Statement of Purpose
In conjunction with the firm of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, Haverford College is developing a comprehensive master plan. The master plan will serve as a living document and decision making tool, providing guidance for the development of the college well into the future. The plan will balance our ambitions for academic and institutional development with our commitment to sustaining the physical beauty of the campus and its buildings. The plan aims to be comprehensive, historically responsive and environmentally proactive and to take into consideration what Haverford College has been in the past, where it is today, and where it sees itself going in the next quarter of a century.
Statement of Process - VSBA's Approach to Campus Planning
VSBA is working with Haverford College to think strategically about its future. Over the next 12 months or so, we'll analyze the campus as a complex network of systems, patterns and activities. We’ll propose ways of conceptualizing the physical campus, as we formulate development strategies for its buildings and landscapes. Our master plan will also connect to Haverford's educational, administrative, and financial goals.
In our approach to campus planning at Haverford, we will:
-- define the major objectives of the project
-- describe several alternative means of achieving them
-- advise the College on the choice between means, and then
-- suggest plans for implementation over time.
Our first step will be a "once-over-lightly." We'll gather preliminary data to get a broad view of the College and campus area -- from the school's aspirations, issues, problems, and opportunities, to its setting and general context. We'll work with many groups in the College community to ensure that our planning for what the campus ought to become derives from what it already is. (So far our planning has brought us into contact with over 300 people representing a wide cross-section of Haverford's faculty, staff, students, and alums!) By the end of this phase we'll know much more about the campus and parameters for our study.
After that we'll start to develop general statements of purpose into specific options for growth and preservation. Even in this phase the plan could serve as a useful working document -- helping Haverford to define policy and make physical design choices.
Some of our planning tasks will focus on particular areas and systems -- individual departments, for example, or facets of student life or campus security. Working closely with our team of consultants, we'll develop a landscape master plan, concepts for classroom technology and infrastructure, and plans for a campus-wide system of art acquisition and siting. Our discoveries in these detailed analyses could also help shape the overall master plan.
Finally, the completed campus master plan report will present an executive summary of our discoveries, using both graphics and text. Our hope is that it will offer Haverford a powerful tool to help shape campus evolution for many years to come.