Emory Campus Master Plan: History

Multiple Responses

This is not to say that all architecture of this period was hostile to context, nor were all architects inept in responding to pre-existing traditions. Many fine architects struggled with the implications of tradition, however, unlike their Beaux-Arts educated predecessors, they received little rigorous education about the ways of the past. Since design was no longer seen to derive from historical precedents, the history curricula of many schools of architecture became merely an embellishment to a professional education. Thus as architects struggled with the ramifications of both tradition and context, it is not surprising to find that each individual developed his or her own personal response to the problem. Thus it is understandable that on a Campus like Emory's with a strong tradition of architecture and a readily understandable context in place prior to World War II, we find post-war architects proposing a wide range of formal responses to the problem of designing buildings and exterior spaces on campus. Some of the efforts of these architects appear to abstractly respond to the circumstances of tradition and context, while others simply ignore the pre-existing order of the campus. Ultimately the result is somewhat like a dinner party at which the participants are constantly talking but no coherent topic of conversation has emerged.

Campus Planning vs. Urban Planning

The problems caused by the radical shift in architectural discourse were not limited to campus architecture and planning. Many of the same problems described above would be all too apparent if one were to conduct an examination of the architecture and urbanism of the later half of the 20th century. However, unlike its urban counterpart, the "Academical Village" typically lacks the set of legal checks and balances that might even minimally regulate growth and preserve the integrity of its planned vision. At the most basic level, private land ownership in the American urban model (typically the blocks and parcels of land within the city), is complimented and regulated by the disposition of streets and squares (right-of-ways) which are held in public trust. The regular positioning of right-of-ways insure public access to privately held lands and permit assembly of the city's inhabitants. Right-of-ways also regulate the ultimate size of any continuous parcel that a landowner can assemble, which in turn lends a recognizable scale and rhythm to the city. It is for this reason that cities usually make the closure and/or bridging of streets a very difficult proposition. With the addition of zoning regulations, which place limitations on how land can be developed, and review boards, to insure that zoning ordinances are applied in an equitable manner and new designs perform to set standards, both the public and private sector can be held in a mutually beneficial check and balance. The type of checks and balances described above, a very real manifestation of the constitutional nature of American government, typically do not apply to the Academical Village. Ironically the model for the Academical Village is a bit more medieval, which may in fact be a kind of poetic justice considering the historical origins of the university. Unlike its urban counterpart, the campus is not a mosaic of public and private ownership (rarely does an individual college or program within the university possess title to the land upon which it is situated), nor do the streets and squares (paths and quadrangles) necessarily represent guaranteed right-of-ways (as can be seen by the positioning of the Emory Museum Building on the prominent campus cross-axis). Any kind of zoning on campus is usually understood as a loosely conceived grouping of similar activities seldom with binding ramifications. Lastly, though some institutions have begun to institutionalize design review boards to regulate modifications to the built and natural environment, many other universities operate without this form of oversight. So while the circumstances of the city are regulated by a model which we Americans hold as an ideal, a system of checks and balances, growth in the university is a consequence of a feudal system of lords and princes (substitute deans and presidents) vying for preservation and expansion of their own interests.

Planning for the Long Term

The question then is how a campus plan might live beyond the tenure of its progenitor (usually the president of the institution). Certainly the Hornbostel plan for the Emory campus sustained and regulated growth for nearly 50 years, in part because of the clarity of its vision and in part because of the ability of subsequent generations administrators, faculty, students, and architects to reasonably interpret and adapt its intentions. At some time following the Second World War, the influence of the Hornbostel plan on new development began to wane. Possibly because land was seen to be plenty, because the needs were perceived as so urgent, unique, and new, or even the ideas encoded in the Hornbostel plan were no longer legible to a generation unschooled in its language, development on the campus took on a the appearance of laissez affair planning practices, when in fact quite the opposite is true.

One might conclude that the very art of making cities, towns, and communities of buildings within the landscape, such as universities, have been endangered by the wholesale devaluation of tradition and context. In many academic and professional circles since the later half of the 1960's and up to the present architects, landscape architects, planners, and others who effect the built environment have begun to examine the architectural traditions that were abandoned by the modern movement. The idea of stewardship of both the natural and man-made environment have had a profound effect upon the re-discovery of value in both context and tradition.

If one were to define the mission of a university as two-fold: to preserve knowledge and resist change while actively seeking new knowledge and instigating change, one might begin to have a sense of the direction that a campus plan should take. A campus plan should seek to find the value in the principles of planning of the past while simultaneously projecting new directions for the future.

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