Rutgers hosts 'immersion days' for architects, planners
Five design teams compete to implement new vision for College Avenue campus
Archived article from Feb 6, 2006
By Ashanti M. Alvarez
Architects, landscape designers and urban planners spent two days “immersed” in all aspects of Rutgers as they prepared to undertake a design competition that will transform the College Avenue campus.
The design competition, launched in September 2005, is part of a multiyear project announced by President Richard L. McCormick to create a campus that will attract the nation’s top faculty and students, strengthen ties with the university’s host communities and add to a state university that is a major source of pride for New Jersey.
The competition focuses on a campus redesign that will transform College Avenue into a pedestrian-friendly greenway, construct a major academic and campus services building, and develop plans for a major transportation hub.
From the evening of Jan. 22 to the afternoon of Jan. 24, the design teams, consisting of about 30 professionals, toured the campus and met with groups of people who have an interest in the redesign. Team members spoke with McCormick, faculty members, alumni, administrators, members of the governing boards, New Brunswick city officials and stakeholders, and representatives from the New Brunswick Theological Seminary. Members of the competition jury, a panel of experts selected by a steering committee with input from the university community to judge the competition, participated as well.
The university issued a Request for Qualifications to 45 pre-eminent architectural firms nationwide and across the globe, and selected five design teams. Their proposals are due March 22. Each team’s conceptual design proposal will be on display in March and April,
and one team will be selected in April.
“All the people involved in planning the immersion days did an excellent job,” said Kyu-Jung Whang, vice president of facilities and capital planning and chair of the design project steering committee. “The teams were appreciative of the amount of effort we put in to host them. They felt that Rutgers is a very diverse place. Each campus has its own flavor and they were very impressed with that.”
Members of the university community were invited to three public sessions at the Rutgers Student Center throughout the immersion days events. The design teams had the opportunity to listen to and question panels of Rutgers representatives on a variety of topics.
Session I: Architectural Planning and Context
The designers received as much of Rutgers’ 240-year history as possible in one and a half hours. University Archivist Thomas Frusciano outlined the role of the Dutch Reformed Church in Rutgers’ early years, the pivotal transition of Rutgers in 1864 from a small private institution to a land-grant school, the 1956 act that established the board of governors, and Rutgers’ membership on the Association of American Universities in 1989.
Elizabeth Reeves, an assistant facilities planner at Rutgers, emphasized the importance of Rutgers’ physical history, with 10 buildings listed on the national register and the nearly 200-year-old Old Queen’s building. She described the College Avenue campus in five distinct precincts: Queen’s, Neilson (Voorhees Mall), Bishop, Alexander Merchant block (the northern end of College Avenue near Buccleuch Park), and College Avenue, the thoroughfare.
“The development of each precinct roughly coincides with social, political and economic change in the American culture,” Reeves said. “After 40 years of little or no growth on the College Avenue campus, Rutgers has reached a critical mass, and so the next chapter of historic growth begins.”
The River Dorms along George Street were erected in the 1950s to accommodate increased enrollment. Christina Thoma, a Rutgers College senior who studied the River Dorms in a university design course last year, said the buildings are examples of the first modern “high rise” dormitories in the United States. Over the past 50 years, these dormitories have aged, bearing serious signs of deterioration, yet they are not beyond repair,” Thoma said. “It is imperative to reconsider their historic, practical and economic value prior to demolishing Frelinghuysen, Hardenbergh and Campbell Hall.”
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