KPS recognizes that the physical campus is a manifestation of an institution's mission and culture. A campus should express the individual uniqueness of it's people, place, and time. It is a blending of learning environments, campus life, and supportive elements.
Our plans act as roadmaps for our clients, allowing their physical settings to grow more useful and beautiful over time. KPS recognizes that each component of a campus plan is integral to the overall success and learning environment of the Institution. We strive to inter-relate buildings, infrastructure, open spaces, transit, site ecology, and storm-water management. Our process is intensely collaborative and involves consensus building amongst administrators, faculty, students, facilities staff, and prospective users.
University of Alabama Master Plan Update
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
The University of Alabama Vision, as described by President Witt in the 2007 plan:
"Our vision is to become the “university of choice for the best and brightest.” People—students, faculty, staff and alumni—are the heart of this university. They are the greatest of the four cornerstones of our vision. The other cornerstones—programs, facilities, and resources—will equip our students not only to compete in the world, but to preserve and change it for the better. By bringing together academics and research, this university creates a synergy that benefits not only the students, but the entire state of Alabama.
To make our vision a reality, we have created a bold new plan that includes the most aggressive goals and ambitious objectives we have ever set forth. As we walk the Capstone today, we enjoy the shade of trees we did not plant, the music of chimes we did not build, and the benefit of programs we did not initiate. However, it’s now our time and responsibility to provide for the future. It’s time to plant trees whose shade we will not enjoy and to support the education of young men and women yet to be born. Now is the time for us to choose. And we choose to transform the future." President Witt
The University of Alabama Campus Plan presents a clear and compelling vision: a return to the fundamental principles on which the University of Alabama campus was historically planned and designed, even as the University responds to contemporary demands. This requires reclaiming and reinforcing the campus as a prime example of the American campus planning tradition. Therefore, the Campus offers a complete learning environment—a hospitable, yet engaging academic setting, steeped in the beauty, climate and culture of the South, where residential villages, academic villages, outdoor gathering places, walkways, and recreation areas are interwoven into a gracious and welcoming setting that nurtures the soul and inspires the mind.
Since the plan completion in 2007, The University of Alabama Campus Plan has served as a roadmap for some of the most aggressive changes the University has undertaken. The campus has been transformed into a pedestrian environment by removing the automobile from the core of the campus. All Freshman are now residing on campus in one of several residential villages, and the core campus has expanded to include the new engineering complex. KPS is currently engaged with the University in the 2012 Campus Plan Update which will incorporate the former campus of Bryce Hospital, the university's neighbor for 150 years. A preliminary version of that plan is shown above.
University of Alabama Birmingham
Birmingham, Alabama
The Campus Master Plan Amendment explores and identifies ways in which the University of Alabama at Birmingham might grow over time within its urban context; continuously evolve its role as a leading economic engine in the State of Alabama; enhance the quality of living, working, playing and studying on-campus; and foster public and private investments essential to the well-being of the University’s neighbors, Downtown Birmingham, and the city overall.
In terms of the physical improvement and growth of the campus, these issues are essential to the evolution of the University’s unique, multi-functional campus:
A campus-wide open space system that will organize and interconnect the campus and its major functions.
A walkable campus to optimize future growth opportunities.
A focus toward town and gown as academic, medical, research and other University functions grow in the future, the campus must also grow.
University of North Alabama, Campus Master Plan Update
Florence, Alabama
The 2010 Campus Master Plan update envisions a return to the traditional American campus planning principles upon which the University of North Alabama, the first state-chartered institution to begin operation in the state, originally developed. The plan reveals the campus perhaps 20 or so years from now, assuming continued growth and investment in academics, housing, campus amenities, and support facilities.
New facilities are positioned around the campus in support of a unifying network of open spaces. This provides a strong, central academic core with optimal internal accessibility and appropriate transitions at the community edge. Bicycle and pedestrian improvements work together with the campus’ functional organization so that students, staff, and visitors will find it increasingly convenient to move about the campus. Vehicular access, parking facilities, and an improved wayfinding system provide easy arrival and departure while supporting and encouraging safe, non-vehicular travel within the campus.
