CAMPUS DESIGN FOR MSU COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND LIFE SCIENCES

from Portfolio 2023 - Nada Abdel-Aziz

by Nada Aziz

PROBLEM SEEKING

Situation

The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at MSU is growing, consistently outpacing the rate of new building development. The current growth patterns of MSU are suburban, defined by car-centric streets lined with low-rise buildings setback with large lawns and interspersed parking. CALS is also adjacent to the historic quarter of campus, where buildings are organized around a great vacant central lawn. This central green model was started in the early 19th century and was propagated across the country. The goals for this studio were to propose a third alternate model of development for the future of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

VEHICULAR ORIENTED SHARED STREET PEDESTRIAN/TRANSIT ONLY TRANSIT HUBS AND STOPS

VEHICULAR ACCESS

Agenda

The campus district master plan focuses on pedestrians, density, shade and functional green spaces as an alternative to current car-centric land use patterns of campus.

Four Patterns for Growth

1 - Build denser, taller building clusters around functional or recreational green spaces, creating smaller identiﬁable nodes across the district.

The intent is to create multiple smaller distinct places instead of one large lawn to which all else is secondary. One such node for CALS could be adding a student farm to the existing greenhouses in the center of campus.

2 - Link these nodes into a web of densely forested and shaded pedestrian corridors.

East-west traffic is addressed through a loop encircling the existing core of CALS with new building clusters forming the loop’s perimeter. Pedestrian boulevards handle north-south traffic. One such corridor is a pedestrian “forest”, where a boulevard is densely planted as shown in perspective above.

3 - Green spaces and pathways can serve double duty as a stormwater management network.

4 - De-prioritize car traffic by converting existing streets to be “naked” shared streets where pedestrians move freely and car traffic is subservient

Existing buildings