New Quad Improves Drainage, Accessibility
With the addition of a new 500-space parking garage and elevated athletic fields, Worcester Polytechnic Institute was looking to reorient its campus. Working with the WPI Facilities Department, our landscape architects developed a campus-wide conceptual framework plan to address the areas of greatest need.
With new parking and vehicular circulation now concentrated away from the center of campus, the first priority was to redesign the Quad by creating a strong, central community and gathering space for students and faculty. Our design accomplished this by realigning circulation connections, providing donor recognition opportunities, improving drainage within the established active high-use lawn, introducing large trees for definition and shade, and providing placemaking nodes. Concurrently, the team designed the Wedge Dining Terrace to solve both universal accessibility issues and provide an outdoor dining terrace that, although adjacent to The Quad, is a destination in itself.
In addition to these projects, our landscape architects continues to address logistical challenges and prioritize a plan for the school to accomplish its goals as the campus evolves. Working with WPI, we have implemented several individual areas of the conceptual campus framework plan.
Services Snapshot
Halvorson | Tighe & Bond Studio provided landscape architecture design services in support of this project.
