Rethinking the Campus
To better understand the campus as it is today, the team interviewed faculty, students, college staff and neighborhood leaders, conducted an inventory of Columbia’s buildings, and commissioned a Cognitive Mapping survey.
The team interviewed faculty, students, college staff and neighborhood leaders.
Cognitive Mapping Study Cognitive Mapping Study
In March 2005, a survey was emailed to all Columbia
students inviting them to track and report their
movements around 
campus over the course of one
week. The survey results showed that commuter
students arrive at public transportation terminals
and parking lots while residential students walk from
dormitories to academic buildings. Throughout the
day, traffic is concentrated around the 600 blocks of
Wabash and Michigan Avenues. Some students travel
further south to the specialized facilities around the
intersection of Wabash and 11th Street. Most students
visit just one or two buildings in a day. In the evening,
commuter students return home while resident
students study or participate in cultural activities on
campus.
Interviews revealed that the Columbia College
Chicago community is largely separated into
departmental areas. For example, photography
students are unlikely to cross paths with graphic
designers even though the departments are near
each other. Routes between classrooms or buildings
do not offer opportunities for encounters between
students of different disciplines. There are few areas
for students to meet and “hang out” while on campus.
Columbia 2010 sets a goal for collaboration between
students in different disciplines, but the physical
campus does not support this goal.
CAMPUS ZONES
As surveys from the cognitive mapping exercise showed, there are currently two disconnected hubs of activity at the north and south ends of campus. Based on these findings, the participants in the brainstorming discussion on Columbia’s financial and real estate planning encouraged the College to focus its real estate strategy, consolidating its campus facilities from both the south and the west. Consolidation would concentrate student activity over a smaller area, enhancing the vitality of the campus community by intensifying the activity on campus. The campus zone boundaries proposed by the Master Plan team reflect these recommendations.
Planning Principle: |
Academic and administrative facilities should be
concentrated into a zone east of the El tracks that are
mid-block between State and 
Wabash, south of Congress
and north of Roosevelt. Most of Columbia College Chicago’s
current facilities are within this area. Future growth of
academic and administrative functions should be within these
boundaries.
Planning Principle: |
The zone for residential facilities overlaps the academic zone, but as these facilities are less critical to the active daytime energy of the campus, residential facilities may be located within a larger area. This allows more flexibility to make use of real estate opportunities that arise.
Over time, as Columbia acquires property focused within the recommended zones, the campus will naturally have a more vital campus community and a stronger presence in the South Loop.
Planning Principle: |
Some Columbia programs require functions that are incompatible with the South Loop central campus. For example, the spaces required for Media Production are large, column-free, ground-level sound stages with high ceilings. This type of facility, which is limited to one or two stories because it is not financially viable to build above the clear-span sound stages, is not economically practical in a neighborhood with steadily rising property values. For this reason, some facilities, on a case-by-case basis, will be sited at a remote location.
The current real estate pattern of acquiring property throughout the South Loop has inadvertently isolated the various academic programs. Under the recommendations of the Master Plan team, the concentration and overlap of the campus zones will bring students from different disciplines together. The conscious juxtaposition of the variety of uses on Columbia’s campus increases opportunities for encounter, discussion and collaboration outside the classroom, embracing the development of a campus life that enriches learning.
Campus Hubs
Planning Principle: |
A second recommendation for the reorganization of
Columbia’s campus is the development of campus hubs.
Hubs are facilities that act as focal points within the
larger campus, creating concentrations of activity. The Master Plan team envisions four hubs: a Campus
Center, a Studio hub, a Performance hub, and an
Administrative hub.
The hubs grow from existing patterns of use of campus buildings. The current administrative hub should remain at the 600 block of South Michigan. The cognitive mapping study and building surveys showed studio art and liberal arts and sciences programs concentrated around the intersection of Wabash and Harrison. Performance-based programs are concentrated around Wabash and 11th street. Few students travel between these concentrations of activity. The team recommends that studio activities and performance activities continue to be focused at their current locations but that the related creative disciplines are expressed at street level. A proposed Campus Center, containing liberal arts and sciences programs, space for studio arts, and new student activity functions, is located between these two academic hubs, central to all activities on campus. The Campus Center will be a destination for the Columbia community, increasing the student traffic along Wabash and providing a vital link between the concentrations of activity at the north and south ends of the campus.
The concept of campus hubs grew directly out of the brainstorming session, where participants discussed the need for the campus to have a central focus in addition to smaller, School-based hubs. School-based hubs allow each school to develop and maintain an individual identity within the larger framework of Columbia College Chicago. Although each hub is the nucleus of School-specific activities on campus, no hub is the exclusive domain of any one School. The hubs express the public aspects of each specialty, encouraging participation from students and faculty from all Schools and the neighborhood community.
Front Yard/Back Yard
Columbia’s campus has two distinct faces. The campus “front yard” is the more formal and historic Michigan Avenue. The campus “back yard” is the casual, funky spontaneity of Wabash Avenue. The front yard and back yard each have important messages to communicate about Columbia College Chicago, but each plays a different role.
Michigan Avenue and Grant Park are Chicago’s front yard; a traditional grand boulevard and the location of many of the city’s cultural institutions. The status and reputation of Michigan Avenue makes Columbia’s front door at 600 South Michigan an impressive welcome for parents, visitors, and prospective students. The front door should be open, welcoming, and also substantial.
Grant Park provides open green space for an
otherwise hard-surfaced urban college campus.
The campus planning experts who participated
in the campus brainstorming session stressed the
importance of maintaining a connection to the
park as a vital resource for students. At the end of
each year it is a primary location for the Manifest
celebration. The park is a place for students to
study, relax, or simply escape the intensity of
the rest of the campus throughout the year.
In the campus “back yard”, along Wabash
Avenue the focus will be on Columbia’s
sustaining creative community. Focusing
Columbia’s real estate expansion within campus
zones would concentrate student activity in a
smaller area, making street life more vibrant.
With an increase in the student presence on
campus, the College needs to become more
permeable at street level, making the creative
process and works of art visible to passersby.
Columbia College Chicago should actively place
creative activity in as many storefront windows
along Wabash as possible. Galleries, fabrication
workshops, active studios, theater or dance
rehearsal space or performance art venues
are possible functions. Featuring the creative
process in a storefront window will facilitate
communication between the different disciplines
and with the neighborhood population in general.