Lincoln Hall Project
The Evolving Quad
Looking Forward
Modern concerns are increasingly in conflict with large spaces on campus, even as they’re still revered. Campus quadrangles run against an increasing concern for sustainable environments, for example, as their current design requires a lot of maintenance.
So far, rather than replacing or drastically altering their open space, universities have been focusing on more progressive maintenance techniques to solve the problem of sustainability, Sears says.
Spaces like the Quad are also jeopardized by aging buildings. During the ongoing renovation of Lincoln Hall, workers used a new technique of re-lining storm sanitary sewers rather than digging trenches in the Quad to remove them. Heavy cranes were positioned so they weren’t parked on the Quad lawns.
It begs the question, however, of how long people will take such steps to preserve such open space.
“As long as that landscape is the people’s perception of the highest and best use, [the Quad as it appears today] will remain,” Sears says. “If people valued agriculture in an aesthetic way, we would plant corn on campus. But that’s really not what people’s perception of an appropriate environment for academic buildings is right now.”
Corn on the Quad? It sounds funny today, but old Adams never saw skateboarders coming, either.
By Dave Evensen and editorial intern Jason Peterson