A Landscape Plan is being developed to guide and direct the stewardship of the Keele and Glendon campuses. The following statement by the designer, John Thackara, speaks to York University as a ‘dynamic learning organization’ and inspires a rationale for the Landscape Plan.
Dynamic Learning Organization
“The constantly changing flows of people and ideas that characterize a dynamic learning organization, and the quality of interactions with other people and communities and customers, are more important than the boxes we meet in, the chairs we sit in, or the keyboards we punch to communicate with. If innovation is a social process that involves complex interactions among individuals, communities of practice, and customers, then fostering these complex interactions – designing the context of innovation and learning – brings so-called soft aspects of workplace design to the fore. The keyword here is minds in the plural – and in particular the innovative capabilities of groups. Learning happens best when people participate in different communities to practice. The best collaboration environments provide the opportunity to meet, share ideas, discuss, and learn from one another’s experiences.”
- (John Thackara, In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World. The MIT Press, Cambridge. 2005. p.99)
The Context for Innovation and Learning
A landscape plan for York University is about “designing the context of innovation and learning”.
- Design in this sense is about influencing positively the quality of interactions between students, faculty and staff through the creation, enhancement, renovation and maintenance of a sustainable campus landscape.
Landscape Plan Goal
The goal of a York University Landscape Plan is to:
- motivate and direct action that will:
- foster the complex interactions among students, faculty, staff, alumni and visitors
- provide an environment that presents opportunities “to meet, share ideas, discuss and learn from one another’s experiences”.Those opportunities are to be embodied in the University campus landscape - the physical context for innovation and learning - that we plan and design together.We want the University campus to be regarded positively as a great place; therefore an objective of landscape plan implementation is to:
- ensure that York University is a great place to be - to become.
Sustainable Landscape
One University - two campuses, Keele and Glendon
- Distinctive landscapes'
- Greater than the sum of their sites and systems.
- Distinct landscapes or sites.
- Within a larger urban ecological system or region.
York’s campus landscapes have a dynamic integrity related to:
- The integration and interaction of their ecological and cultural systems at all scales.
- Our associated experience of those systems.
The University landscapes evolve as their ecological and cultural features and systems evolve generally or by design:
- They should always be inspirational and contribute positively to teaching, learning, research and the general well-being of students, faculty, staff, alumni and visitors.
- They should always be sustainable.
The integrity of York’s campus landscapes is compromised by physical deterioration and disintegrated physical change; such conditions also detract from a person’s University experience.
Planned and designed physical change should:
- Maintain and enhance landscape integrity and sustainability.
- Maintain and enhance a person’s positive experience of the University landscape.
Need & Definition
The York University Landscape Plan arises out of the need to:
- Advocate, guide, direct and inspire the stewardship of York University’s Keele and Glendon campus landscapes.
Stewardship
- The integrated management of the University landscape through responsible planning, design, development, renovation and maintenance in order to achieve a sustainable landscape.
- Sustainable action - ecologically, economically, culturally and aesthetically appropriate - in support of the following principles relating to the environmental and experiential quality of York University’s campuses.
- Acknowledge and accommodate the vibrant, dynamic nature of the University population and environment.
- Protect, conserve, restore, maintain and enhance the ecology of York’s Keele and Glendon campuses.
- Enhance individuals’ sense of place and lived experience.
- Promote and reinforce a positive, memorable image of the University.
- Engage the University population in the planning, design and care stewardship - of their landscape.
- Ensure the comfort, health, safety and general well-being of the University population; its students, faculty, staff, alumni and visitors.
