A Grand Park and a Campus Meander for UCSD

Overview

It is the intention of this proposal, A Grand Park and Meander for UCSD, to reverse the ecological and physical fragmentation of the UCSD campus by enhancing and linking valuable ecological lands, connecting the Park with the State Reserve Lands external to the campus, and providing necessary links to connect the campus fragments to each other.

This study/project consists of two interrelated designs, the Grand Park and the Meander. Together, these two elements represent the "body" of the Campus' natural lands, the Grand Park serving as "tissue", the Meander providing a connective and supporting framework, or "skeleton". This scheme will provide an alternative to the normal system of grand axes typically found on urban university campuses. Major intact portions of the Grand Park already exist, as do other more disturbed remnants of the eucalyptus groves and canyon lands. It is intended that the project will unify these existing parts both by the restoration of the disturbed remnants and the formation of new connections where continuity has been lost.

Analysis of the Campus "natural" lands reveals that the "morphology" of the Grand Park and Meander can not rely on the traditional English or French notion of a park as a centralized, definitively bounded green space, distinct from its surrounding development. Rather, the Grand Park is based on the metaphor that a park is an echo of the diversity in the countryside located in the city. It then can exist as a flow of wildlife, vegetation, and human population woven into and around the campus fabric. This flow occurs in three distinct directions, which can be viewed as downstream flow of "tributaries" somewhat like a watershed system; however, unlike the water in a river, the human, animal, and plant populations move both "up" and "down" stream.

The Grand Park and Meander

The Grand Park will be a designated "green" area that includes lands already protected under the 1989 Long Range Development Plan for UCSD (Ecological Reserve, Grove Reserve, and Preserve Lands) and the newly created Meander with the inclusion of additional green corridors to link the fragmented parts. The Grand Park will expand the visual properties of its boarders with "urban" (developed) areas by proposing the expansion of plantings into the edges of certain adjacent areas such as parking lots and housing clusters, to increase the perceived Scale and presence of the Park terrain.

The main goal of the Meander is to create a path, a single gesture which connects the campus' natural features and provides a means to experience the Grand Park informally, a "breathing space", as it were, for the campus community. The Meander differs from regular walking paths in that it is meant to invite relaxation and contemplation. In sensitive areas it can exist as a dirt path, cleared by hand and only a few feet wide. In other areas, particularly in the center of campus, it will be wider with a durable surface that can accommodate higher volumes of pedestrian traffic. In a few places it will merge with existing pedestrian pathways. It will have a physical and visual identity unique to itself as it moves from grove to canyon, to vista point, and back to grove again, always within minutes of the center of the campus. Wherever possible, the Meander will be isolated from the noise and business of campus life, through screening, occasional earth berming, planting, and sensitive placement of the pathway.