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Campus Building Analysis: Building Heights & Footprints

There is much deliberation in the studio about how to approach building height and footprint size regarding the design opportunity we have ahead of ourselves. UNCG has its own guidelines for new buildings as well as the city of Greensboro but perhaps its not a question of how big or how tall we can go in our designs.

The library is the tallest building on campus, standing at 11 stories tall located in the center of campus. Connected to the EUC, it also has the largest footprint. It is easy to infer from these numbers and the relative location that this is the heart of UNCG’s campus. Not to mention, the services, activities, and knowledge this “heart” has to offer further enforce its character as a landmark. One must ask the question: What can our designs offer to deserve such honor and visibility as another potential landmark on campus? This information will be helpful to the design teams in comparing the tallest (and largest) buildings on campus along with what they have to offer and their locations within the context of UNCG’s campus.

Campus Building Analysis: Parking Decks

Sufficient parking capacity is an important factor and necessary evil in the campus master plan. Surface lots don’t have much to offer other than a place to park a car. Parking decks offer a higher density but they are expensive and most are probably considered a visual and physical obstruction to pedestrians. UNCG has over 3000 deck spaces with plans to expand that number by 1700 spaces in the future through two separate expansion projects. The parking decks are included on the list of tallest/largest buildings on UNCG’s campus. Note that the Oakland deck expansion will include a pedestrian bridge across the NC train tracks, an apparent attempt to cross the boundaries of the southern part of campus.

The location of a future deck seems to be a difficult decision to make. If you’re building over an existing surface lot, where do all of those people who used to park there, park now? In this case, it seems UNCG has partially developed our Lee street site into an overflow parking lot for that exact reason (as far as the design phase is concerned, everything on the site is open to our decision). Integrating parking as a mixed-use option in the program makes for interesting design opportunities since it has the potential to serve the university and the city. Perhaps taking that one step further and integrating a transportation hub into the program could be an even more complex design experience. The hub could include light rail, a bus station, or just serve as major node (or district if it became concentrated enough) for high density parking on campus.

Campus Building Analysis: Residential

Much of UNC Greensboro’s residential halls are located in North Central campus with the exception of both the Spring Garden Apartments and Tower Village. The concentration of residential halls has been classified as a residential district due to their relative proximity to each other (some of them are quite secluded). According to the current UNCG master plan, there are future plans for two residential halls on the parcel of land currently used for freshman parking, adjacent to Tower Village and across from a student recreation field. The proposed residential hall closest to Spring Garden is planned to have approximately 96,000 square feet with 1 occupant for every 325 gross square feet (about 295 students). The second is much larger at 130,000 square feet with the same occupant per gross square footage mentioned above (400 students).


With the possible addition of these residential halls, UNCG increases the potential for a secondary residential district on the southern edge of campus. Unfortunately this opportunity for increased density also creates a problem for parking. In adding these halls, UNCG loses a substantial number of surface parking spaces. If the new building designs follow a similar, seemingly successful, solution to that of the Spring Garden Apartments (mixed use with sub-level parking) then there should be minimal impact on commuters.

It should also be mentioned that the Spring Garden/Aycock intersection is a major gateway into campus. With increased student housing, there is opportunity for increased student activity and economic development around that newly developed district. Should one of the design teams choose the part of our studio’s Lee Street site adjacent to this gateway (Lee/Aycock intersection and corner parcel), integrating student activities or housing into the optional mixed-use part of the program would be something to consider for this location.
The residential halls on campus come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The older halls average about 200 net square feet per student occupant. While opinions vary on the subject of whether to live on campus or not from student to student, a majority of upperclassmen (and women) choose to live off campus because of the desire for more personal space. It is UNCG’s goal to attract more students to live on campus, regardless of their year classification. With that in mind, UNCG has recently taken the intiative in that realm by redeveloping the Spring Garden Street Apartments, offering over twice the average net square footage per student occupant (457) as well as offering sub-level parking. With larger housing options available, upperclassmen will be more likely to reconsider on campus living as opposed to comperable off-campus options.

