They may not be running for president any time soon, but administrators are looking to build a Bryan Center walkway to the 21st century.
Built 20 years ago to help connect the newly-constructed Bryan Center to the rest of West Campus, the walkway has repeatedly drawn criticism for being too narrow, too unimaginative and even ugly. Now, as plans develop for a new building in the area and for renovations to other neighboring structures, administrators and student officials are thinking more about the future of the walkway.
"It needs to be destroyed. It's the most inefficient use of space I've seen," said senior Sean Young, residential life liaison for Duke Student Government.
Young said that despite the high usage of the walkway, the concrete structure discourages interaction and mingling among students. He cited its largely bare surface, with just a handful of benches and trash cans interspersed among the tabling of student organizations.
Just what could fill the void has been discussed by several University space committees since the early 1990s, including the Cultural Space Committee. Last year, that group suggested the expansion of the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture within the West Union Building, the creation of a multicultural center in or near the Bryan Center and the development of the area in between.
"We saw the link, the development of a fuller sense of what the walkway tries to do, as part of our contribution to the discussion of campus community," said committee chair Judith White, assistant vice president and director of the residential program review. "This quad was developed as a center of student life, and to have the Bryan Center feel like a tether out in space just doesn't fit."
White and other planners noted that changes to the walkway would require much more than tearing it down. The path would have to comply with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, and the loading areas below must remain accessible for large trucks.
"As attractive as it might be--the notion of taking the bridge down--you have to understand that you wouldn't just have a meadow. You'd be taking people into a series of loading docks," White said.
Still, administrators would like to create a link with more space, better aesthetics and easier connections with West Union and other buildings.
Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs, said one model might be a piazza, a town square typically found at the center of some Italian villages. Leading the renovation planning for West Union, the Bryan Center, Page Auditorium and the Flowers Building, Moneta said there is a hole among the buildings that he could see filled with a wider walkway, including fountains, modern art sculptures, a garden, tables and "corners to gather at."
"When it's a walkway, it's only a place to get from one place to another," he said. "I would very much like to see the walkway turn into a plaza."
Whether or not the walkway is a meeting point, to many students it is already a very social area, a well-known forum to chat with friends, table for an organization or draw political slogans in chalk.
"Everybody's in a club, and this is the space to talk and promote what you're doing," said freshman Alicia Cave, who sold United in Praise singing telegrams on the walkway Wednesday.
Many suggest, however, that the space could use significant improvement, and planners have placed the walkway among their highest priorities in discussions of renovating and reallocating student social space. "It was put in there when brutish concrete construction was certainly one way to do architecture and design," said John Pearce, University architect. "Today, at Duke, anyway, we're much more interested in contextual construction and design--how materials should be used, how the landscape should be done, how the lighting should be done."
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