Quads: making an entrance

This spring, the University community had a chance to express opinions on concepts proposed for a new, formal entrance to the campus's Main Quadrangle. The entrance will be on the quads' east side, along the University Avenue edge where tennis courts once stood.

Alistair McIntosh, a landscape architect with Watertown, Massachusetts-based Sasaki Associates, will continue his design work through the summer and fall, with implementation expected to begin in spring 2001.

McIntosh has solicited feedback in small-group discussions with students, faculty, and staff and at two campus town hall meetings held this spring. At those meetings, he presented three ideas: a sitting wall interrupted by landscaped planters; a planting bed with an evergreen hedge cut low to resemble a wall and broken up by seven entries framed by ornamental trees; and a long metal-and-wood pergola-like structure.

Initial reaction to the proposals, says campus architect Curt Heuring, is that the "wall" created by hedgerow and ornamental trees "represents the best balance of permeability, friendliness, seclusion without exclusion, cost, maintainability, appropriateness of image, simplicity, and elegance."

McIntosh has also been charged with creating a new lighting plan for the quads.