Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Annie Pfeiffer Chapel in Florida. Image © Josh Hallett

是時候模糊城市和大學之間的界限了
It’s Time to Blur the Boundaries Between Town and Gown

由專筑網王沛儒，小R編譯

我住在倫敦，那里有 23 所大學，這些大學的在校生人數接近 50 萬。在一個擁有近 1000 萬居民的城市中，5% 聽起來是一個很小的比例，但卻是一個相當可觀的數字，大約相當于亞特蘭大的人口數量。如果城市規�？s小，這個比例就會上升。在我們隔壁城市牛津（人口 15 萬），40% 的人口是在校生；在劍橋（人口 12.5 萬），比例大概是 33%。在這些地方，校園和城市緊密地交織在一起，二者的規劃息息相關。

許多美國大學在創建之初，都是從牛津、劍橋大學的城市形態中汲取靈感。這在四合院和新哥特式建筑中都有所體現，但在新建筑的表現形式上卻出現了一種創新：大學是獨立的場所�？赡苁欠�譯的問題，因為牛津、劍橋，并不存在校園的說法。這些大學分布廣泛，但其中許多學院都與城市隔絕。無論是 14 世紀還是 20 世紀的設計（參見牛津大學圣凱瑟琳學院或劍橋大學菲茨威廉學院的現代主義重新詮釋），它們的學院系統都形成了錯落有致的形態，但每所學院都屬于整體，這些大學分布在其所在的城市。

在牛津，有拉德克利夫區和伯德雷恩區，這是牛津大學的歷史中心，當地人、游客和大學都聚集在這里。在城市的其他地區，有較新的拉德克里夫天文臺區和牛津科學區；學院、院系和研究所遍布全城。Osney Mead和Begbroke正在規劃兩個創新/科學園區，它們相距三英里。牛津大學自身是城市塑造者，最近成立了牛津大學發展公司，這是一家合資企業，正在開發這兩個校區，還投資改善了城市的基礎設施。劍橋也采用了類似的模式，由大學建設新的城市擴展區，目的是為了增加歐洲熱門的房地產市場的住房供應。

因此，這些大學城形成于幾個世紀的發展，這會是美國大學的未來空間嗎？

俯瞰羅德島普羅維登斯，布朗大學的身影從城市的輪廓中顯現出來。1770 年，布朗大學搬遷到了現在的位置--學院山上一座占地 8 英畝的莊園，這個莊園歸布朗家族所有，這是布朗大學的主要贊助方。在 19 世紀和 20 世紀期間，布朗大學圍繞著一個中心廣場逐步發展，將城鎮和校舍錯綜復雜地交織在一起，形成了今天的學院山社區。

普羅維登斯是美國古老的城市，與牛津劍橋一樣，布朗大學的大部分建筑在汽車出現之前就已經建好了。因此，學院建筑和非學院建筑之間的距離比較近。建筑占地面積比許多新建大學都要小。這為大學邊界線與城市邊界線之間、公共生活與學術生活之間的毗鄰和互動提供了許多機會。

In London, where I live, there are 23 universities. Those universities make up an institutional population of nearly half a million people. In a city with almost 10 million residents, 5% may seem a small number, but it’s a significant one, roughly the population of Atlanta. Shrink the city, and the proportion can increase dramatically. In our neighbouring cities of Oxford (population 150,000), 40% of the population is institutional; in Cambridge (population 125,000), it’s 33%. Campus and city are so intertwined in those places that a plan for one is almost necessarily a plan for the other.
In their origins, many American universities looked to Oxbridge for inspiration in their urban form. It’s seen in the ubiquitous quadrangles and neo-gothic architecture, but in its New World manifestation came an innovation: the campus as a standalone place. Something became lost in the translation, because at Oxford or Cambridge, there is no campus per se. The universities are diffuse; however, many of their college precincts are closed off from the city. Their collegiate systems result in a patchwork of cloistered domains, whether designed in the 14th century or the 20th century (look to St Catherine’s College, Oxford, or Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, for modernist reinterpretations), but each is a piece of a greater whole.
In Oxford, there’s the Radcliffe Camera and Bodleian quarter, the historic heart of the university where locals, tourists, and university co-mingle. In other parts of the city, there are the newer Radcliffe Observatory Quarter and Oxford Science Area; colleges, faculties, departments, and institutes are dotted around town. Two innovation/science campuses are being planned at Osney Mead and Begbroke. They’re three miles apart. Recognizing its role as a shaper of the city, the university has recently set up Oxford University Development, a joint venture that is developing both sites and making investments in improving the city’s infrastructure. Cambridge follows a similar pattern, with the university building new urban extensions that aim to increase housing supply in what is one of Europe’s hottest property markets.