Apologies for not posting earlier...my intro for the studio program document

On a narrow parcel of land, bordered on the North and South by the NCRR tracks/Oakland avenue and Lee street, and on the East and West by South Aycock street and Tate street, exists our opportunity. It is here that our 4th year studio has focused its attention, investigating and analyzing the context of the site through the study and understanding of the master plans proposed by both the City of Greensboro and the University of North Carolina – Greensboro. We see the railroad tracks and Lee street, not as social, physical, or economic boundaries, but as a immeasurable prospects for design and for improving the quality of life in the area beyond what it is and what it represents to citizens today. While working inward from the urban scale, we’ve also been working out-word by programming a mixed-use architectural building to be placed strategically as the face of UNCG on the southern entrance to campus. Our simultaneous studies draw inspiration for each other and for our eventual proposals for the new architecture building.

This document is a culmination of several areas of focus. As mentioned before, this book is first and foremost a programming document to aid our design teams challenge the status quo of an institutional architecture building. The Gatewood Studio Arts building, our current building, was the first item investigated. Having experienced the building ourselves, we were able to identify both the positive and negative aspects regarding offices, classrooms, studios, etc. Using this information in conjunction with construction drawings and the program document compiled for the building as an example to work from, we were able to set our own guidelines (listed further in this book) for the design team proposals.

The Gatewood building was not the only building we studied. To help the studio understand what other architecture schools had or hadn’t done before us, we performed several precedent studies. These studies served as real comparisons to our own building and to what we think an architecture building should be. From the adjacency of program spaces and the general aesthetic of the building in relation to the campus in which it exists, to the size of the student body served by the building, the information gathered not only helped us add and subtract program spaces, but also made the studio look into the varying ways in which previous architects had approached the design of. These studies will also fortify the foundation of this book for which the design teams plan to use to formulate their own solutions for a new architecture building on campus.

Our site serves as crossroad for several governing entities, more specifically the city of Greensboro and UNC Greensboro, among others. After disseminating the city’s Lee Street corridor plan and the University’s master campus plan, the studio was able to draw it’s own conclusions about land usage for our purposes with regards to the new architecture building proposals. The site will be a part of both the city and the university, serving the community on many different levels and layers. The site analysis included in this book will aid design teams in not only meeting the minimum expectations set forth in the plans laid out by the city and university, but also potentially exceeding them.

We are excited with the challenge presented before us and are looking forward to soaring into the design process. Perhaps we might be able to turn a few heads with our ideas….

texture, tactile experience with artifacts

How could I forget my toys? Wonderful objects they are...some structurally fragile, others cold to the touch. All of them have one thing in common: a unique tactile and textural opportunity. Even the artifacts made of the same material or are of the same "type" all hold a special experience by themselves, almost like a personal genetic code. The two items shown here were once very important to a train car but were discarded and forgotten about, much like everything else we found on our adventure.
If I had to take a guess, I'd say this device once connected and held two train cars together (not by itself of course). The iron latch, aside from its rusting outer layer, is in better shape relative to the rest of the other artifact material types. It carries a heavy appearance, a solid mass that weighs just as much as it looks.
Moving the latches on the end is still fairly easy as they surprisingly haven't rusted tight. One can only imagine the immense tension occurring within this locking device between two train cars. Running my fingers across several areas, it reminded me of sand paper although there was a substantial difference between the different mechanisms.
The sides have a finer feel then the center faces, perhaps because of a combination of the object's center of gravity (central mechanism) and inability to stay upright. The joints are distinctly rougher then the various surface areas.
Tiny craters seem to be in high concentration in that area but are also scattered about the entire artifact, like there is some sort of organism that can eat through the metal and carve out a home. The serial number is still visible and offers its own identity to my finger tips, subtle depressions in the iron skin allowing me to read without my eyes....

The second artifact, the train car wheel break...another device of action. How many breaks are there on a single train car? On a whole train (cars included)? The amount of force required to stop an object with such tremendous momentum is unbelievable...not so much when there are a couple hundred breaks to help out I suppose.
It seems to be a composition of iron and type of ceramic (break surface). While the iron side has a similar sand paper texture to our first artifact, some of the skin is flaky and easily chipped off when brushed up against. There also appears to be a decal of some sort although I can't tell what it is anymore because of the deterioration caused by the hostile environment it was in.
The cylindrical negative space has the same ceramic surface as the pad on the underside of the break. Both are severely cracked and fractured, worn down by the numerous times it was responsible for applying pressure to the wheels of the train car.
The smaller perpendicular cross opening in the cylindrical form might have been where another mechanical piece was connected to another form within the negative space.
This was my favorite part about the break...it actually looks like it might be a map. No X marks the spot for buried treasure.

Maybe next time.