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Five years ago, design firm Sasaki Associates was asked to to help develop Philadelphia's Schuylkill waterfront and surrounding areas.

Now, the company has been handed a blank slate.

Penn has asked the firm -- which is unusual in its integration of multiple planning disciplines -- to design the campus' eastward expansion into the newly acquired postal lands.

Penn will not be acquiring the 24 acres of land between Locust and Market streets east of campus until 2007, but the rush to fill the space has already begun.

How the $50.6 million land is developed will affect the University for decades to come. Ideas have already begun being discussed, as Sasaki Associates employees have been meeting with Penn officials since the summer.

The amount of space allows for myriad possible uses -- ranging from academic and recreational to residential.

Last week, Sasaki Associates President Dennis Pieprz and an accompanying team of architects and planners visited Penn as a part of the meetings.

Schuylkill Gateway

The firm was hired five years ago to work on the Schuylkill Gateway plan.

The effort brought together multiple stakeholders from around the city -- including Penn, the Center City District and the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation. It focused on developing the space between Center City and University City to strengthen the connection between the two sides of the Schuylkill River.

The partnership and ideas generated planted the seeds for the collaboration on eastward expansion. Though the Schuylkill Gateway plan was more of a proposal than actualities to be implemented, it served to "make a case of why Penn should buy the postal lands," Senior Vice President of Facilities and Real Estate Services Omar Blaik said.

This took place as Penn envisioned a possible eastern campus during its master plan development five years ago.

When it came time to decide on a firm for the postal lands' development, given Sasaki's "knowledge of the river and their knowledge of the stakeholders [involved in that area], the firm became a natural choice," Blaik said.

While Sasaki will be able to draw from its experience with the Schuylkill, the design and planning of the eastern campus will be approached from a different angle -- the facilities will need to accommodate Penn's academic needs as well.

Worldly Experience

Sasaki has done numerous projects around the world and was recently selected as the winner of the design competition for the 2008 Beijing Olympics' master plan. Its portfolio ranges from a luxury resort in Lebanon to the Oklahoma City Federal Building that replaced the one destroyed in 1996.

However, the firm also has significant experience working with universities.

It has worked with more than 400 universities in architectural or campus-planning projects -- including projects for San Francisco State University, the University of California at Berkeley and Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

Sasaki worked with Berkeley on the New Century Plan, a master plan of the campus, from 2000 to 2002. The partnership with Northwestern began in 2003 with work on the master plans for different areas of the campus. The firm and Northwestern are also embarking on a master plan for the entire campus this fall.

Both schools were very satisfied with the experience.

"It was the best consulting experience that we've had here, and I've worked with quite a few" consultants, said Kerry O'Banion, a campus planner at Berkeley.

Ron Nayler, associate vice president for facilities management at Northwestern, said he was also "pleasantly surprised."

The two projects and Penn's own eastward expansion occupy three different corners of the United States, but all three universities stress the need to shape their campuses according to the urban environment.

"We can't design buildings that are just objects in space. Every building we [design] responds to its context," O'Banion said.

Northwestern's Southeast Campus Master Plan sought to improve the campus's connection to the nearby city of Chicago through an better view of the city skyline and to increase the school's access to the adjacent Lake Michigan.

'A rare moment'

Penn differs greatly from both schools, however, in that the University has acquired a large piece of undeveloped land.

"This is a rare moment for Penn" as an urban campus to have such an amount of space available for developments "right in the heart of the University," Pieprz said.

While such vast expansion for established, urban universities is not common, such opportunity is "not unheard of," said Harris Steinberg, executive director of Penn Praxis -- an organization that allows faculty and students to test ideas in practical design projects.

Both Harvard and Columbia have acquired property on a scale similar to Penn's, but the difference lies in that Penn does not have to "take down any neighborhoods to reimagine the campus," Steinberg said.

However, the acquisition of a new piece of land does not mean that the development will not have to take into account the realities of Penn's current campus.

The development must build incrementally on the existing campus structures, Steinberg said, emphasizing the need to "respect what has been there before rather than to reinvent" completely.

"My charge to Sasaki is to take into account what is uniquely Penn and make the most of it," President Amy Gutmann said.

Pieprz said that the firm actually tends "to like it better when there are existing forces that are complex and dynamic" -- as opposed to developing new communal identities.

Sasaki and Penn officials are still working to decide what type of buildings to put on the postal lands. At the heart of the question lie the academic needs of the University -- whether they involve athletic fields or research facilities.

O'Banion stressed the need for campus-planning consultants to work with campus staff to "take academic ideas and come up with design solutions" -- something he says Sasaki is very good at.

Along with the academic needs to be considered, Pieprz added, the planning must allow for "flexibility and the unknowns" and put in buildings that will generate "life and activity."

He said that Penn is traditionally very "pedestrian-focused," with plenty of green spaces -- "a glue that holds the University together" -- and added that this tradition must be carried on as the core campus expands to the east. Besides the green spaces scattered throughout Penn's campus, nearby commercial blocks such as University Square also have strips of green that aim to draw pedestrians.

But in developing the postal lands, the University will look beyond the land itself.

The postal lands represent more than space that will simply enhance University City's access to the river and Center City through recreational and civic spaces.

"As the city's largest employer, we need to think about stimulating additional economic development on not the core lands that will remain academic, but on the additional lands as we take them over," Gutmann said.

Penn is known nationally for its ability -- at least in recent years -- to look beyond campus boundaries and connect with the local community, said Greg Havens, a senior associate with Sasaki.

But there are parts of the city that will be difficult to integrate into the development.

"The Amtrak rail lines and the highway at the river's edge are very difficult to overcome," Pieprz said, since they block direct development to the Schuylkill.

Still, he was optimistic about working with the problem.

"We are looking at the feasibility of a new pedestrian bridge over the Schuylkill River to connect an extension of Locust Walk and the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood," Pieprz said.

As the center of campus moves eastward, a central part of the development will be maintaining the University's compactness the sense of a centralized campus as it works to connect the two areas with a strong pedestrian network.

"If that journey [to the east campus] is a rich and diverse urban experience, then the distance is not something you're going to think about," Steinberg said.

And Pieprz promised to deliver just that.

"We will create a strong and lively urban edge at Walnut Street to bring life and activity to this important gateway to the University," he said.

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