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| The comprehensive site plan for West Campus indicates the completion sequence for each of the five proposed houses (which are numbered and labeled with completion dates). The Gothic halls complex will be preserved and the existing University Halls (Sperry and Class halls) and Noyes Community Center will be replaced with the new facilities, as shown. KieranTimberlake Associates -- Architects |
With the recent go ahead vote by the Cornell Board of Trustees and a generous gift from two alumni, plans for the university's new West Campus house system for upper-level students are well under way.
On Jan. 26 the trustees voted unanimously to approve the site selection for the overall West Campus Residential Initiative at the foot of Libe Slope and for the first of the five houses to be constructed beginning next spring. Three days earlier, alumni and longtime benefactors Robert J. and Helen H. Appel committed $15 million to support the $200 million project, being funded by gifts to the university. Two weeks ago, two key committees, the West Campus Council and the West Campus Student Focus Group, were briefed on the comprehensive site plan for the community.
And March 25-27, a full-size mock up of the student suite -- a typical single room, double room, living room and bathroom configuration -- will be constructed in the lobby/pool room area of Noyes Community Center and open to the public. This event will provide another opportunity for members of the Cornell community to comment on the suite design.
The West Campus project, developed through a consultative process involving faculty, students and staff, and led by Vice Provost Isaac Kramnick, the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government, is the second phase of the university's Residential Initiative. It will build on the successful North Campus project, a living- and learning-based residential community for freshmen, which was completed last fall.
The goal of the West Campus project, Kramnick said, is "to bridge the gap between the intellectual life of students and their residential experience at Cornell."
Kramnick said the conventional residence halls will be replaced by a house system with live-in faculty, student leadership and greater informal interaction between undergraduates, graduate students, faculty and university administrators.
The phased project, designed by architect KieranTimberlake Associates of Philadelphia, is expected to be completed by 2010. It includes demolition of the University Halls and Noyes Community Center; construction of approximately 600,000 gross square feet of space that, with the Gothic Baker Complex, will create five distinct houses, each named after a legendary Cornell faculty member; and construction of a new Noyes community recreation center. The design will provide better integration with the nearby fraternity houses and will include replacement or upgrade of the West Campus utility and data infrastructure, landscaping and parking.
The five residential houses will provide 1,800 beds, with approximately 350 students, live-in graduate and professional student mentors and a dining room in each house. The houses will emphasize informal interaction with faculty members, opportunities for personal and intellectual growth, self-governance, social and cultural programming, privacy and independence.
In the Feb. 5 and 6 briefings to the West Campus Student Focus Group and the West Campus Council, Amy Floresta, an architect with KieranTimberlake, said the firm saw the site as an extension of Libe Slope. The site is defined by University Avenue to the north, West Avenue to the east, Campus Road to the south, and Stewart Avenue on the west. She said the plan retains the Gothics as an integral part of the overall design, as well as the east-west orientation of the complex, following the sloping topography, maximizing views toward the city and the lake.
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| Amy Floresta, an architect with KieranTimberlake Associates, briefs the West Campus Student Focus Group on the new comprehensive site plan, Feb. 5 in Clark Hall. Robert Barker/University Photography |
Floresta said that during the phased construction, 1,635 beds will be maintained at all times on West Campus and that Noyes Center would not be demolished until Phase 4, after three new dining halls and the new community recreation center are constructed. Nothing will be demolished during Phase 1. During Phase 2, Class of '22 and '28 halls will be demolished. Sperry Hall will be demolished during Phase 3; Noyes and Class of '18 and '26 halls will be demolished during Phase 4; and Class of '17 Hall will be demolished during Phase 5. The graphic above shows the schedule of phased construction of the new houses.
Students have been involved with the West Campus initiative in a variety of ways, including the focus group and through several class projects, said Jean Reese, Residential Initiative project leader. The classes include:
"We are very pleased to have many students involved in West Campus planning through their coursework," Reese said. "Students and faculty are eager to have a real-time, tangible project on which to focus their study, and the project will benefit when the results of their work are applied to programmatic and design decisions."
At the recent student focus group meeting, the approximately 25 students appeared excited by the concepts behind the proposed West Campus residential community but concerned about some specifics of the plans, including:
Several students returned to the question of the suite design of the new living spaces, which features several four- and five-person suites clustered around a small common space, rather than many rooms lining a corridor.
One student said she is now living in one of four adjacent units in Baker, while last year in her residence hall there were 50 students on her hall. "If I wanted apartment living, I would live in an apartment. I want a simple hallway down the middle."
Members of the West Campus Council reacted positively to the new design, Reese said. They, too, had questions about parking, about the exterior look of the buildings and about such common areas, such as the music practice room, the library and the computer room. They wanted to ensure the future flexibility of these spaces. They also wanted the designers to be creative in room furnishings, to give students lots of options for controlling their living environment -- including creating cozy nooks and crannies for students to find a quiet place to rest, study and enjoy the views.
"As a member of the West Campus Council, I've seen the pieces of this puzzle individually, but the unveiling of the design was the beginning of seeing how all these pieces fit together," said Jenny Gerner, associate dean of the College of Human Ecology and professor of policy analysis and management. "It was very exciting and leads me to think that the vision for West Campus can really work. Of course, there remains lots of work to do, and we still need to get some key constituencies, like faculty and the colleges, to be better informed and to buy in. But if we can do as much in the next year as we have in the last, a West Campus living-learning community will be close to a reality."
Reese said that more than 100 faculty, staff and students are participating in the West Campus Council and its committees. Recommendations and input from the council, from student focus groups and from frequent campus presentations and information fairs are shared with the architects and campus planners at the monthly design workshops.
Comments from the suite mock-up will contribute to the next level of detailed planning -- design development, which is followed by the construction document phase.
"Students will own these houses," Kramnick said, "and we will pay close attention to their views as we move now into the stage of translating the program vision into physical spaces."
Groundbreaking for House 1 is anticipated to be about a year from now.
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