College Ave. Campus Design Competition Winner

December 13, 2006

Members of the Rutgers Community:


Last year I announced a design competition to help Rutgers achieve a new vision for the College Avenue Campus. Between then and now, the university has conducted many lectures, forums, surveys, and discussions about campus planning, and they have been enormously helpful. Many in the Rutgers community have served on the advisory committees, design jury, and planning team, and they have my thanks and admiration.

This was a competition of ideas. The five design teams took very different approaches and suggested novel ways to look at the campus. We learned from their perspectives, as well as from our public discussions and from the experts who came to campus. Some common themes emerged from among these ideas, such as:

  • don't close College Avenue completely to vehicular traffic
  • take greater advantage of the campus's proximity to the Raritan River
  • don't ignore the historical nature of the campus
  • start with more detailed planning and the transforming of public spaces; defer building until later on.

We considered this input along with factors such as the transformation of undergraduate education, our needs on Livingston and other campuses, and the dollars that may be available from various sources for this project. The final decision was to select a team with which we are confident that we can work toward an exciting future for Rutgers and for the College Avenue Campus. I am proud to announce that we have selected the team led by Enrique Norten of Ten Arquitectos and by Ignacio Bunster-Ossa of Wallace, Roberts, & Todd (WRT). The news release is available at http://urwebsrv.rutgers.edu/medrel/viewArticle.html?ArticleID=5505.


In making this decision, Rutgers is not selecting every detail of Ten Arquitectos/WRT's design plan. Rather, we are selecting a team that has proved itself most capable of working in partnership with Rutgers and New Brunswick toward a distinctive vision that will attract the best to Rutgers and will make citizens and alumni proud. We were impressed by this team's openness to listening to the university community, its collaborative approach, and the creativity of its proposal. Given our financial realities, we appreciated the scalability of the Ten Arquitectos/WRT project, which can be implemented in increments rather than all at once. We are also excited about the proposed project's ability to have a dramatic impact in the short term even as we plan further steps in the future.

Having selected a team, we are eager to take the next steps toward realizing this vision. We will place a priority on those elements of the plan that can be accomplished soon, such as to make the public and pedestrian spaces on the College Avenue Campus more attractive and appealing.

Ensuring that College Avenue lives up to our bold vision will take many years and much more conversation and planning. But I couldn't be happier to have Ten Arquitectos/WRT as our partner along the way.

Richard L. McCormick
President
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey