Working papers were provided by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. in order to provide a basis to assess work accomplished and work that was yet to be done. All working papers are on file in the following locations:
Science Center
Clapp Library
Jewett
Archives
Working Paper One--"Programmatic Elements/Space Needs/Interpretive History"
Working Paper Two--"Pedestrian and Vehicular Circulation/Parking"
Working Paper 2A--"Campus
History:
Landscape Forms and Spaces as Records of College History
Campus as the Physical Embodiment of College's Academic Mission and
Collective Memory"
Working Paper Three--"The Campus Landscape: Utility and Environmental Systems"
Working Paper 3A--"Wellesley's Adjoining Lands: Preserving an Idyllic Surrounding"
Working Paper Four--"Campus Landscape: How Structure and Type Refine Space"
Working Paper Five--"Master Plan Principles and Goals"
Working Paper Six--"Campus Lighting"
Working Paper Seven--"Campus Signage"
Working Paper Eight--"The Interdependence of Design and Maintenance"
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Campus Open Meeting on Parking and Circulation, 4 December 1997
1. 0 Guiding Principles of Parking and Circulation Today
1.1 Parking and circulation need to be understood as integral
components of the Wellesley campus landscape in terms of the
following principles:
· Beauty: What were the historical and what are the
contemporary roles of parking and circulation in creating the unique
beauty of the Wellesley campus?
· Function: The full connectivity of the campus is
essential for its proper functioning. How can we strike a delicate
balance of vehicular accessibility and service with the needs of
pedestrians?
· Safety: What are the safety issues on campus?
· Clarity: What is the importance of clarity as a goal of
the circulation of the campus?
· Wayfinding: How are roads, paths, and parking a part of
wayfinding on campus?
2. 0 Conditions of Parking and Circulation Today
2.1 Cars play a crucial role in the life of Wellesley College and its beautiful but dispersed campus. However, cars are parked everywhere today; along roads, at the edges of crucial historic open spaces, in front of key vistas and sight lines, at building entrances, in service areas, and sometimes on lawns and meadows that historically were preserved and intended to be left open as part of the organization of the campus landscape. Most of this ad hoc parking has come about incrementally -- in 1966 the Jewett Hill Road was widened to accommodate snow plows and soon after parallel parking was added at the road edge.
2.2 One of the functional purposes of College Road, the main road of the Wellesley campus, is to allow people to understand where the center of the campus is, how to get there, and where to park. How successful is College Road in this regard today? Prior to the 1961 relocation of College Road from the edge of Severance Green, to the edge of the "Outer Meadow," College Road accomplished all of these objectives extremely well.
2.3 Pedestrians and vehicles freely mix on the Wellesley campus, and safety is a concern. In our view, the mixing of moving cars, parked cars, and pedestrians in some locations, including Pendleton Hill Road, Jewett Hill Road, and Tower Court Road, create areas with safety concerns. Safety concerns exist elsewhere on the campus; the speed of vehicles on College Road is in conflict with the numerous and necessary pedestrian crossings and the awkward circulation route through Gray Lot creates potential for dangerous conflicts between cars.
2.4 In general, the pedestrian circulation of the campus for able-bodied people works quite well, excluding those areas where conflicts with vehicles exist: the steep topography of the campus poses severe limits to people using wheelchairs.
2.5 There is not enough convenient and centralized parking on campus today. In our view, some parking currently allowed in the campus center should be removed, such as cars parked on the road edges around the Chapel Lawn. If this were done, there would be a need for more centralized parking. This problem could be partially resolved by a different parking management strategy, i.e., enforcement of the use of existing remote lots and improvements of shuttle service to these lots.
2.6 There is a severe shortage of parking in the Science Center-Observatory-Sage area, where approximately nine academic departments reside in the Science Center alone. The demand for parking in this area has never been seriously addressed. Remote parking seems impractical to service the parking needs of the whole northeast area of the campus. There is also a shortage of visitor parking.
2.7 A parking garage, at first consideration, might seem to some an anathema to the romantic qualities of the Wellesley campus. We believe that an inventive design for a parking structure joined with programmed functions could yield an interesting hybrid building type, thus transforming the potential negative concerns often associated with a parking structure.
