Preserving and improving the beauty and functionality of our campus as it grows to accommodate more students, more faculty/staff and more research is both a major challenge and a grand opportunity.
With the help of a superb team of consultants from the Baltimore firm of Ayers/Saint/Gross, the university community has had the opportunity over the past year to identify the very best physical elements of the UGA campus. Those key elements have been used to develop a Physical Master Plan to direct our approaches to building new buildings, renovating older ones and moving people around campus.
As we strive to create a more effective educational environment, consideration must also be given to such factors as topography, vegetation, traffic and parking patterns, academic and extracurricular uses and aspirations, athletic needs and uses, and current and projected facilities.
The physical planning group--led by Senior Vice President Allan Barber, University Architect Danny Sniff and consulting group leader Adam Gross--is working hard to develop a master plan for all physical aspects of campus.
In the process of developing that plan, literally thousands of interviews have been conducted with students, faculty, staff and administrators. Along the way, we have reached a few conclusions on key principles that will help shape the final plan. Among those key principles are:
• Everyone wants a more “walkable” and interactive campus, with human-scaled buildings framing attractive, well-landscaped open spaces. North Campus is clearly the paradigm for the 600-acre main campus, and we need to extend that model to the entire university.
• Roadways and parking patterns must be redesigned to move the heaviest traffic and some parking to the periphery of the campus. We need to build additional parking decks to handle on-campus parking. We must also decongest our road network and bus routes for quicker, more efficient service.
• While the university will undoubtedly add millions of square feet of buildings over the next decade or two, we can do it in a tasteful manner by increasing the utility of the campus and by planning the campus as an interconnected series of attractive green spaces framed by buildings.
• Our campus would benefit from being less elongated. We’ll look for opportunities to grow east-west, as well as south.
• Benches, gardens and walkways are among the most beautiful campus features and should be multiplied.
• The campus would benefit from more architectural coherence, and we must develop some strong parameters for the construction of new buildings and renovation of older ones to achieve that coherence. The use of classic architectural styles, such as sloped roofs, distinctive entries, traditional windows, and appropriately proportioned height-to-width ratios, will serve as a benchmark for future building designs.
These principles are already guiding current projects such as the improvements to Jackson Street, which includes installing bike lanes, widening sidewalks, burying overhead electrical lines and providing bus pull-off lanes.
Every sidewalk we reshape and every shrub we plant is part of the plan to make this campus an even more beautiful and effective learning environment. Please join in the next phase of this university-wide conversation by attending one of three public presentations on the Physical Master Plan scheduled for Nov. 12. Come learn how the plan has developed to date and share your ideas for shaping the future of this great institution.