounding city or suburb, and create dead zones in the urban fabric as well as isolated, boring places for students.


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Discussion:: Schools are certainly unique elements that have special requirements — among them safety for students, ample space for recreation, and sufficient size to provide for economies of management. Yet there is no fundamental reason that they must be isolated, or pose impenetrable barriers to the city.


Perhaps the best example of a necessarily large school is the university campus, which often must accommodate many thousands of students. Yet even large university campuses can be integrated directly into the walkable urban fabric, served by streetcars and other public transit, thus forming an integral part of the city separated from it by a semi-permeable (not solid) boundary.¹


05 1 02 School Campus.jpg
Left, an isolated and boring university “supercampus” in Olympia, Washington, and right, a lively campus integrated into the urban fabric of Portland, Oregon. The latter campus is in a walkable, bikeable setting, and served by streetcar and other transit. The special requirements of a campus give it even more urgent pedestrian needs. Every building generally needs vehicular access for services, but that must take second place to the pedestrian connectivity. An obsession with mono-functional zoning often forces all student dormitories on a campus to be clustered together, while all administrative functions are housed in a single, imposing building, etc. Yet functional segregation works against mixing and compactness, and does not produce an ideal learning environment.


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Therefore:

Do not isolate school facilities and surround them with dead inactive edges, but weave them into the city fabric, providing stimulation to students and non-students alike. Wherever possible, put buildings on the edges, and where sports fields must go to the edges, build attractive pergolas and other structures to promote walkability. Assure that buildings are attractive at pedestrian scale, and offer interesting window views to surrounding streets.


05 1 03 School Campus.jpg


Assure that the school campuses have a Walkable Streetscape with a well-articulated Place Network...




¹ It is helpful in this context to review patterns by Christopher Alexander and colleagues for a campus at the University of Oregon. See Alexander, C., Silverstein, M., Angel, S., Ishikawa, S., & Abrams, D. (1975). The Oregon Experiment, New York: Oxford University Press. The pattern descriptions given below are our own summaries:


Open University. Do not isolate the university by surrounding it with a boundary; instead, interweave at least one side of the campus into an adjoining city, if that is possible.


Student Housing Distribution. Locate some student housing within the center of the campus, with different percentages in regions as one moves away from the center. The first 500m radius containing ¼ of the resident students; ¼ in a ring between 500m and 800m radius; and the rest outside 800m.


University Shape And Diameter. If possible, situate classrooms within a central core of ½ km radius, and non-class activities such as administration, sports centers, and research offices outside.


Local Transport Areas. Give priority to pedestrian flow in the central core of the campus, within a radius of ½ - 1 km. Vehicular traffic here must be made to go on slow and circuitous roads.


Fabric Of Departments. While each academic department ought to have a home base, it should be able to spread over into other buildings and interlock with other departments.


For further reading see Salingaros, N.A. (2020). Planning, Complexity, and Welcoming Spaces — The Case of Campus Design. In Handbook on Planning and Complexity, De Roo, G., Yamu, C. and Zuidema, C. (Eds.) Cheltenham UK: Edward Elgar Publishers.



Mehaffy, M. et al. (2020). SCHOOL CAMPUS (pattern). In A New Pattern Language for Growing Regions. The Dalles: Sustasis Press. Available at https://pattern-language.wiki/.../School_Campus



SECTION I:

