Central Campus architect selected

Conn. firm to lead Duke's big project

DURHAM -- Duke University announced Tuesday that the architecture firm Pelli Clarke Pelli, which boasts extensive experience designing college campus buildings, has been awarded the job of creating a design for the university's Central Campus project.

The job involves creating a new campus on 200 acres south of Erwin Road, between the existing East and West campuses. The land is now occupied by, among other things, an aging assortment of university-owned apartment buildings, various parking lots and the Sarah P. Duke Gardens.

It is a very long-term project. Over the next half-century, the new third campus is expected to emerge, fostering academic and social integration. It will have a mix of new student housing, university buildings, arts centers, classrooms, student eateries and campus-based shops.

The firm likely will design a campus pulling from the distinct styles of the Gothic West Campus and Georgian classical East Campus, said Richard Riddell, special assistant to Duke President Richard Brodhead.

Riddell said that when Duke leaders visited the firm's Connecticut offices this year, they were happily surprised to stumble upon an entire studio room dedicated to the Central Campus project. Pelli Clarke Pelli hadn't yet been been hired but clearly wanted the job.

"They had invested themselves in this," Riddell said.

The firm has designed many large university projects and several other high-profile buildings -- the World Financial Center in New York City is one -- and has created several university master plans. It was hired in part on the strength of its campus work, including research facilities at UCLA, an engineering center at Yale and a cluster of facilities at Grinnell College in Iowa.

Duke experience, too

The firm has worked previously at Duke. About eight years ago, it designed Duke's sports quad, which includes the Wilson, Sheffield and Schwartz-Butters buildings and the area known as Krzyzewskiville.

"He just exhibited an understanding of life on campus," Riddell said of Cesar Pelli, the firm's co-founder. Pelli was the dean of Yale's architecture school from 1977 to 1984. Brodhead, Duke's president, was a Yale English professor at the time.

"President Brodhead wants the architecture to be as enduring as it is on West and East [campuses]," Riddell said.

Pelli will work under some restrictions. Early this year, the Durham City Council approved a rezoning for much of the property after Duke agreed to a dozen legally binding conditions that will limit the height of buildings and the amount of retail space and will require the planting of bigger trees and other concessions.

Pelli's firm was selected from a pool of 11 firms initially considered. Pelli said Tuesday that design will begin after conversations with a lot of people on campus as well as an examination of traffic, environmental and other issues.

"This is going to be a fresh start," he said. "We are already dealing with a well-developed university."

The firm has done similar, broad-scope master plans at Rice University, the University of Texas at Austin, and two Argentine universities, Pelli said.

"You learn something in every experience, but you don't try to replicate anything," he said.

The university originally intended to revamp solely the residential aspect of Central Campus but later broadened its vision to target a larger, more integrated "academic village" that university officials pledge will include green roofs, stormwater conservation and other environmentally friendly features.

University officials say academic units in the arts, humanities and international programs will be key components in the Central Campus.

The "academic village" model is one that universities have been moving to for years now, an acknowledgement that utilitarian, institutional campuses of generations past aren't adequate, Pelli said.

"There is a re-understanding, a re-admission that campuses need to be treated gingerly," he said. "They are for people."