So, these are university cities that emerged through an organic process over centuries. Might this be the spatial future for the American university?
Look above Providence, Rhode Island, and Brown University’s figure ground appears from the grain of the city. In 1770, the college moved to its current location, an 8-acre estate on College Hill, owned by the Brown family, its principal benefactors. It grew incrementally around a central quad during the 19th and 20th centuries, weaving town and gown intricately together, creating today’s College Hill neighbourhood.
Providence is one of the oldest cities in America, and, like Oxbridge, much of Brown predates the automobile. The result is that college and non-college buildings are closer together. Building footprints are smaller than in many newer universities. This presents many micro-opportunities for adjacencies and interactions between the university’s boundary line and the city’s, between public and academic life.


Brown University. Image © Daniel Elsea

圍墻圍起來的校園有意義嗎？還是說，像布朗大學這樣的大學將成為城市中的開放區域？確定模式非常重要，因為這兩種規劃類型截然不同。校園規劃優先考慮內部的秩序和可辨識性，還要強調邊緣的界定；然而，更合適的還得是鄰里規劃，它更加尋求以非正式的漸進式城市設計和軟化的邊緣向外延伸。許多城市大學本質就是社區。

并不是每所校園都在城市，事實上，美國的許多校園都在小鎮上。就拿我讀本科的威廉姆斯學院來說吧。威廉姆斯學院典型地反映了美國人喜歡把學院建在小鎮而非城市的傾向�！靶℃偂被�本上就是一條街道和幾個街區的典雅的住宅，與田園風光融為一體。介于兩者之間的區域就是“城鎮”。威廉姆斯建于 18 世紀末，逐漸修建了大量的房產，向原始地貌延伸。如今，在全鎮 2,176 英畝的土地中，威廉姆斯占了 450 多英畝。雖然學院規模相對較�。ǔ鲇谶x擇），但卻是方圓數英里內最大的機構。這表明，土地管理是學院規劃的核心責任。盡管威廉姆斯學院與世隔絕，但其梭羅式的環境卻很有欺騙性，它并不孤獨，坐落在生物群落和棲息地之間，自然和文化景觀需要精心呵護和尊重。這就要求在建筑設計時需要采取溫和的方式。

Does a walled-off campus make sense? Or, instead, is a university like Brown an open and porous citizen of the city? Deciding which is the case is important, because the two need very different types of plans. A campus plan prioritizes the order and legibility within and places emphasis on defining edges; yet what might be more appropriate is a neighborhood plan, which seeks to reach out with a more informal and incremental urban design and softened edges. Many urban universities are effectively neighborhoods.
Not every campus is urban; indeed, many American ones are in small towns. Take Williams College, where I was an undergraduate. Williams typifies an American preference for locating colleges on the frontier rather than in cities. “Town” is pretty much one street and a few blocks of genteel houses that blend into a bucolic landscape. Everything else in between is “gown.” Williams, founded in the late 18th century, gradually accumulated a large number of properties sprawling out into the virgin landscape. Today, it holds over 450 acres of the town’s total of 2,176. It may be a relatively small institution (by choice), but the college is the biggest player for miles and miles. This suggests a responsibility for land stewardship at the heart of college planning. Despite the splendid isolation, Williams’ Thoreau-esque setting is deceiving. It is not alone. It is set amid biomes and habitats, a natural and cultural landscape that demands care and deference. This suggests a gentle approach to building design.