2.8 The Service Parking Lot is unlike the rest of the Wellesley Campus. It fills an important valley that was intended to be open space, and disrupts the historic Olmsted principle of the spatial organization at Wellesley where open valleys were intended to be surrounded with buildings on adjacent ridges and hilltops.
2.9 Parking for special events is inadequate in the campus core, particularly the Science Center Area and College Club.
3.0 Questions and Ideas about Parking and Circulation
3.1 Should we reexamine how College Road works as part of structuring the clarity of the campus? When approaching the campus from Route 16, should College Road be partially restored to its former historical alignment, i.e., after passing Stone Davis, should College Road instead turn south and pass the Chapel (as it did prior to 1961)? Then, should it turn north before Rhododendron Dell, passing in front of Founders Hall and Green Hall, where it could then connect bark to College Road? Would this partial historical realignment of College Road better present the center of the campus as part of the daily arrival and exit sequence for most campus users?
3.2 Are the existing main campus entrances, although perhaps beguiling in their subtlety, inappropriately understated? Should these entrances be enhanced? How? With what message? Should the current campus entrance from Route 16 be relocated to one of the former older historic entrances? Should there be a new campus entrance at the northeast area of the campus (to replace the long ago closed Fiske Gate) that also would reestablish a link to the village?
3.3 Certain buildings on campus could easily be made to comply with the spirit of current ADA requirements - - e.g.., an accessible main entrance could be added to the Science Center, an important place for public lectures. Other buildings on campus may also warrant attention in the near future for wheelchair accessibility.
3.4 Would Wellesley benefit from a centrally and carefully sited new building that also incorporates a significant parking structure? Could these be combined with siting / landscape strategies for the now structure, placing it on the side of a bill or partially underground?
3.5 Should the removal of all parking that is parallel at the edge of secondary roads be considered? Where should these parking spaces be relocated - - to other existing areas or to new parking sites on campus? Where?
3.6 Should we reevaluate current parking management practices to include the possible allocation of different types of parking stickers, based on staff needs to use their cars during the day?
3.7 Should the College get tough on parking violations and enforcement?
3.8 Should parking for medium and large events be accommodated in remote areas with a better shuttle service?
4.0 Next Steps
4.1 Completion of Phase One Working Papers:
Working Paper 3 - Environmental Factors (landscape, drainage, and
riparian systems)
Working Paper 4 - Viewshed and Landscape Analysis in Spatial,
Functional and Ecological Terms
Working Paper 5 - Summary of Preliminary Findings and Directions for
Master Plan
4.2 Phase Two Working Papers: Concepts and principles of completed working papers will be used as a foundations for synthetic studies of the overall campus plan. Maintenance guidelines and phasing/cost projections will be developed.
4.3 Michael Van Valkenburgh will discuss the time line for completion of the next steps at the
meeting.
16 March 1998
A Campus Form and Structure
Principles:
1.0 Historically, Wellesley¹s landscape and buildings have been organized topographically in an irregular pattern of buildings sited on hillsides connected by undulating valleys and vistas. Key vistas and sightlines function as guides for orientation on campus.
2.0 Education at Wellesley is inextricably linked to the landscape particularly in the way that landscape is engaged with the daily life on campus through movement.
3.0 Movement from buildings out into the landscape is a fundamental organizational element of the Wellesley campus.
4.0 The Master Plan will approach the landscape design as an explicit extension of the historic patterns of land conservation and development that are unique to Wellesley and which are based on the principles of the 1921 Master Plan.
Goals:
1.0 Campus Form - Indigenous Landscape
A Master Plan goal will be to identify existing and previously existing elements of the indigenous landscape that should be protected and revitalized, to renew the historical importance of the natural landscape as a fundamental component of the campus form.
2.0 Restoration of Orienting Devices
The Master Plan recognizes that the key vistas and sightlines outlined in the 1921 master plan, that act as guides for orientation on campus, cannot be precisely restored, however reopening viewsheds and sightlines must be encouraged wherever possible.
