Duke has spent the better part of a decade seeking out a venue for student life. Now, Duke has the chance to reconstruct student space on West Campus and Central Campus that lends itself to the vision of a dynamic intellectual and social environment that the University has articulated as its goal.
To capitalize on this unique opportunity, the University must strategically integrate spaces to foster both a community of scholars and climate for individual growth while keeping open avenues for unpredictable development. Central Campus, which will be completely re-built in the coming years, offers the most room to develop a new campus climate. The core of the current Central proposal is a campus that connects three separate spaces--East Campus, West Campus and eventually the Health System--into a cohesive community at the epicenter of the University.
Central must become a destination, not just a thoroughfare. It should serve as a magnet, drawing students, faculty and staff into Duke's campus where lively interaction can become the norm.
To ensure that the space unifies the campus, Duke has to think carefully about the needs of the different constituencies it hopes to draw together. The University will start with undergraduates, replacing 1,000 existing Central beds with a pair of modern facilities.
When completed in 2006 and 2008, respectively, the apartment-style buildings will house upperclassmen and create a logical evolution of undergraduate residential life. Freshmen graduate from the intimate quarters on East to the academic center on West to a more independent style of living on Central as they move through the University.
The new campus must meet the requirements of both its residents and the greater Duke community.
The University is successfully creating academic spaces that harbor interdisciplinarity, and it should look to this academic model as it tries to bring a similar concept into social and residential life. The school must engineer social spaces that encourage the types of interaction that ground personal and professional development.
To afford Duke the opportunity to create a unique identity for undergraduate life, the development must complement, not detract from, the other two undergraduate communities.
On West Campus, the University has prudently halted plans to construct a plaza as the foundation of a new student village. The delay will buy time for administrators to coordinate village plans with those for the surrounding buildings, including the Bryan Center and the West Union Building, and mesh that entire scheme with the concept for Central.
The planning of both major, long-term projects must occur together, with constant communication and collaboration among senior administrators. Neither the residential space on Central nor the academic and extracurricular space on West will succeed if it is planned as an independent unit.
Duke must remember that at the heart of any University lies not the buildings, but the people. These projects will all take multiple years, and even though they will address space problems for future classes, current students will not see the fruits of the efforts.
Administrators need to recognize that the issues the new spaces will solve are still present in the current student body, and while we will all hold our breaths in anticipation of the new architecture, we cannot hold back action.
The framework for student life that fits Duke's unique cultural needs to begin now with temporary measures so that when the buildings are finally integrated, the community will be too.
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