Williams College. Image © Daniel Elsea

美國最美的文化建筑就是最好的例證，安藤忠雄設計的克拉克藝術學院擴建工程是隸屬于這個學院的教學博物館，它坐落在伯克郡的風景中。寬敞的內部空間可以向外眺望伯克郡的群山，里德-希爾德布蘭德（Reed Hilderbrand）設計的人造景觀與周圍的自然景觀融為一體，安藤的建筑也隨之融入其中，甚至還柔化了周圍笨重的建筑--20 世紀 50 年代的美學藝術建筑和 20 世紀 70 年代協和建筑事務所（The Architects Collaborative）設計的粗野主義建筑，給人的感覺更像是波士頓而不是伯克郡。建筑師 SO-IL 最近公布的為威廉姆斯學院藝術博物館所做的設計也采用了類似的景觀主導方法。在這種情況下，校園不是由建筑和草坪的簡單組成，而是將建筑與自然融為一體。

洛克菲勒大學坐落在曼哈頓上東區的東河畔，它的地理位置與克拉克藝術學院截然不同。這座 20 世紀的校園與周圍的城市通過圍墻隔開，從規劃和風格上看，更像是一所中世紀的牛津劍橋大學。這所大學只能往上走，別無他法。在第一大道（First Avenue）和富蘭克林-羅斯福大道（Franklin D Roosevelt Drive）之間的第 62 街和第 72 街之間，有一個廣闊的醫療社區，占地覆蓋了 20 多個連續的街區，其中包括多家專注于醫學研究和實踐以及生物醫學研究的全球性機構：洛克菲勒大學特別外科醫院（Rockefeller University Hospital for Special Surgery）、紐約長老會醫院（New York-Presbyterian Hospital）、威爾康奈爾醫學中心（Weill Cornell Medical Center）、威爾康奈爾醫學院（Weill Cornell Medical College）和斯隆凱特琳癌癥紀念中心（Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center），這就是嚴肅的科學力量。

One of the most beautiful cultural buildings in the U.S. exemplifies this. Tadao Ando’s expansion of the Clark Art Institute, a teaching museum attached to the college, is set in its Berkshire landscape in such a way that it almost disappears. Generous internal spaces look out into the Berkshire hills, with a manmade landscape by Reed Hilderbrand blending into the surrounding nature, and by extension Ando’s building, while even softening its clunkier neighbours—a 1950s Beaux Arts folly and 1970s brutalist hunk by The Architects Collaborative, which feels more Bostonian than Berkshires. The recently unveiled design by architects SO–IL for the Williams College Museum of Art adopts a similarly landscape-led approach. What’s happening in this case is less a campus of formal buildings and lawns and more an approach of nestling buildings into nature.
In a vastly different setting, Rockefeller University occupies a compact citadel on the East River in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Walled off from the city around it, this 20th century campus is more like a Medieval Oxbridge college in plan and demeanour. The university can’t really go anywhere but up, and it has. But cross the street and check out its immediate neighbours. There is a wider medical community that runs between 62nd and 72nd, between First Avenue and Franklin D Roosevelt Drive, covering over 20 contiguous blocks that includes several global institutions dedicated to the study and practice of medicine and biomedical research: the Rockefeller University Hospital for Special Surgery, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical Center, Weill Cornell Medical College, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. That’s serious scientific power.


The Rockefeller University. Image © Daniel Elsea

因此，乍一看，這似乎是一個獨立的區域，實際上這是整個城市知識生態系統。然而，洛克菲勒最初的園區以約克大道和東河為界（利用了羅斯福大道的使用權），占據了第 63 街和第 68 街之間的五個街區。校園三面完全封閉，只有東 66 街的一個主入口可以進入，如果說多孔性的條件是什么，那就是它了，這些醫療機構的鄰居們必然有著許多相同的空間要求和期望。

作為天然的創新搖籃，美國的大學可能是開啟可持續城市的鑰匙。馬薩諸塞州劍橋市比任何美國城市都更能體現這種可能性。這里有著龐大的大學機構--我們可以稱之為“MITHarvard”--占據了城市的兩端，但隨著兩所大學的擴建，也在逐漸靠攏。兩所大學的在校生占劍橋總人口的三分之一。

