Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects + LTL Architects + Derive Engineers

Rooted in the site’s history of community, farming, and personal growth, with a focus on future climatic change, the design for the University at Buffalo’s South Campus envisions a campus evolving over several decades to meet the needs of students, faculty, staff, and Buffalonians and fostering a reciprocal relationship with the city and region.

Using a broad set of inputs – IPCC and NY State Climate Impact Assessment data, student assessments of campus issues and needs, engineering data and analysis, and the University at Buffalo mandates to be carbon neutral – The Biogenic Campus plan creates a strategy for the evolution of the campus over a 50-year timeline to create a vibrant ecology and community refuge. This responsive framework adapts to extreme weather, shifting demographics, and evolving educational paradigms. The campus is reconceived as a collective resource: capturing carbon, generating energy, growing biomaterials for structures and beyond, and enlivening the campus for all. The visionary plan manifests three primary principles for resiliency:

Interdependent Systems: Infrastructure, Architecture, and Landscape are intertwined – the landscape provides biomaterials for construction, ecosystems support geothermal infrastructure while sequestering carbon, gardens provide education and nutrition, and structure and landscape function as extensions of each other.

Biodiverse & Multivalent Landscapes: Ecological corridors structure networks of circulation and education; micro-climates provide a variety of social and educational spaces; precipitation is proactively managed; and adaptive management reduces maintenance and promotes ecosystem health.

Biogenic Architecture: The campus grows its architecture; site-grown, plant-based materials provide for the construction and renovation of buildings, reducing embodied carbon and increasing thermal performance.
The landscape is comprised of two primary ecologies – the Oak Savanna and the Ribbon Forest, consisting of Limestone Woodland and Oak-Hickory communities. The Ribbon Forest offers a shaded multi-modal path for students and the community, wind protection from fierce winter climate, and a diverse habitat for non-human species. The Savanna is a biodiversity hotspot and accommodates geothermal wells beneath grasses that sequester carbon. The Geothermal Timber Forest is artfully managed on a harvest cycle that supplies material for construction while preventing root intrusion into infrastructure—linking forest management directly to energy performance.

New building construction and renovation projects on campus, including a new University-Assisted Community School, are constructed of biogenic campus-grown materials. The Biogenic campus expands its reach by expanding these new building technologies to the Buffalo region as well as the growth of its materials. As demand for biogenic material on campus shrinks, the fields become community gardens and serve as living laboratories for students and the community, reinforcing landscape as a site of learning and care.

The integrated landscape and building systems create a refuge from climatic extremes. Wetlands, forests, and savannas moderate temperature, manage intense rainfall, and support biodiversity. Buildings are connected by accessible green corridors, flexible outdoor classrooms, and passively climatized spaces to create gradients of comfort across seasons.

Anticipating climatic and social uncertainty, the design envisions manifold, interdependent systems to ensure the campus can adapt to future extremes and provide an inclusive haven for the flourishing of learning, human connection, and interspecies sustenance while creating a model for a responsive campus that embraces a regenerative relationship to our shared environment.