Since its founding in the 1960s, Medgar Evers College has been a central figure and source of pride for Brooklyn’s Bedford Stuyvesant community. Its reinvigoration, spurred by a rapidly expanding student body, began ten years ago with a campus master plan, prepared by Ennead Architects and Thomas Balsley Associates. In addition to new facilities, the plan foresaw a shortage of outdoor public spaces normally associated with a robust academic setting and proposed closing the street that had divided the campus. Ten years later, a capitol program provided the means by which a new central quad and promenade would replace the street and parking. With this bold urban intervention and an intense greening program, this new vision for the school’s outdoor public spaces will enhance campus life for students, faculty, and visitors.
Together with its promenade, this new quad provides a unifying pedestrian connection between Bedford and Franklin Avenues and between existing and new campus buildings, finally providing the campus with a cohesive identity and sense of place. With the dramatic transformation of a street to more campus green space comes the opportunity to integrate a series of sustainability strategies into the campus environment. The carbon footprint of the campus is reduced through the implementation of porous paving, native plantings and gabion walls in bioswales, and low voltage LED lighting.
The promenade serves as an academic “hallway” and is bordered with a diverse array of seating opportunities and a series of “garden rooms” which serve as outdoor classrooms, living rooms, study spaces, and planted gardens. At mid-point, the promenade swells into a large lawn area, a much needed center to the campus for informal academic lounging and large gatherings such as performances, festivals, and the annual graduation ceremony. To unify the hallway’s variety of spaces, a series of landscape and architectural elements is deployed, including a distinct and modulated paving pattern, plinths for seating, and light pylons with interpretive graphics that form the school’s “walk of fame.”
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New Jersey Institute of Technology Green
This campus, like many others, has suffered from the lack of a coherent plan, rendering its campus experience to a series of passages through disconnected interstitial spaces. A key component of the landscape master plan was the identification of new building sites on campus that would shed light on a comprehensive assessment of open spaces and movement system...
Columbia University Landscape Master Plan
As part of a larger development framework plan by Beyer Blinder Belle Architects, Thomas Balsley Associates was commissioned to prepare a landscape master plan for this important historical campus.
The work began with extensive historical research into the original McKim Mead & White plan and Olmsted writings as well as an assessment of current camp...
Montclair State University Student Center and Quad
SWA/Balsley collaborated with DIG Architects and Montclair State University to reimagine the campus student center, adjacent quad, and connections to the surrounding campus. Through site analysis and project stakeholder meetings, key pedestrian and vehicular circulation routes were identified for resident students, daily commuters, and University staff. The st...
Sonoma State Weill Lawn & Commons
Weill Lawn and Commons provide outdoor performance venues at Green Music Center, a world-class performing arts complex. The landscape architects prepared overall master planning and landscape architectural design. A simple, dramatic grading plan unifies project elements, directs circulation, and buffers concert venues from adjacent roadway traffic. Weill Lawn...