So what at first glance seems a standalone place is actually part of an incidental urban knowledge ecosystem. Yet Rockefeller’s original campus is bounded by York Avenue and the East River (utilizing air rights over the FDR Drive), occupying five blocks between 63rd and 68th. It is completely enclosed on three sides, accessed by a single main entrance on East 66th Street. If there ever was a condition for porosity, this would be it. These medical neighbors are bound to share many of the same spatial requirements and ambitions.
The natural cradles of innovation, America’s universities might be the key to unlocking more sustainable cities. Cambridge, Massachusetts, exemplifies this possibility more so than any American city. Here there is a vast university apparatus—we can call it MITHarvard—that occupies two ends of the city but that gradually is coming closer together as both universities have expanded. The institutional population of the two universities comprises a third of the total population of Cambridge.


MITHarvard. Image © Daniel Elsea

哈佛一直在“規劃”，也側面反映了他們管理方式的分散性。如今，哈佛大學的校區已經越過查爾斯河，擴展到波士頓本土了。然而，最近我驚奇地發現，麻省理工學院從未遵循過校園規劃，也不想進行校園規劃。麻省理工學院給我的感覺是，這樣的規劃會限制其校園的發展。

麻省理工學院和哈佛大學，就像牛津大學和劍橋大學一樣，享有一種共生關系，為他們的城市帶來社會、文化和經濟效益，反之亦然。如果大學與城市合作，為劍橋的可持續城市發展塑造更全面的框架，會怎樣呢？以這種方式擴大規�？梢院芎玫靥幚硪幌盗袉栴}，從住房可負擔性到容納初創企業，到投資公共交通，再到推動氣候適應性的發展。

Reflecting the decentralized nature of how it is governed, Harvard is always “planning.” Harvard’s holdings today have now sprawled across the Charles River into Boston proper. Yet I was struck to learn recently that MIT has never followed a campus plan, nor does it want one. The feeling being such a plan would constrain its opportunistic approach to campus growth.
MIT and Harvard, like Oxford and Cambridge, enjoy a symbiotic relationship, bringing social, cultural, and economic benefits to their city, and vice-versa. What if the universities teamed up with the city to shape a more comprehensive framework for Cambridge’s sustainable urban development? Scaling up in this way could deliver real benefits to a host of issues, from housing affordability to accommodating startup businesses to making investments in mass transit to pushing the boundary on climate resilience.


Brown University. Image © Daniel Elsea

一個強大的城市為一所大學的成功提供了關鍵因素。無論是對人才的吸引力、學生的安全，還是提升院校品牌和豐富多樣性。在校園之外，在城市中零散的建筑群與城市本身的整體體驗之間，是否可以找到大學的身份認同？城市即大學，大學即城市？也許是時候讓我們所熟知的校園規劃退出歷史舞臺了。取而代之的應該是一種更加外向型的規劃，在這種規劃中，與大學環境相關的往往是更為重要和復雜的問題，除此之外，大學內部的規劃也同樣重要。

美國大學可以成為促進城市規劃進步的有力工具。在它們所在的地方，通常沒有其他單一的土地所有者可以在當地發展中扮演如此具有變革性的角色。作為場所締造者，它們擁有得天獨厚的優勢。也許是時候讓校園回歸大學最初的愿景了：它屬于城市，二者的邊界逐步模糊。

A strong city provides a university with key ingredients for success. Whether it’s attractiveness to talent or student safety or boosting institutional brand and enriching diversity. Might university identity be found beyond the campus, in a territory somewhere between a scattered collection of buildings within a city and a whole experience of the city itself? The city as the university, and the university as the city? Maybe it’s time to retire the campus plan as we have known it. In its place should be a more outward-looking type of plan where the often much more significant and complex issues pertaining to the university’s context are given just as much importance as to what has carefully been planned within.
American universities could be powerful instruments for progressive urban planning. Where they are situated, there usually is no other single landowner primed to play such a transformative role in local development. They occupy a uniquely privileged role as placemakers. Perhaps then it’s time to return the campus to the original vision of the university: as part of the polis, where its boundaries are blurred.