A town hall meeting, led by Associate Vice President Michael Murphy, was held the evening of October 18 to discuss Carnegie Mellon's "Campus Design Vision." According to Murphy, the purpose of this meeting was to hear "ideas and thoughts on the campus," for subsequent discussion at the Campus Design Vision forum that took place on Thursday, October 19.

A Design Vision Committee was formed last November to formulate a specific design vision for Carnegie Mellon. The committee includes: Murphy; Emeritus Life Trustee Lucian Caste; Associate Vice Provost Ralph Horgan; Vice Provost for Research Peter Lee; CFA Dean Hilary Robinson; architecture professor Gerard Damiani; trustee Jill Kraus; CMU's Director of Design Bob Reppe; Carnegie Museum of Art's assistant professor and curator Raymund Ryan; trustee Leah Simonds; CIT Dean Pradeep Khosla; and, Qatar Assistant Dean Kevin Lamb.

Murphy began the meeting by asking the audience, mostly comprised of faculty and several students, what their favorite (or least favorite) place on campus was. Anne Witchner, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, was one of the first to answer.  

"I have been here for a while and the campus has improved so much," Witchner said. "If you do a 360 on the cut, it really is quite beautiful."

A first-year engineering and trumpet double major had both a positive and negative outlook on the campus: "I am very fond of CFA as well as Schenley Park on a nice day. However, inside the Scaife building, I feel like I am in a cage. It is so isolated in there."

Murphy quoted committee member Caste, a well-known architect who completed a degree in Architecture at Carnegie Mellon in 1950, as saying that the idea behind a strong design for the CMU campus is "to guide and inspire." Murphy then presented the critical issues that he wished to be addressed before the upcoming forum. The issues included: A Core Mission & Higher Education Environment; Art & Aesthetics; Our Identity & Values as a Community; and, Functionality, Feasibility & Sustainability.

Based on these issues, Murphy first asked the audience, "How much does [the design of campus] really matter?" He was curious if Carnegie Mellon could still maintain a strong academic environment if all of our buildings were block houses.

Dan Resnik, an emeritus professor of history responded by saying, "We need to pick a design to reinforce what we want to be and need to be."  

Bill Brown, a professor of Biological Science agreed with Resnik.

"Anytime I go back to my alma mater, the one thing that strikes me is that even though they have built new buildings, they have managed to hold on to a sense of the classic buildings as well," Brown explained. "The design of a campus must have cohesion to it."

The general consensus of the audience was that block houses wouldn't be a positive or inviting design for Carnegie Mellon students.

Murphy then moved on to a different aspect of the campus design by asking the audience, "How do we ensure that art and the vision of artists are incorporated into the life of the campus?" Robinson believes that the best way to do this is to include a percentage of the building cost to artwork.

"I don't mean spending money on artwork once a building is built or renovated, but actually getting artists to work closely with the architects right from the beginning," said Robinson. "We should incorporate artwork into the building itself."

After this discussion, Murphy presented a new idea to the audience about expanding Carnegie Mellon to other parts of the city. As of right now, there is land available to CMU across the river from the South Side Works (three campus lengths away from the center of the campus). It was proposed by Murphy that this could be a good area to house graduate students as well as undergraduates. As of right now, more than 30 percent of undergraduate students live off-campus, as well as 100 percent of the graduate students.

"We have five acres just three campuses away on the river. What we are asking is, should we use this space?" Murphy asked the audience.

Questions surrounded how students would be able to get to and from the main campus, especially later in the evening.

"A trolley car would be ideal," Murphy explained, pointing to a map that shows this available land. It was also brought up that Harvard just started to expand, and that university just bought property across the river from its main campus.

However, the main concern with the majority of the audience was how to renovate the spaces we already have.

Susan Bassett, Director of Athletics and Physical Education, said, "We have an aspiration to build a building that would offer something for everyone on this room. It would include not just athletics, but also nutrition, wellness, etc."

Murphy closed his presentation with one last comment: "We as a campus need to feel comfortable about making changes."

Caste agreed with Murphy that it is important for Carnegie Mellon to keep moving in the direction of change.

"We are not a victim of change, we are a generator of change," said Caste. "We need to try to assess where CMU is today, and where it is in the distant future."

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