C A M P US DE S I GN
ON THE COVER: Duke University’s Nasher Art Museum / Durham, NC SURFACE // 1
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OVERVIEW & PHILOSOPHY Surface is the field of action where we apply our craft to create places that serve the needs of the user, provide for social interaction, and reflect and enhance a site’s natural and built composition. From our studio in downtown Durham, we advocate for the artful creation and transformation of surfaces that integrate a site’s ecology, social function, and architecture. In this book you find images and descriptions of a few of our higher education projects. Approximately two-thirds of our recent work has been in the design of sites for educational buildings. We have been especially busy with projects at Duke University, NC State University, North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill and Greensboro campuses), and Wake Technical Community College. Surface has a critical understanding of all phases of facilities planning and design. Our 20 years of experience translates into workable master plans and distinctive site designs that remain flexible over time yet establish strong frameworks for campuses to evolve. We excel at developing concepts that set the stage for new buildings, facility expansions, renovations, coherent vehicular and pedestrian systems, campus open spaces and landscape themes that create vital places to work, places to recreate, and distinctive places for learning.
Shown: School of Nursing | North Carolina Central University | Site Design
SURFACE Durham, NC
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BUTLER CHAPEL, CAMPBELL UNIVERSITY Surface has been working on the historic Buies Creek, N.C campus since 2009. Projects have included Master Planning, Streetscapes, and Site Designs at several of the historic buildings as well as new additions to the educational center. At the Osteopathic School of Medicine (shown on the following pages) Surface 678 provided site and landscape design for the 96,500 square foot building on a new medical campus at Campbell. This page: Campbell University’s first Chapel serves the needs of the student body, is home to the Divinity School and is a place for University and community events. Located in the heart of campus, the iconic 10,000 square foot building is enclosed by outdoor spaces for meditation and respite from the daily activities of campus life. A Memorial Garden, with the school motto inscribed on the stone slate patio, provides a space for small gatherings. A 14’ wide memorial walk between the Memorial Garden and the Chapel honoros benefactors. A reflecting pool and Meditation Garden contribute to the sense of peace and tranquility exhibited throughout the Chapel gardens. Furnished with one smiple bench, lined with rosemary hedges and paved in blue slate, the Meditation Garden is a small secluded space within the Memorial Garden.
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Osteopathic Building | Campbell University | Site Design Buies Creek, NC
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FUQUA SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, DUKE UNIVERSITY Shown at left and this page: Duke University, Fuqua School of Business. The Surface team has had the privilege of contributing landscape designs on the iconic NC campus since 1997. Projects have included an Athletic Precinct Master Plan, Baldwin Auditorium renovations, Bryan Center Parking and Walkway Improvements, as well as many others, including the Nasher Art Museum, the Perkins Library, and more. For the School of Business, Surface solved many functional problems which had occured after a complex series of additions. Major site goals included enhancing the student and staff experience by adding parking, reorganizing the entry for visitors, and providing exterior spaces for entertainment functions and dining. The design reorganizes the site by isolating the staff parking from the visitor experience. An entry court culminates at the vehicular drive, providing a clear path to the building entrance. Behind the facility, a new dining addition forms spaces for exterior dining plaza and quarter circle lawn for functions.
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Fuqua School of Business | Duke University | Site Design Durham, NC
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CHAPEL IMPROVEMENTS, DUKE UNIVERSITY Surface 678 provided a landscape/visual quality assessment of the Chapel Drive approach to Duke Chapel and concepts for entrance and pedestrian amenity improvements. Proposed stone columns and walls create portals to the formal Chapel quadrangle. Entrance improvements form a defined gateway to the campus “sacred space,� provide vehicular control, pedestrian seating and amenities incorporated at a bus stop plaza. Consolidated signage and proposed landscape treatments help to focus views to the Chapel entrance and tower.
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PERKINS LIBRARY EXPANSION, DUKE UNIVERSITY The project creates a series of connecting walkways and plaza spaces that will link a new library expansion and reading pavilion with the historic Collegiate Gothic Quad, new Divinity School Expansion and new Engineering Research Center. As part of a primary east-west campus pedestrian route, the library expansion spaces take their cues from the character of adjoining buildings and architectural styles including those found within the historic Collegiate Gothic Quad and more contemporary adaptations. The palette of paving materials, walls, steps and landscape treatments provide functional pedestrian spaces and accessible routes, announce building entrances, and create a patio space for evening social events and an upper terrace for quiet seating.
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GENERAL CLASSROOM BUILDING, NC A&T UNIVERSITY The site design concept for the new 88,000 square foot academic building at NC A&T University focuses on the stratification forms indicative of agricultural practices. These significant patterns are translated and applied to the landscape design, creating an urban environment that allows for dynamic movement throughout the site. Both landscape and hardscape patterns recall worked fields while Gingko trees represent the edge of a forest clearing and appear from the seating walls continuing into the plaza. Derived from site context and the modern architecture of the building, sequenced plaza areas and seating strips provide meeting points, resting places and directionality for students
New Classroom Building | NC A&T | Site Design Greensboro, NC
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ELIZABETH HERRING GARDEN, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA GREENSBORO Surface is very proud to have an ongoing relationship with UNC Greensboro, one of the 16 university campuses of The University of North Carolina, the birthplace of public higher education in America. The Elizabeth Herring Garden (shown here) is an award-winning tribute to a prominent university patron. Surface 678 was asked to design a memorial garden for Elizabeth Herring in recongnition of her lifelong love of gardening and her patronage of UNCG. The garden is based on a lyrical design that emulates the character of a multi-movement musical composition. The central walkway reveals different spaces for different functions that include a woodland garden, open lawn, study area and recital terrace. The edge of the walk is punctuated by 8-foot vine columns that add a rhythmic element to the design and leads one to the reflecting pool and stylized rock ledge fountain. Vine-covered screens partition the study area into smaller private spaces.
