PROJECT LOCATION

PROJECT BACKGROUND

The University of the Virgin Islands (UVI) on the St. Croix campus occupies the site of a former sugar cane plantation called Golden Grove Estate, at a time when the island was divided into a grid of roughly 200 x 300 feet. The most prominent remnant of that time is the royal palm avenue, which marks the campus entrance and is a major historical landmark—perhaps the only palm avenue surviving in St. Croix today. Vast areas of the campus are covered by parking lots, and the building fabric has evolved over time in clusters, without following a coherent campus planning scheme.

CAMPUS SCALE AND FORM

We performed planning studies to advise on an overall framework for building expansion, with a special focus on helping to locate and characterize the configuration of a Research Technology Park (RTP) that the University decided to build on a 10-acre parcel of the campus, after a developed it on another site. The UVI buildings are organized roughly in an orthogonal manner to the palm avenue, with The Evans Center and the Residential Halls clustered around their own courtyards, but the open space is reduced to car-oriented circulation and parking lots. There is a lack of clear functional and visual organization around a central common campus space that could be used and understood by students as a place to gather and interact. To help the University understand this, we prepared scale diagrams comparing UVI to other campuses on the US mainland.

RTPark CONCEPT PLAN

The Committee overseeing the approval of the RTP project hoped to see the new buildings follow traditional Danish style and scale, inspired by the historical fabric of Christiansted and Frederiksted, and not diverge from the existing buildings on campus. RTP would be accessed from the royal palm avenue and would be planned in two almost symmetrical zones on either side of the project entrance drive: the zone to the north would be designed and built by the university, while the one to the south would be leasable to tenants, who would be responsible for the construction of their buildings.

PHASING PLAN

The RTP complex would follow the existing orthogonal layout of the UVI St. Croix campus. It would be inspired by the grid as a formal geometry, which is so pervasive in the history of the cultural landscape of St. Croix, both in the subdivision of estate property and in the layout of its historic towns. The RTPark would be developed in phases around modules, each consisting of buildings organized around pedestrian-scale courtyards or campus quadrangles. The RTPark modules or quads would be bound together and connected to the rest of the UVI campus through the existing royal palm avenue. In the phasing plan, roads, parking lots, and empty quads to be developed later would be outlined by shade trees, which would be planted all at once in Phase One to form and delineate usable pedestrian space. As the parking lots expand in Phase Two and Three with new buildings, the trees would be transplanted there, matching in size and age to those of Phase One planting.

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN GUIDELINES

Since the campus project would be built in phases with individual buildings designed by different architects, we were asked to prepare architectural standards and guidelines to ensure compatible design choices and character among the RTPark buildings and with the UVI campus. The University wanted the new buildings to stylistically recall the historical examples of 19th-century Cruzan architecture, especially as it relates to the building envelope and treatment of the exterior walls and their openings.

THE INNOVATION CENTER

We prepared conceptual ideas for The Innovation Center, the first building to be built, as a testing ground for presenting and agreeing upon the architectural guidelines for the entire RTP campus. The color of the building could be a warm, golden yellow, and the roof color and form would be the main feature, tying the RTP to the university campus roofline and to the other buildings nearby. The yellow color ultimately became the key element in the color scheme and graphics of the guidelines book that we also wrote and designed.