PATTERNS OF SCALE


1. REGIONAL PATTERNS

Define the large-scale spatial organization…

1.1. POLYCENTRIC REGION

1.2. BLUE-GREEN NETWORK

1.3. MOBILITY CORRIDOR

1.4. 400M THROUGH STREET NETWORK

2. URBAN PATTERNS

Establish essential urban characteristics…

2.1. WALKABLE MULTI-MOBILITY

2.2. LEVEL CITY

2.3. PUBLIC SPACE SYSTEM

2.4. BIOPHILIC URBANISM

3. STREET PATTERNS

Identify and allocate street types…

3.1. URBAN GREENWAY

3.2. MULTI-WAY BOULEVARD

3.3. AVENUE

3.4. SHARED SPACE LANE

4. NEIGHBORHOOD PATTERNS

Define neighborhood-scale elements…

4.1. STREET AS CENTER

4.2. PEDESTRIAN SANCTUARY

4.3. NEIGHBORHOOD SQUARE

4.4. NEIGHBORHOOD PARK

5. SPECIAL USE PATTERNS

Integrate unique urban elements with care…

5.1. SCHOOL CAMPUS

5.2. MARKET CENTER

5.3. INDUSTRIAL AREA

5.4. HOSPITAL

6. PUBLIC SPACE PATTERNS

Establish the character of the crucial public realm…

6.1. PLACE NETWORK

6.2. WALKABLE STREETSCAPE

6.3. MOVABLE SEATING

6.4. CAPILLARY PATHWAY

7. BLOCK AND PLOT PATTERNS

Lay out the detailed structure of property lines…

7.1. SMALL BLOCKS

7.2. PERIMETER BLOCK

7.3. SMALL PLOTS

7.4. MID-BLOCK ALLEY

8. STREETSCAPE PATTERNS

Configure the street as a welcoming place…

8.1. STREET AS ROOM

8.2. TERMINATED VISTA

8.3. STREET TREES

8.4. STREET FURNISHINGS

9. BUILDING PATTERNS

Lay out appropriate urban buildings…

9.1. PERIMETER BUILDING

9.2. ARCADE BUILDING

9.3. COURTYARD BUILDING

9.4. ROW BUILDING

10. BUILDING EDGE PATTERNS

Create interior and exterior connectivity…

10.1. INDOOR-OUTDOOR AMBIGUITY

10.2. CIRCULATION NETWORK

10.3. LAYERED ZONES

10.4. PASSAGEWAY VIEW



SECTION II:

PATTERNS OF MULTIPLE SCALE


11. GEOMETRIC PATTERNS

Build in coherent geometries at all scales…

11.1. LOCAL SYMMETRY

11.2. SMALL GROUPS OF ELEMENTS

11.3. FRACTAL PATTERN

11.4. FRAMING

12. AFFORDANCE PATTERNS

Build in user capacity to shape the environment…

12.1. HANDLES

12.2. CO-PRODUCTION

12.3. FRIENDLY SURFACES

12.4. MALLEABILITY

13. RETROFIT PATTERNS

Revitalize and improve existing urban assets …

13.1. SLUM UPGRADE

13.2. SPRAWL RETROFIT

13.3. URBAN REGENERATION

13.4. URBAN CONSOLIDATION

14. INFORMAL GROWTH PATTERNS

Accommodate “bottom-up” urban growth…

14.1. LAND TENURE

14.2. UTILITIES FIRST

14.3. DATA WITH THE PEOPLE

14.4. INCREMENTAL SELF-BUILD

15. CONSTRUCTION PATTERNS

Use the building process to enrich the result…

15.1. DESIGN-BUILD ADAPTATION

15.2. HUMAN-SCALE DETAIL

15.3. CONSTRUCTION ORNAMENT

15.4. COMPLEX MATERIALS



SECTION III:

PATTERNS OF PROCESS


16. IMPLEMENTATION TOOL PATTERNS

Use tools to achieve successful results…

16.1. FORM-BASED CODE

16.2. ENTITLEMENT STREAMLINING

16.3. NEIGHBORHOOD PLANNING CENTER

16.4. COMMUNITY MOCKUP

17. PROJECT ECONOMICS PATTERNS

Create flows of money that support urban quality…

17.1. TAX-INCREMENT FINANCING

17.2. LAND VALUE CAPTURE

17.3. EXTERNALITY VALUATION

17.4. ECONOMIES OF PLACE AND DIFFERENTIATION

18. PLACE GOVERNANCE PATTERNS

Processes for making and managing places…

18.1. SUBSIDIARITY

18.2. POLYCENTRIC GOVERNANCE

18.3. PUBLIC-PRIVATE PLACE MANAGEMENT

18.4. INFORMAL STEWARDSHIP

19. AFFORDABILITY PATTERNS

Build in affordability for all incomes…

19.1. INTEGRATED AFFORDABILITY

19.2. COMMUNITY LAND TRUST

19.3. MULTI-FAMILY INFILL

19.4. SPECULATION TAX

20. NEW TECHNOLOGY PATTERNS

Integrate new systems without damaging old ones…

20.1. SMART AV SYSTEM

20.2. RESPONSIVE TRANSPORTATION NETWORK COMPANY

20.3. AUGMENTED REALITY DESIGN

20.4. CITIZEN DATA