The Landscape Architecture
Bureau was challenged to re-imagine StanfordUniversity’s Washington
campus on Connecticut Avenue
in Washington, DC. The design challenge was to form, on the
University’s only open space, the Connecticut Avenue streetscape, integrated
intimate spaces for conversations among students, seating and respite for
passersby walking to the nearby National Zoo, and a new identity for the campus
based on Stanford’s core values of academic excellence, environmental
stewardship and social equality. The streetscape was treated as one extended
surface, folded and warped to provide accessibility, punctuated by a series of
low walls to provide seating for students, neighborhood residents and tourists,
to form and protect planted areas and to impart a playful, theatrical character
to the public face of the university. The scheme uses native plantings, root
trenching, local materials, and low voltage lighting to promote visible
sustainability and ensure longevity of the plantings, which normally suffer in
such tight urban settings.