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Elizabeth Herring Garden | UNC Greensboro | Site Design Greensboro, NC
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RANDALL B. TERRY, JR. COMPANION ANIMAL VETERINARY MEDICAL CENTER, NC STATE UNIVERSITY Surface 678 has worked on many memorable projects for North Carolina State University over the past decade. Projects have included the Alumni Center, Agriculture Communications Building, Biomedical Campus, Conference Center, Redhat Lucent Building and many more. Surface created the master plan and site design for the $72 Million Randall B. Terry Jr. Companion Animal Veterinary Medical Center located on the Centennial Biomedical campus of NC State University. The 110,000-square-foot addition more than doubles the size of the institution’s Small Animal Veterinary Teaching Hospital, making it one of the largest, most technologically advanced veterinary facilities in the country. The building forms the campus hearth, a significant social and cultural outdoor space. Surface designed stormwater management technologies to reduce sedimentation and increase water quality. A series of campus paths connect the project to the meadow, research facilities and college.
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Randall Terry Companion Animal Veterinary Medical Center | NC State University | Master Plan & Site Raleigh, NC
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Alumni Center | NC State University | Site Design Greensboro, NC
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KENAN MUSIC BUILDING, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL The historic campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has provided our talented designers with many opportunities for professional excellence. At the Kenan Music Building, Surface 678 created a strong presence on an important street and new quadrangle that integrates service and pedestrian movements, an arts walk and a future sculpture garden. We designed the project to respond to many campus influences. Along Columbia Street, the design is contextual in its response to walkway and wall systems, extending existing treatments south. The patio features a coffee bar that requires lots of pedestrian porosity. The eastern side of the building anchors a new quadrangle that is loosely framed by a strong north south walkway through Port Hole Alley to Franklin Street. This access is designed to function well as a scaled pedestrian walkway and a service route for parking, deliveries and fire vehicles. The Arts Walkway is a tree lined walkway that delivers visitors to the heart of the Arts Common District and provides services to the building.
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WEATHERSPOON ART MUSEUM, UNC GREENSBORO Surface’s design for the main courtyard at the UNC Greensboro Art Museum transformed an underutilized brick courtyard into an inviting entrance space and outdoor sculpture garden. A raised corten steel planting bed contoured in a wavelike form straddles the existing courtyard wall to visually connect visitors from the sidewalk into the gallery. Its stylized birch grove provides dappled shade and helps subdivide the courtyard into smaller sculpture settings. Large black-stemmed bamboo is planted along the courtyard edge softening the building face and courtyard wall to create a simple but elegant environment for outdoor art.
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COOK QUAD RENOVATION, FAYETTEVILLE STATE UNIVERSITY The 1.5 acres that is Cook Quad today was once part of a larger open space formed by the original group of historic buildings on campus. As the campus has been developed that space has been reduced, used as a temporary construction staging and parking space and mobile classrooms have been located in the quad, damaging the Quad as a result. Surface 678 was hired to restore this previously symbolic open space back to a prominent campus setting. The design renovates the open space, improves entrances to buildings on the Quad and has as focal point, Cook Hall, one of the more architecturally-prominent buildings on campus.
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CENTRAL GREEN & PERFORMANCE PLAZA, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA SCHOOL OF THE ARTS Surface 678 was tasked with changing the heart of the prestigious Winston Salem, NC campus from a remnant unplanned landscape to a highly designed and functional landscape. The overall design weaves together different buildings and spaces to form a continuously designed landscape from Waughtown Street to the Daniels Plaza. The design removed excess parking and remnant driveways to create pedestrian walkways that move through the central campus green. Performance Plaza preserves a treasured tree and links the two performance venues together with an elliptically shaped roundabout and plaza. This plaza serves to provide a formal space for performances. The universally accessible walkways climb 35 vertical feet from Daniels Plaza to the Administration Building on Waughtown Street. Waughtown Street was closed to the public and its width reduced to calm traffic and increase pedestrian safety.
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PEOPLE FIRST We are fierce believers in the notion that good design happens when you are having fun. Our team of 17 landscape architects and urban designers are self described “landgeeks� who approach every design challenge with positive energy and confidence. Dreamers with a practical notion for how to build. Builders with the heart and fearlessness to dream. We understand that the success of any project begins with listening to our clients and setting and exceeding expectations for the work to be done. With 20 years of experience at our core and a group of dedicated designers we are capable and ready to provide high quality, imaginative landscape solutions.
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surface678.com
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215 Morris St Durham, NC 27701
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919 . 419 . 1199 tel
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