CAMPUS PLAN VISION AND GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Master Plan Vision and Guiding Principles

The draft Campus Plan includes a vision statement, principles and strategies and build on the 2009 Master Plan principles.

The UBC Okanagan Campus Plan is guided by a vision statement and set of planning principles developed earlier in the planning process.

Vision Statement

UBC’s Okanagan Campus aspires to be a centre for learning and innovation that produces global citizens through transformative personal growth and collaboration. Its people, places and activities are linked by a shared commitment to fostering community, and supporting social and ecological well-being. Deeply connected to the landscape, the campus is an accessible, intimate, and welcoming environment — a catalyst for positive change.

Guiding Principles

  • Foster a welcoming and connected campus
  • Celebrate place
  • Support campus vitality
  • Support campus growth through whole systems infrastructure planning

A Welcoming and Connected Campus

Principle: Through physical design, programming, and partnerships, the campus will reach out to the surrounding community to create lasting connections between people and places.

Vehicular Connections and Movement

Vehicular Connections and Movement

Proposed strategies for implementing this principle include:

  • Designing flexible buildings and spaces to accommodate a range of academic and research activities
  • Promoting opportunities to embed living laboratory projects into the design of buildings and open spaces
  • Supporting people who live, work, study, and conduct research with world-class facilities
  • Mitigating the impacts of parking and vehicle loading on the walkability of the campus experience
  • Staging parking surfaces as future building locations with structured parking
  • Designing spaces to host community events in a deliberate attempt to open the campus and provide additional opportunities to host neighbours at a regional scale
  • Making the campus more pedestrian-oriented
  • Planning for an improved transit hub that meets operational and passenger needs

Celebrating Place

Principle: Strengthen the intimacy and connectedness of campus spaces and places, while celebrating and embracing the surrounding Okanagan landscape, to achieve a distinguished and compact core within an indigenous landscape setting.

Integrated Space

Integrated Spaces and Places

Proposed strategies for implementing this principle include:

  • Creating a compact campus core and strengthening major pedestrian axes
  • Placing new buildings to frame open spaces and heighten the experience of the surrounding landscape
  • Providing a network of informal walkways, bike paths, and trails
  • Bringing landscape features into the campus core as much as possible
  • Strengthening the visual identity and cohesiveness of the campus
  • Reinforcing the Okanagan grasslands and pine forest in landscape design
  • Supporting design excellence and integration on multiple scales

Campus Vitality

Principle: Leverage campus growth to create a vibrant community, meeting the needs of all users and enabling students, staff, faculty, and the broader community to connect, learn, and linger.

Distributed Housing and Amenities
Distributed Housing and Amenities

Proposed strategies for implementing this principle include:

  • Broadening the distribution of residential uses on campus
  • Responding to the needs and preferences of residents in neighbourhood design
  • Providing a range of amenities and services within each residential neighbourhood, such as: common spaces / social spaces, collegia, strategically placed ancillary retail, bike facilities, and outdoor recreation.
  • Allowing for flexibility in the ground floor uses of buildings
  • Creating a vibrant pedestrian-oriented “Main Street” along University Way
  • Encouraging increased transit use, and supporting a walkable campus

Whole Systems Infrastructure

Principle: Campus growth should be managed through a whole systems  (environmental, economic, and social sustainability) lens to achieve a net-positive impact on the well-being of the campus community and ecology.

Proposed strategies for implementing this principle include:

  • Designing buildings and landscapes to minimize energy and water consumption
  • Designing buildings and infrastructure for flexibility and resiliency and to support opportunities for campus as a living lab
  • Exploring opportunities for use of district energy systems and passive design principles, incorporating landscapes that are characteristic of the Okanagan climate
  • Implementing stormwater management strategies that preserve ecosystem assets
  • Shifting toward renewable and regenerative energy, water, and waste systems

What is whole systems thinking?
Systems thinking is a method to understand how things (elements and systems) are related, and how they influence one another within a whole. An example of systems thinking is how elements like water, sun, soil, air, plants, animals and human beings interact and support one another as a system.