Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Smith College, MNLA Partner for 20-Year Landscape Master Plan

  • By Matt Jones
  • 09/29/22

Smith College in Northampton, Mass., recently partnered with landscape architecture firm MNLA to complete a 20-year landscape master plan for its 147-acre campus. The original campus of the private women’s liberal arts college measured 27 acres and was planned and founded as a botanical garden, according to a news release. The new plan is set to modernize the design to meet the current and future needs of the campus, students, faculty and staff.

The news release reports that the new plan “recalibrates the relationship between humans and their environment” and builds off of four foundational pillars of inclusive, adaptive, educational and connected landscapes. MNLA and Smith involved collaboration with Smith community members, including on-campus engagement sessions and interactive student projects, to get input at each stage of development.

The three districts of the Smith campus—River, Core and Town—will have its own aesthetic based on its own history, locality, cultural influences and ecology. “Mutually dependent landscape systems—circulation, land cover, hydrology and cultural systems—form a matrix within the campus, grounding the landscape and connecting it to its regional context,” said the press release. The new master plan will bring out the uniqueness of each district while still weaving together a cohesive campus feel.

Many of the plan’s individual projects have already been developed in detail, while small pilot projects are ready for implementation as a proof of concept and to test certain space transformations that could lead to longer-term initiatives.  Larger-scale projects will lay the seeds for the future of the campus and landscape.

About the Author

Matt Jones is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • Architectural Power for the Modern Campus Landscape

    For generations, an outdoor classroom only required a textbook and a patch of grass. Today, not only has the laptop replaced the printed pages, the rise of agile learning has turned campuses into study halls with students listening to lectures and researching topics from quads, gardens, and plazas. The challenge for architects and facility managers is to provide connectivity without cluttering the landscape with visual eyesores or creating safety hazards with extension cords.

  • Colorado School District Breaks Ground on Unified PK–12 Campus

    The Haxtun School District No. Re-2J in Haxtun, Colo., recently announced that ground has been broken on a renovation/addition project that will unite its two schools, Haxtun Elementary and Haxtun Jr/Sr High School, according to a news release.

  • Q&A: How to Prevent Kitchen Grease Fires in Commercial Kitchens

    School cafeterias and university dining halls serve thousands of meals daily, relying on high-heat equipment like fryers, grills, and ovens. While these operations keep students fed, they also generate significant grease-laden vapors. Without proper controls, this grease becomes a silent fire threat. As a certified exhaust cleaning specialist and business coach who has helped hundreds of institutional facilities achieve NFPA 96 compliance, I emphasize that proactive grease management isn’t optional; it’s a core fire/life safety practice.

  • Montclair State University Starts Construction on $120M STEM Building

    Montclair State University in Montclair, N.J., recently broke ground on a new $120-million Interdisciplinary Science Building, according to university news. The university partnered with HoK Architects for the project’s design, and it’s scheduled to open in time for the 2028–29 academic year.