arm weather and a land boom, rather than a picturesque campus, drew the first University of Miami constituents. There were some early construction hiccups, such as the 1926 hurricane that put a 22-year freeze on the half-built Solomon G. Merrick Building. But eventually operations shifted back from the “cardboard college” Anastasia Building to the original 160-acre plot donated by Coral Gables founder George Merrick (son of Solomon G. Merrick).

Today’s campus reflects much of the work of Florida’s first female architect, Marion I. Manley, who also designed the Memorial Classroom and many of the buildings now part of the School of Architecture. Postwar modern was the predominant style of the day.

“When I first got here in the early 1970s, the campus was pretty dismal,” recalls George Alexandrakis, professor and chair of the Department of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences. So Alexandrakis embarked on what would parlay into 30 years of service on the University’s Building and Grounds Committee, an advisory group with representatives from the Faculty Senate, the School of Architecture, the student body, and the Department of Real Estate, Campus Planning, and Construction. “From day one on the committee, I knew that, in every opportunity that came along, we would have to do our absolute best to improve the campus.”

When he was president, Edward T. Foote II invested in the palms, banyans, bougainvillea, and other horticulture that, as he vowed to do in his 1981 inauguration speech, have since made the University “a magnificent botanical garden, a living laboratory.”

The allure of the Coral Gables campus was a major selling point for sophomore music major Andrew Maguire, but he admits there’s a lot of room for improvement. “The whole atmosphere is beautiful—the palm trees, the flowers, the open space,” he says. “But the architecture is fairly bland. I visited other schools that have beautiful buildings—brick, stone, flagstone—each has its unique style, but they all blend together.” With a few exceptions like the new Marta and Austin Weeks Music Library and Technology Center, he says, the buildings here are generally unimpressive.

Universities nationwide are realizing the importance of creating and maintaining attractive campuses, and many are making significant changes to their master plans. Students and faculty at Harvard, Columbia, Carnegie Mellon, Bucknell, and countless other U.S. institutions all report the familiar sound of jackhammers outside their windows.

President Shalala asserted recently that the University “will not populate our campuses with nondescript concrete shells and cookie-cutter designs.” Which is why some of the most notable names in architecture today are designing the latest additions to the University’s master plan. Shepley Bulfinch Richardson & Abbott—a firm that has completed projects for Stanford, Yale, and the Smithsonian—is designing a major expansion of the Otto G. Richter Library that will provide a home for the School of Law’s new moot court and skills center and the Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy. Arquitectonica, with such signature Miami buildings as the American Airlines Arena and a new 15-story federal courthouse, is designing a four-story student activities center and an addition to the Whitten University Center with a new incarnation of the Rathskeller. Michael Graves, a 40-year Princeton professor renowned for his wide range of practice, which includes household products for Target, is the lead architect for the School of Business Administration’s Miguel B. Fernandez Family Entrepreneurship Building. This facility will combine academic centers, classrooms, and residences in one building. Michael Dennis, professor of architecture at MIT who has designed award-winning projects at Princeton, Cornell, Emory, and Carnegie Mellon, is designing the new Alumni Center. Leon Krier, father of the New Urbanism movement for livable communities and consultant to the Prince of Wales, is the principal architect for the Jorge M. Perez Architecture Center, which opens this fall.

“There are two things that are important in campus design,” says Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, dean of the School of Architecture. “One is the issue of timelessness, and the other is a growing recognition that campuses can be patrons of great architecture.”

Plater-Zyberk and Krier are instrumental in helping the Department of Real Estate, Campus Planning, and Construction synergize new construction with the postwar modern structures that occupy much of the Coral Gables campus. The challenge, they say, is overcoming the suburban sprawl built into the original campus design. “Elizabeth involved me,” Krier says, “because she wanted to set an example of how, in long-term phasing, you can go from a suburban campus to one that is much more urban.”

“I know what the physical environment needs, and it needs people,” says Janet Gavarrete, former assistant city manager for the City of Miami Beach who has been campus planner at the University for the past five years. Her hands swirl over an aerial map as she demonstrates the future flow of people and energy from one end of campus to the other. The map, a frame of reference that covers the full expanse of a conference room wall, was photographed only five years ago, but many campus landmarks—the Convocation Center, Weeks Music Library and Technology Center, Fred C. and Helen Donn Flipse Building—are conspicuously absent from it. Replacing the map is pointless, as it would be outdated before the glue dries on the wall.

The push to convert a suburban campus into an urban one is driving a housing blitz on the Coral Gables campus. “Increasing the number of students living on campus really will help transform the way the campus feels and looks, how its heart beats, and how much it pumps all around,” Gavarrete says.