3.0 Relationship of Architecture to Understanding Campus Structure
A goal of the master plan is to explore strategies whereby the campus can be better understood in terms of way finding and perceived as an integrated and manageable whole.
4.0 Siting of Buildings
Future expansion of the campus must adhere strictly to the historical pattern of siting of new buildings on hilltops and the top brow of hillsides.
The master planning team will make an assessment of the optimum locations for new facilities in the medium to long term future. The team will investigate a specific list of possible future building types as well as possible locations for as yet unimagined facilities.
The Master Plan will identify sites for potential development and sites where construction should not be permitted.
5.0 Massing and Scale of New Buildings, Parking Areas and Play Fields The massing and location of future buildings and playing fields must be carefully considered to preserve the remnants of the original, fragile topography.
The Master Plan will guide the massing and optimum location of new facilities.
B Historical Context
Principles:
1.0 Landscape takes precedent over architecture at Wellesley. The continuous, absorbing, and timeless qualities of the cultivated natural landscape of the campus envelop and unify a rich but diverse collection of architectural styles.
2.0 Wellesley must reinvigorate the idea of cultivated nature as a central part of its campus landscape.
Concern: Historical documentation has shown that since the 1930s, and increasingly in recent years, the vegetative diversity of the campus landscape has declined This results in a landscape that although pleasant, has become homogeneous and lacking in the rich collage of landscape elements that existed in the past.
Goals:
1.0 Landscape Management and Maintenance
A Master Plan goal is to reintroduce a cultivated natural landscape to the Wellesley campus within the context of a feasible landscape management and maintenance plan.
2.0 Integrity of the Historic Landscape
An encompassing goal of the Master Plan is to reverse and correct the gradual process of homogenization and standardization of the campus landscape.
3.0 The Suburbanization of the Landscape¹s Character
The Master Plan promotes an understanding of the need to revive the historic patterns of the Wellesley campus landscape as a collage of distinct landscape elements that together form a whole.
C Parking
Principles:
1.0 Cars have nearly always been a part of the Wellesley campus and therefore should not be banned from the campus or limited to its perimeter.
2.0 Contemporary challenges such as increased dependence on the automobile must be balanced with safety, the primacy of the pedestrian experience, and the ecological and aesthetic impact of parked cars and roads to the surrounding landscape.
3.0 The historical importance of walking should be re-encouraged as the primary form of movement within the campus. All future parking policy, availability, and placement such as the storage of vehicles at the periphery of the campus, should reinforce this principle.
4.0 All parking should be safely and directly linked to major areas of the campus.
5.0 Parking should be discouraged in locations that create unsafe environments for pedestrians.
6.0 Where the public is regularly attracted to places on campus, parking and wayfinding needs must be addressed.
Goals:
1.0 Moving or stationary vehicles that endanger the lives of students, faculty, staff, and members of the Wellesley community, should be removed from the campus. Parking in the Green Hall courtyard and on portions of the Pendleton and Jewett ramps should be quickly phased out.
2.0 The presence of parked cars in the campus landscape, particularly the historic core, must be diminished.
3.0 Parking policy for staff who require the use of their vehicles during the day, (and access to the historic core of the campus,) should be established.
4.0 New overall campus parking policies should accompany all parking changes to ensure fairness in implementation.
Recommended Parking Changes:
1.0 Center of Campus
Cars parked at the edges of historic open spaces such as Chapel Lawn should be removed. Parked vehicles in these spaces disrupt the overall sense of the landscape, breaking the continuity of views across the spaces to the campus, and altering the historic scale and feel of these areas.
2.0 Science Center Area
There is a severe shortage of parking in the science Center/Observatory/Sage area. Nine academic departments reside in the Science Center alone, but the demand for daily parking in this area has never been seriously addressed.
3.0 Special Event Parking
The Master Plan will study alternatives for parking shortage on campus during special events, with the intention of permanently keeping parking off the meadows.
4.0 Service Staff Parking
College service vehicles should not be parked in valuable central parking areas such as the Service Lot. Identifying alternative locations for service vehicles will be considered.
Staff parking in service areas impedes delivery access and endangers pedestrians. Finding alternative locations for service staff parking should be a priority.
5.0 Student Parking
Student parking should be limited in central parking areas. Alternative strategies for student parking will be explored.
6.0 Surface Lot Parking
Surface parking lots should not be located in the campus valleys. The Master Plan will look at strategies to relocate this parking and return this site
to a "green" valley.
7.0 Increasing Campus Parking
There are no central sites for new large surface parking areas on campus. The Master Plan will examine two alternative approaches to increasing parking on campus: parking structures, and remote surface parking areas, such as the North 40.
Places where existing parking lots may be expanded will be identified and studied.
8.0 Parking Structures
Parking structures will be studied to see if with creativity they can be unobtrusively woven into the campus landscape. Parking structures must be conveniently sited, safe and linked to areas of more dense campus activity.
Options for combining a parking structure with a new campus center will be considered as well as considering parking structures in isolation.
9.0 Remote Lots
One part of Wellesley¹s parking problem is the perception that the remote parking lots are too far away, inaccessible, and unsafe. This perception could be altered by a different parking management strategy that creates a variety of new and clearer links to the campus core.
The successful use of remote lots for special event parking will rely upon better management strategies.
D Campus Entrances and Circulation
Principles:
1.0 Circulation must be understood as an integral component of the Wellesley campus landscape in terms of: beauty, function, safety, clarity, and way finding.
2.0 The Wellesley College Campus is understood and revealed through movement. All forms of movement should reinforce the experience of the campus on a daily basis. The historical primacy of the pedestrian experience of the landscape must be renewed.
3.0 Arrival is an essential aspect of the experience of Wellesley Campus. The first glimpse of Wellesley should convey a sense of hospitality and be a reminder to denizens of the changing, unending beauty and interest of the campus. The points of arrival should be reinforced to clarify the basic structure of the campus.
4.0 A principle of the Master Plan is to diminish the ease of cutting through campus, without precluding direct access across the site.
Concerns:
1.0 A particular concern is the visual degradation and associated safety threats resulting from the mixing of pedestrian movement with vehicular traffic in some areas of the campus.
Recommended Policy Changes:
1.0 Pedestrian and Vehicular Circulation Reducing the mixing of pedestrians and automobiles, in areas of unnecessary proximity, will be a goal of the Master Plan. A study of pedestrian and vehicular circulation will be undertaken to identify where conflicts currently exist between pedestrians and the vehicles.
The importance of the pedestrian experience of the landscape will be considered and emphasized along with the goals of improving safety and introducing traffic calming.
2.0 College Road
A goal of the Master Plan is to provide a more diverse experiential journey through the campus landscape, at the same time as improving safety.
The current alignment College Road does not serve as an adequate introduction to the structure and diversity of the Wellesley Campus. College Road currently acts as a perimeter spine of the campus and as such contradicts the planning intentions of the 1921 Plan.
One of the functions of College Road is to enable people to understand where the center of the campus is, how to get there, and where to park. The Master Plan will explore how to recapture these important qualities as part of rethinking options for road alignment.
The daily experience of using College Road should sequentially reveal and describe the story of how Wellesley is organized. Whether for the first time or after years of repeated use, the experience of the road is of equal value.
The master plan will consider the different types of drivers on College Road and aim to ascertain to what extent it is used as a short cut for Town traffic.
3.0 Campus Entrances
The main campus entrances are under expressed as gateways to the campus.
The Master Plan will study the campus entrances in terms of defining the purpose they should serve and whether they currently fulfill this purpose. The location of entrances will also be studied as part of the overall vehicle sequence of arriving and leaving campus.
4.0 Intra-Campus Circulation
The Master Plan will study intra-campus circulation and examine the potential for relocating some internal campus services to the Distribution Center.
The isolation of the Distribution Center from the core of the campus has two major liabilities: it impedes the day to day need for internal circulation, from the Campus Center to the Distribution Center, since the present route via Route 135. is cumbersome, time consuming and at times unsafe.
E Compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
Principle:
1.0 Wellesley College is committed to improving the accessibility of its campus to people with different abilities and disabilities and will comply with the requirements of ADA.
Policy Recommendations:
1.0 Access to New or Renovated Buildings
All new building projects and renovation projects planned for Wellesley College will comply with the requirements of the ADA.
The location of future building projects should consider the potential to extend compliance to include surrounding parking areas, adjacent buildings, and the campus landscape.
2.0 Access to Buildings Eligible for Listing in the National Register of Historic Places
Wellesley shall evaluate the potential of each historic building on campus to comply with ADA, while retaining each building¹s historic character. Each building evaluation should include a summary of the financial, architectural, and aesthetic implications of compliance.
3.0 Access to buildings which should comply with ADA
Several buildings on campus should comply with ADA, even though these are required to comply only in the event of renovation. These buildings include those with a public lecture hall, classroom buildings and to a lesser degree, the dormitories. Each building evaluation should include a summary of the financial, architectural, and aesthetic implications of compliance.
4.0 Access to the Landscape
Movement from buildings out into the landscape is a fundamental organizational element of the Wellesley campus. Wherever possible this experience should be extended to students with disabilities, particularly between significant places on the campus. Access to the Academic Quadrangle via the landscape, should be a goal of this principle.
F Wellesley's Campus Planting
Principle:
1.0 Future planting should reinforce the overall historical structural and spatial qualities of the campus by employing interpretation of historical, philosophical and practical concerns. The Master Plan will produce a summary of the existing campus planting associations.
Goals:
1.0 Renewing the Existing Campus Vegetation
Many of Wellesley¹s plantings are reaching maturity and a plan to guide their renewal will be part of the Campus Master Plan.
G Landscape Types
Principles:
1.0 Future landscape change, (and planting) should respect the historically evolved and very particular structure of the Wellesley College landscape.
2.0 Wellesley must preserve and reassert the importance of the valleys and ensure against existing and future encroachment.
Goals:
1.0 Identify the primary landscape types that are part of the campus form with the purpose of assuring
2.0 Hilltop Quadrangles
Whenever possible new buildings will respond to the shape of the land replicate the established south facing courtyard pattern, and establish sightlines to the landscape or to Lake Waban.
3.0 Courtyards
The restoration of the existing courtyard gardens, including the Green Hall courtyard, will be part of this Master Plan.
4.0 The Planted Hillsides: Veils and Separators
The Master Plan will set the limits of the planted hillsides that must be preserved and will also establish restoration guidelines and maintenance procedures for the hillsides.
5.0 Groves
The Master Plan will guide the replanting of the groves on the Wellesley campus.
6.0 Lake Edge
The Master Plan will provide specific guidelines for the renewal of the edge of Lake Waban.
7.0 Lines of Trees and Allées
The Master Plan will guide the renewal of lines of trees and allées as part of the Campus Landscape.
8.0 Lost Types
Although it is not possible, (or even desirable,) to reclaim all of these lost planted features, the master plan will address the issue of the shortage of these kinds of plant forms today, and suggest how a renewal plan might build some of these back into the campus fabric, to add more gusto to the campus landscape.
9.0 Specimen, Class, and Memorial Trees
Memorial trees should be part of a more unified plan for the addition of specified kinds of trees to the campus landscape.
H Landscape Maintenance
Principle:
1.0 A detailed, fiscally responsible and feasible maintenance plan is essential to the long term health of Wellesley¹s cultivated landscape.
Goals:
1.0 Existing maintenance procedures and current budget allocations will be reviewed in terms of their appropriateness to existing landscape conditions.
2.0 New capital projects should include an endowment for landscape maintenance.
I Infrastructure
Principle:
1.0 Policy for future alteration and/or expansion of campus infrastructure should emphasize an ecological, cost effective, and low maintenance approach.
Recommendations:
1.0 Irrigation
Criteria for implementation and management of a limited campus irrigation system will be established. Whenever possible criteria should be ecologically based.
