Campus: University or a Modern Urban Structure?

Abstract

Modern cities face a range of problems, such as the need to redevelop inefficiently used former industrial territories, traffic congestion in cities, air, water and soil pollution and the disappearance of cities' last remaining natural areas. These issues require rethinking methods for the redevelopment and renovation of city districts. The campus model for the formation of sustainable territorial units in a city is set to replace conventional zoning (residential area, industrial area, city centre, recreational area). In campus structures, like in university campuses, everything is grouped together: residential and recreational facilities, schools and workplaces. Meanwhile, the environment, with elements of an individually-branded design code, is an area for likeminded people (residents of the campus) to interact. New social and economic models, as well as new global ideas, contribute to the appearance of new campus city blocks and micro- and macro-structures that are comparable to smart cities – the showcases of contemporary intellectual communities. In such urban areas, nature also plays a different role: it ceases to be a passive background, a means of featureless landscaping based on standard principles. The present research offers a description, analysis and classification of campus urban structures, based on the preliminary study of historical types of landscape organization in university campuses. Based on comparative historical analysis and experimental modeling, it distinguishes five types of the architectural and landscape organization of campuses: the enclosed model, the communicative model, the podium model, the nature-oriented model and the nature-equivalent model. In nature-equivalent campuses, nature becomes the main participant in the environment. Such urban structures become natural elements themselves, as they become parts of the ecosystem: environmentally safe, sustainable and self-regulating components of the natural and anthropogenic global landscape. The material laid out in the present research is of practical importance for students of architecture and campus designers.