Bar Harbor, ME – Coplon Associates was recently awarded a Merit Award from the Boston Society of Landscape Architects for the Kathryn W. Davis Residential Village at College of the Atlantic (CoA) in Bar Harbor.
The project was developed to provide on-campus housing for this shorefront college noted for its role in educating leaders in environmental stewardship, sustainability, and responsibility. The design of the project had several overriding objectives: demonstrate environmental stewardship through sustainable building practices; create a new center for residential life, encourage more students to live on campus, and improve internal campus connections. The design solution sited three new high-performance buildings along a pedestrian “street” vitally linking the north and south ends of campus. Each building, including an adjacent historic cottage renovated into a student center, features a courtyard that references the international nature of the student body.
Strongly committed to sustainable building practices, CoA chose to redevelop an existing residential site with two historic structures for the new student housing. The shorefront site was constrained by bordering wetlands and streams, shoreland setbacks, and existing structures and vegetation. The plan developed by the landscape architect integrated the three new residential structure and a boiler building containing a central wood pellet boiler and bike storage into this context, achieving a net reduction of approximately 8% in impermeable surfaces, while substantially increasing the programmed use of the site. On site run-off was broken into small sub-drainages and directed to landscape areas for irrigation and infiltration. Bordering wetlands and streams were protected and integrated into the landscape design that defined the boundaries of the project site. Grading was carefully designed to address regulated limitations to building height and provide universal accessibility to the houses and common areas. As part of CoA’s desire to recycle and reuse, cut granite stone salvaged over the years from the former summer estates that comprise the campus was used in the construction of seating walls and stone benches throughout the project.
The planning for the Davis Residential Village contributed to CoA’s efforts to meet a goal of achieving campus-wide independence from fossil fuel by 2015. The site design supported the ongoing effort to fully pedestrianize the CoA campus by both removing vehicles and driveways from the residential district and developing a defined, functional and attractive north-south pedestrian connection. The clustering of the high performance buildings around the pedestrian spine creates a village like setting was intended to foster on-campus student life, an important aspect in the overall health of the college community. To date, the project has been remarkably successful with applications for residency exceeding available space.
Coplon Associates oversaw all aspects of site programming, site design and permitting, collaborating closely with COA and the project architects (Coldham and Hartman, Amherst Massachusetts for the residential buildings and Stewart Brecher Architects for the campus center renovation) throughout the project design, and construction.