2.0 Storm water Run-off
The absorption of run-off is a crucial element in the viability of any natural landscape. The Master Plan proposes curbing the use of new "piped" storm water systems. Instead, whenever possible, storm water run-off , should become part of the visible landscape of the campus, (such as open streams) as opposed to the invisible infrastructure of pipes below ground.
Potential regulatory constraints will be evaluated in terms of the long term gains of eliminating high cost infrastructure prior to further development of conceptual ideas.
3.0 Maintenance Endowment
The feasibility of new capital projects should include an evaluation of their impact on adjacent infrastructure systems such as utilities, parking, and circulation routes. Where infrastructure upgrade is required, project budgets should include the capital costs of new infrastructure and a landscape maintenance endowment.
J Wellesley¹s Adjoining Lands
Principles:
1.0 The historic and contemporary role of each parcel in extending the idyllic campus landscape must be understood when considering future uses.
2.0 The ecological relationship between the main campus and its adjacent parcels must be understood when considering future uses for the parcels.
Policy Recommendations:
1.0 Protecting Lake Waban
The Master Plan will define strategies for protecting Lake Waban as a natural resource while allowing it to continue to serve recreation needs.
2.0 Deed restrictions and public constraints There are numerous private deed restrictions and public regulatory constraints that will limit Wellesley¹s flexibility with its land
3.0 Potential future use
Each adjoining land parcel must be considered in its relationship to the main campus in terms of its potential for future use, prior to implementation of any proposal.
K Ecological Considerations
Principle:
1.0 Comply with all environmental regulations governing Wellesley¹s lands.
2.0 Respect the ecological cornucopia of the campus where regulated and feasible.
Goal:
1.0 Identify and preserve unique ecological areas on campus.
Policy Recommendations:
1.0 The Master Plan will evaluate the visual, legal and management impacts of creating wetlands and wet meadows.
2.0 The Master Plan proceeds with the acknowledgment that the wet meadow is-- ecologically and historically,-- in terms of campus form, a dominant plant type that should be more visible on the campus as a result of the Master Plan.
L Planning for the Future
Recommendations:
1.0 Campus Center
The Master Plan will examine potential sites and programming for a new Campus Center to meet the contemporary needs of the campus as a whole.
Before any further renovation work is envisioned and completed in the existing student center, (new offices, maintenance, code compliance, etc.) the future of this collection of buildings should be resolved.
2.0 Dormitory
The feasibility of siting a new dormitory will be studied. Presently there is a housing shortage and a demand for an air-conditioned residential facility that would give Wellesley the ability to host summer conferences and provide on campus accommodations for conference attendees.
3.0 Gathering Space
The master plan will recommend the development of a general (interior) gathering space for conferences and non-denominational religious groups.
4.0 Varsity and Intramural Playing Fields
Recreational activity has always been integral to the life at Wellesley. Wellesley needs to increase the number of regular sized intramural fields on campus. The Master Plan will explore sites for adding varsity and intramural fields in a manner that will enhance the overall landscape structure and character.
5.0 Decentralized Dining
Decentralized dining is a significant element of the campus social structure which should be retained.
6.0 Green Hall
Issues of the programmatic use of Green Hall along with a general need for restoration of its interior leads us to recommend a total review of Green Hall versus the currently planned program of incremental actions. It is clearly a building worthy of such consideration.
7.0 Pendleton Hall
The master plan suggests the need for a methodology for a further study of Pendleton Hall. The study would explore whether an expansion of Pendleton Hall could make it a center for the Social Sciences, analogous in some ways to the role of the Science Center on campus. Issues of accessibility and fire safety, as observed in the status report dated 29 July 1997, should be carefully evaluated as part of this separate study.
8.0 Houghton Chapel
It seems inappropriate to radically change the Chapel. Clearly, worship activities placed in the basement are secondary to the space of the Chapel above. While this type of space may be acceptable for social and educational functions, it is problematic for a truly integrated and egalitarian community of religions and beliefs.
9.0 Clapp Library
The master plan will address locating a site for a book storage structure as part of the overall land holdings of Wellesley campus, (not as part of the historic core campus,) but possibly as a part of the west campus area.