Campus functions are organized around the historic campus core, which is reserved primarily for academic and administrative uses, while new student life functions will be strategically integrated to increase activity and convenience. Significant improvements in student housing facilities outside the core will be supported by major investments to student life facilities that will be con-centrated toward the center of campus and available to all.
University of Alabama Huntsville, Master Plan
Huntsville, Alabama
According to University President David Williams, "One of the most important things for a university to do is ensure that it plans its future infrastructure needs carefully and coherently."
In response, KPS Group is helping the University community develop a new campus master plan consistent with their new "Powers of 10" goals and strategic plan.
Among their goals is to bring student life and related organizations into a more central role to allow the opportunity to create a more vibrant and integrated campus. The University selected KPS Group in part for its commitment to an open, transparent planning process that invites everyone to participate in planning for the future of the campus.
The KPS approach seeks participation from all parts of the campus. Students must feel involved in the planning of their residences and their on-campus life. Everyone must share concern for making the campus a safer place to walk and ride. They must also help to solve the ever-thorny problem of campus parking so that students, faculty, and staff can park close to their destination and everyone can walk or ride between classrooms with equal ease—without getting in a car.
The University of Alabama in Huntsville has set very aggressive goals for growth of students, faculty, and facilities. According to President Williams, "In five year's time, this campus will be a very different place—an intrinsically better place to live, learn, and work."
KPS is proceeding with the planning process as a comprehensive, in-depth operation that involves active participation of the entire university community.
Oakwood University Master Plan
Huntsville, Alabama
KPS Group prepared a Master Plan for Oakwood University in 1999, and a Campus Plan Update in 2010. The Oakwood University Master Plan grew out of the University's vision as a self-sustaining campus. Wellness, wholeness, and sustainability are not just ideas on this campus, but daily practices at this unique African-American Seventh-Day Adventist University.
The Campus Plan was developed around several key components of Campus Life- walking, healthy living, sense of community, and sustainability. University leaders envision a truly self-sustaining campus, where families meet, live, and learn, where children are raised, and where the elderly retire.
The plan features new residential areas, academic buildings, greenways and trails, K-12 schools, a retirement village and a cemetery.
Auburn University, Campus Green and Transit Shelter
Auburn, Alabama
The Auburn Campus Green provides a new campus square, and a new heart for the Auburn University Campus. It re-introduces one of Auburn’s original football fields, as a central lawn for passive play, event gathering, and game day activities. It organizes buildings, streetscapes, and plazas along the edges of that green, with areas for seating, for gathering, and for overlooking the rolling green. It proposes a Central Transit Station that reminisces the original façade of the stadium, and thus blends the historic field with the hidden layers of Jordan Hare. The plan is carefully fit within the campus context- physically, historically, and programmatically. It accommodates bus traffic, game day traffic, game day services, stadium egress, and daily pedestrian traffic. And most importantly, it skillfully creates a setting that fosters learning, recreation, gathering, and the Auburn Spirit.
KPS Group, Inc. prepared the master plan and construction documents for the new Transit Pavilion and Campus Green at Auburn University. The new Transit Pavilion and Green was designed to serve as the heart of the Auburn Village. Located in the heart of campus, the area serves as a comfortable and welcoming place for students, as they arrive on Campus each day. The open-air transit pavilion, brick walkways, lights, and banners offer a unique corridor which has affectionately been named "Tiger Alley". On football weekend, the streetscape becomes a festive event area, where the Auburn marching band parades toward the stadium just before kickoff.
The transit pavilion overlooks a new central lawn to the east. This areas is known as Bullard Field, Auburn’s home football field, from the 1920’s until 1939. The reconstructed field replaces parking that was added during the1970's, and restores a central lawn in the heart of campus. It is a place for all of the Auburn community to gather and share in the life and Spirit of Auburn.
The Central Transit pavilion is fashioned akin to the original facade of Jordan Hare Stadium, and thus blends the historic field with the hidden layers and geometries of Jordan Hare Stadium.
The Tiger Transit system hosts 42 buses, and over 2 million riders annually, with the central loading zone located at Tiger Alley.