The first of such forthcoming residences is University Village, a community designed for 800 upperclassmen, law, and graduate students. Upon completion next year, it will be the first on-campus student housing the University has built in more than 35 years. Sergio Rodriguez, vice president for real estate, describes the role livable campuses play as “nurturing environments that allow students to mature physically, socially, and emotionally while acquiring knowledge. Campuses are small communities and require the same type of facilities and amenities as a small town or village.”

reating hubs of activity where people live, work, and play—a key tenet of the School of Architecture’s New Urbanism philosophy—is what the University also intends for its medical, Rosenstiel, and south campuses.

Under John G. Clarkson, M.D. ’68, senior vice president for medical affairs and dean of the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, the Schoninger Research Quadrangle has transformed a smattering of medical school buildings into a campus with a heart. The new millennium brought forth the Lois Pope LIFE Center and the Batchelor Children’s Research Institute, while the UM/Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center and Ryder Trauma Center were earlier additions to the medical campus that set forth a remarkable 15-year growth spurt. In the research quadrangle, a statuesque banyan tree, fountain, and benches have created places where medical school students, faculty, employees, and patients love to linger. But when the work day ends, much of the medical campus is deserted because there is no housing, retail, or entertainment to keep people in the neighborhood.

The Miller School of Medicine is one of many leading stakeholders located in Miami’s Civic Center, the downtown area that houses Jackson Memorial Hospital, the state attorney’s offices, the Miami VA Medical Center, Cedars Medical Center, a courthouse, and the Miami River shipyards. While the area is a resource for medical care, education, research, and social services, most people visit because they have to, not because they want to.

President Shalala and City of Miami Mayor Manny Diaz are spearheading a plan, called The Miami Partnership, to revitalize and transform the Civic Center area. By developing housing, restaurants, offices, and retail shops, the initiative aims to lure people out of the suburbs—and their cars—into neighborhoods where they are within walking distance of work. A flashy new Wellness Center, due for completion next year, will be an added incentive to stick around longer.

“At the heart of The Miami Partnership is the need and desire to create an environment that is more pedestrian friendly, with new traffic patterns, landscaping, sidewalks, and plazas,” President Shalala explains.

President Shalala envisions biotechnology as the lifeblood that will sustain the area, anchored by the Wallace H. Coulter Center for Translational Research. Supported by a $13 million grant, this center will help spin off scientific discoveries into private enterprise, thereby fast-tracking them to patients’ bedsides. Construction will begin soon on a new wet lab research building, and a massive new medical practice building is in the planning stages. “We have jobs,” says President Shalala, “but we need additional high-quality, high-paying jobs for people who are highly educated.”

By comparison, the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science has the good fortune of a tropical, waterfront locale. There are no residential units at this campus, but design improvements could add panache to the spectacular view over Biscayne Bay, and new research facilities will help meet the growing needs of the school. “The goal is to decompress the numerous small buildings and create a quad and central courtyard that will become the focal point for the campus,” says real estate’s Sergio Rodriguez.

The University teaches New Urbanism in its School of Architecture and puts the philosophy into practice beyond its campuses’ borders. A plan to develop its south campus, a 138-acre site next to Miami Metrozoo, encompasses 1,200 residential units, a public school, library, post office, cultural arts activities, and a lifelong learning component among 43 acres designated as natural forest. School of Architecture faculty, Dean Plater-Zyberk, and students are playing a significant role in developing concepts and models.

The south campus project is one of multiple endeavors by Miami Asset Management Company (MAMCO), a wholly owned subsidiary of the University of Miami established to “develop real estate that is of strategic importance to us and that will provide important revenue streams,” says President Shalala. MAMCO also is managing the development of the Smathers Four Fillies Farm project, a residential community in the Village of Pinecrest for UM faculty. The 32-acre property will include 30 homes that are clustered in a central area to enable 19 acres of rare and protected tropical plants to thrive undisturbed under the supervision and care of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden.

n a timeline that seems to be both rapid and gradual, University of Miami campuses are growing and changing to accommodate programs that will jettison the institution ever higher in global renown and impact. Generous contributions to the billion-dollar Momentum fundraising campaign have fueled much of this growth, and the University is taking steps to ensure that progress continues far beyond the end of the campaign.

“Our plans envision a growing University with grand, ceremonial entrances and more distinct campus boundaries, for sure,” says President Shalala. “But they also envision campuses that are intrinsically linked to our neighbors and our communities.”

For the University, being a good neighbor and a great institution means creating feel-good environments that inspire creativity, scholarship, and a lifelong connection with students and alumni.