A DISCUSSION OF IDEAS: An aerial view of the historic College Avenue Campus, the inspiration for an international competition and lecture series that will challenge the way we think about campus planning. On September 26, the university unveiled five designs that will be on display at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum through October 31.

On September 26, President Richard L. McCormick released sweeping design concepts crafted by five world-renowned architecture teams, part of a long-term initiative to redesign the university’s historic College Avenue Campus.

The renderings and models – featured in an exhibit at Rutgers’ Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum – kick off a universitywide discussion about the best way to incorporate the teams’ ideas to create an academic environment that will rival many of the nation’s finest universities, McCormick said.

“When we launched the College Avenue Campus initiative, we challenged the world’s most accomplished architects and designers to dazzle us. They have done that and more by pushing us – through their ideas – to imagine this campus in ways we could have never conceived on our own,” McCormick said. “They are challenging us to think even more boldly about what our campus can be and how we can best serve future generations of Rutgers students. These design concepts will serve as the catalyst for a thorough and enthusiastic discussion about the future of the College Avenue Campus.

“It is highly unlikely that we will build any of these plans in its entirety;” McCormick said. However, he added, “each proposal contains elements that deserve serious consideration.”

Common themes in the design teams’ concepts include:

• Making significant portions of the College Avenue Campus greener. Proposals include sloping green spaces above Route 18 and a serpentine greenway across the College Avenue Campus.
• Greater access to the Raritan River. Ideas for new facilities along the river range from a new park and an open-air amphitheater to a glass-walled dining hall and a cylindrical multistory academic building.
• Iconic structures that define the campus as a more attractive and inspiring academic environment and capture the essence of the university’s commitment to excellence.
• More public spaces, which will create a richer sense of community and greater opportunities for informal interaction among students, faculty, staff and campus visitors.
• A signature academic building that serves as a focal point for the campus.
• Improved pedestrian access. Additional pedestrian pathways will make the College Avenue Campus far more walkable.
• Better transportation connections to the university’s other campuses in New Brunswick and Piscataway.

The exhibit at the Zimmerli Art Museum, which runs through October 31, is free and open to the public, thanks to financial support from Bank of America. In June, the Bank of America Charitable Foundation announced a $1 million grant to Rutgers for the College Avenue Campus initiative.

The five teams will formally present their design concepts to the public October 30 on the College Avenue Campus.

Also in October, a series of free public lectures and panel discussions will complement the exhibition by providing background and context about the challenges and opportunities faced by campus planners and designers in the 21st century.

The competition is being judged by a distinguished panel that includes members of the Rutgers community as well as architecture, landscape design and urban planning professionals. Members of the public can register their reactions to the design concepts through an online survey. Surveys are also available at the Zimmerli Art Museum. The survey results will be shared with President McCormick. A public forum will be held in November to hear comments by members of the community about how the campus might be improved.

McCormick released “A New Vision for the College Avenue Campus” in February 2005 in partnership with New Brunswick Mayor James Cahill. At the core of this long-term initiative is the conversion of the College Avenue Campus into a more welcoming, pedestrian-friendly public space. Another goal is the development of a major transportation hub for the College Avenue Campus. He said the initiative will continue despite the university’s ongoing financial challenges, noting that the university will seek funds from a variety of sources, including private donations and federal grants.

“It will take many years and significant private and public funding to fully redesign this campus,” he said. “Of course, we do not have in hand the financial resources to build any of these proposals today. What we as a community must do is give serious consideration to the ideas in these proposals and determine which have merit. Then we must decide what our priorities will be for the College Avenue Campus and include those in the priorities for our upcoming capital campaign.”

The leaders of the five design teams are:

•  Beyer Blinder Belle Architects and Planners LLP, New York, a joint venture with Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Paris. Beyer Blinder Belle has prepared comprehensive long-term campus plans for Columbia University, SUNY Stony Brook and Indiana University. Nouvel’s projects include design of the Arab World Institute in Paris and the Lucerne Cultural and Congress Center.

•  Eisenman Architects, New York. Projects include the Wexner Center for the Visual Arts and Fine Arts Library at Ohio State University and the Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati. Team member Field Operations’ projects include the Columbia University Open Space and Square in New York and a botanical garden and campus quadrangle at the University of Puerto Rico.

•  Morphosis – Thom Mayne, Santa Monica, Calif. The firm has worked on several major projects, including the Caltrans District 7 headquarters in Los Angeles, graduate student housing at the University of Toronto, the Student Recreation Center at the University of Cincinnati, a new academic building for The Cooper Union in New York and the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Caltech. Mayne is the winner of the 2005 Pritzker Prize for architecture.

•  Antoine Predock Architect PC, Albuquerque, N.M. Projects include the design of the Ohio State University Recreation and Physical Activity Center, Stanford’s Center for Integrated Systems and Rice’s Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology. Another team member, the Olin Partnership, created development plans for the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Predock is the recipient of the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal.

•  Ten Arquitectos (Enrique Norten), Mexico City. The firm’s most recognized projects include the Queens Master Plan in Long Island City, N.Y., and the National School of Theater in Mexico City. Another project, designing a stainless steel screen to mask a parking structure on the southern edge of Princeton University, received the gold medal at the AIA/New Jersey Design Awards in 2002.