East Georgia State College Master Plan Process - Second Year MLA
Over the past four months the second year MLA class has been working with their professors to develop a Campus Master Plan for East Georgia State College (EGSC). The collaborative efforts, real world clients, and exploration of a project from formative research to final design, all came together to provide us with our most real world design experience yet.
East Georgia State College is a small, commuter-based school located in Swainsboro, Georgia. The class project began in Fall Semester 2016, when we learned how to perform a suitability analysis of the site from historic records, survey information, the site’s ecology, existing habitats, hydrology, and existing building layouts, using field analysis and GIS Data. Using this assembled research, we created a “Green Master Plan,” which prioritized sustainable design and low impact development. This project acted as an initial lens, giving us an environmental perspective, with priorities of what was essential to maintain and protect.
In the spring semester we began working on designs for a future expansion of the EGSC campus, with the goal of accommodating an increase in scale that would double the size of academics and triple the size of on-campus residence halls.
Initially, each student in the class pursued concepts independently, outlining and rendering thirteen plans individually. From these plans, the faculty and students selected four designs that best typified distinctly different design objectives for further development. In addition, the class began designing detailed designs of significant campus spaces. Areas for the students to work and socialize was a driving force for the design process.
The master plan designs went through an iterative process of stakeholder input and refinement, until we created a final master plan. Finally, on February 27 the class presented our designs to a group of key stakeholders from East Georgia State College, including President Boehmer. The four selected designs each had components that informed the distillation into one final master plan.
