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February 19, 2008, 12:25 PM ET
New Campus Plan at Princeton Makes Room for Growth on Main Campus
Princeton University is rolling out its new campus plan in a big way, with a brochure, a Web site, a 180-page book, Princeton Campus Plan: The Next Ten Years and Beyond, and, next week, a panel discussion on campus planning.
The university’s new plan, two years in the making, is the work of the New York firm Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners. It focuses on themes like walkability, sustainability, and flexibility, while committing Princeton to protecting both its historic structures and its parklike feel. According to the university, the plan also offers strategies for dealing with a number of different aspects of campus development, such as housing, landscaping, transit, traffic, parking, signs, and storm-water management.
It does not, however, establish any specific design rules for the campus, which is home to buildings in a wide range of architectural styles. In addition to its iconic Collegiate Gothic buildings—including some by Cope and Stewardson, who helped define the style—Princeton has buildings by architects as diverse as Charles Gwathmey, Charles Z. Klauder, I.M. Pei, Robert Venturi, and Rafael Viñoly. Demetri Porphyrios, of the London architecture firm Porphyrios Associates, recently completely a large new Collegiate Gothic residence hall, Whitman College (above), while at the same time a science building by Frank Gehry is under construction.
The university envisions new growth within the 380-acre main campus, even though it owns large tracts of land elsewhere. Four “emerging neighborhoods” of the campus core are slated for significant transformations within the next 10 years, including the area around the Dinky station and the McCarter Theatre (Steven Holl Architects has just been hired to oversee that project). Princeton anticipates more than 2 million square feet of construction between now and 2016. (Chronicle photograph by Lawrence Biemiller)
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