The Future Campus – a world of meeting places

Copenhagen based JUUL | FROST Architects have completed an international survey entitled “The Future Campus – From the Academic Village to Urban University Hub". The survey was initiated by The Danish University and Property Agency and is intended to inspire future campus planning.

The Future Campus-project has resulted in a report that analyzes international tendencies within campus planning and development. The report concludes that interdisciplinarity, life/activities beyond usual lecture hours and the interaction between universities and cities will become increasingly important in the future.

The significance of meeting places
The survey emphasizes that one of the most important tendencies within campus planning is the need for meeting places on, by and out side campus areas. Modern learning is not restricted to auditoriums or class rooms that primarily are orchestrated for one-way communication. Fundamentally learning takes place everywhere and does so in formal as well as informal meeting places. Meeting places are places for exchange between students, researchers and citizens. The report therefore suggests that the functionally related - and at times - water proof barriers between the university and the city should be reconsidered. Campus areas should co-exist with  cities so that campus activities are integrated with city activities and vice versa. Urban life should be integrated with campus life via plug-ins while activities of campus areas should be spread out into the city in form of plug-outs. This type of interaction between users of the university and the surrounding world creates synergies that not only strengthen campus areas but also point towards the knowledge city as a world of meeting places.

Campus planning and the future cities
Helle Juul, Ph.D., Architect MAA, has lead the survey and emphasizes that the significance of meeting places for campus areas is in line with the over all development of cities: "The need for meeting places is underpinned by new urban research, that argues that cities in the future will be a combination of experience and knowledge cities. As a contrast to the functionally divided industrial cities where universities are situated as mono functional learning machines in the outskirts of the city centres, cities in the future will be hybrids where facilities and functions are fused together."

A diverse planning tool
"The Future Campus - From the Academic Village to Urban University Hub" contains comparative analyzes of Lancaster University, ETH (Die Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich) and MIT (Massachussetts Institute of Technology) as well as three Danish universities. The report ends with a catalogue of ideas that is to inspire campus planning in the future.

The report paper has been developed into an operational planning tool that can future proof campus areas, science and business parks. Among other things JUUL | FROST Architects have used the planning tool for campus planning in Malmö, Sweden and in the harbour of Denmarks third largest city, Odense. They are currently conducting a campus location strategy for The University College Copenhagen.

For additional information please contact
Helle Juul, Ph.D., architect MAA, partner at JUUL | FROST Architects
Phone +45 32 95 95 78 E-mail: [email protected]

Photo text: Meeting place at ETH 

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