With its varied topography and parametrically designed elements, the grove pushes at the edges of landscape architecture’s technological capacity, ecological performance, and expressive imagination. But they have limited utility on their own, Reed says they’re mostly good for “image and circulation.”īut not Gerstacker Grove. As spatial experiences, they can be laden with nostalgia potent enough to gather alumni from far and wide, and images of college quads grace many fund-raising emails.

Quads are visions of collegiate life, where autumn breezes flutter golden-hued leaves onto broad lawns defined by stately and historic buildings. “With a lot of these moves, we’re trying to play off or against the traditional quad,” says Chris Reed, FASLA, the founder and director of Stoss. The Stoss Landscape Urbanism design for Gerstacker Grove links the 800-acre campus together, connecting natural systems to the built environment and creating an unmistakable campus center. Meanwhile, the students of the University of Michigan can try out the swings or kick off shoes for a game of sand volleyball. The landscape is filtering and retaining stormwater, boosting biodiversity, and putting on a light show at night and when it rains. Unlike the more staid Central Campus (known as the Central Campus Diag because of its canted but axial tree-lined walkways), the grove is a landscape that is doing things while inviting passersby to do things as well. The campus is more than 50 years old, but until 2016 when the grove was completed, its central hub was an undistinguished plot of trees and walkways with little to no civic presence. It’s home to the school’s College of Engineering, architecture school, performing arts school, and several residence halls. The North Campus is cloistered and suburban, separated from the main Central Campus by a mile-plus and the Huron River. Gerstacker Grove on the University of Michigan’s North Campus is the modern anti-quad. By Zach Mortice Gerstacker Grove is the only major piece of landscape connective tissue on the University of Michigan’s North Campus. The Sports Park was the first municipal synthetic turf field in Northern Colorado, installing it on the fourteen separate sports fields.Stoss Landscape Urbanism’s design for the University of Michigan’s Gerstacker Grove melds ecological performance with technological proficiency. We used raw water for irrigation, bioswales for pretreating storm drainage, and recycled water from the spray park to irrigate the turf. Sustainable, Water-Conserving Design Including Synthetic TurfĬonservation was a major element in our planning process. The setting includes a windmill, cherry orchard, irrigation ditch, entry sign depicting stacked bales of hay, stone benches that portray hay bales, stone monuments to identify field numbers, shelters with red roofs to symbolize barn cupolas, and a Wizard of Oz themed playground. The sports park is located on a historic Colorado farmstead so we incorporated an agricultural theme to bring the site character and connection with the Loveland community. In addition to addressing all these concerns, our master plan added a skate park, roller hockey and volleyball courts, playgrounds, and even interactive water features, Creative Design is the Difference Between a Complex and Park Recreational and unprogrammed park uses needed equal space and accessibility as youth sports leagues. The growing need for competitive and practice soccer fields had to be solved.Ī community park design was needed for large gatherings, special events, and annual festivals. The City of Loveland wanted several goals accomplished with their Sports Park: Loveland, Colorado Multiple Park Uses in One Space

Volleyball courts design landscape arch