Four Sasaki Projects Honored by 2024 SCUP Excellence Awards
The Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) Excellence Awards honors strategic, integrated campus planning
Introducing Vision 2050, a flexible framework guided by the institution’s strategic vision for long-term growth
Michigan State University Facilities and Land Use Plan
The Michigan State University (MSU) Facilities and Land Use Plan, Vision 2050, provides a roadmap to guide the development of the campus, including its 5,300-acre main campus in East Lansing. Guiding this plan, the University’s Strategic Plan articulates a vision for Michigan State to be a leader in advancing academic excellence, student success, and a healthy, safe, and welcoming culture for all. Accordingly, the Sasaki-led Campus Facilities and Land Use Plan touches the full spectrum of university activities: academics and research, residential life, wellness, open space, mobility, infrastructure, and sustainability.
While flexible in nature, the plan recommendations affirm MSU’s goals of academic excellence, student success, DEI, novel partnership opportunities, resilient and sustainable land use, and a mission that advances the state-wide economy. These goals are embedded throughout state-wide facilities and across each of the East Lansing Campus’ precincts, resulting in distinct recommendations around the buildings, mobility networks, open spaces, and utility systems that will support the university’s next generation of development.
East Lansing Campus Existing Conditions, 2023
East Lansing Campus Vision 2025
Engagement
The plan recommendations reflect over 80 stakeholder interviews involving over 660 participants, an interactive map-based survey with nearly 900 respondents, and multiple public forums, which provided the design team a detailed understanding of the university’s facility needs, its strategic goals, and other contingent issues to future development. As the Sasaki team formulated campus development scenarios, ideas were tested alongside university stakeholders through both in-person work sessions and virtual open houses, ensuring that the plan recommendations reflect the diverse, in-depth knowledge of the MSU community.
The Sasaki planning team facilitated public forums with interactive maps to gather stakeholder feedback
Guiding Principles
Vision 2050 builds on the university’s academic success by providing compact, mixed-use academic districts, expanding opportunities for research and innovation, and preserving the campus park, agricultural lands, and natural areas to support MSU’s academic mission. Improvements to the campus landscape and existing academic facilities bring together students, faculty, and staff to encourage interdisciplinarity and academic success. Expanding on the “neighborhood” model, the plan creates new hubs for student collaboration within each of the campus’s academic precincts through a mixture of new facilities.
An interior atrium in central campus provides a space for chance encounters among students, faculty, and staff
Pedestrian promenades such as Red Cedar Promenade enhance campus walkability and non-vehicular mobility
Recognizing that today’s diverse population has broader needs for mental, physical, and social well-being, the plan recommends that improvements to the built environment incorporate spaces to build identity and find solace. Within each campus precinct, indoor gathering spaces anchor significant landscapes, enhancing the sense of community and belonging. Vision 2050 additionally recommends the preservation and, where necessary, expansion of the university’s research land resources, ensuring future generations can sustain the region’s food systems and ecological resources through research initiatives.
Stormwater management and resilient land-use patterns unfold at a variety of scales across the MSU campus
Landscape recommendations include a focus on a civic realm that provides open spaces for a diverse array of celebrations and gatherings
The plan recommends space for potential expansion for biomedical research within Southeast Campus, such as the Research Plaza looking towards Center Green
Land Use Frameworks
The plan utilizes four Land Use Frameworks that guide the campus development:
- The Academic Crescent Framework intentionally concentrates academic and research facilities along a crescent that connects the former Spartan Village, major campus roads, and Southeast Campus. This focused development pattern maximizes programmatic synergies and minimizes costly extensions to supporting infrastructure.
- The Research Gateways Framework anticipates sites for partnerships that advance teaching, research, and outreach. These support new gateways to campus at its southeast and southwest.
- The Campus Life Nodes Framework provides a flexible approach to future and existing student housing and life amenities. It concentrates improvements within or adjacent to MSU’s existing residential neighborhoods, ensuring efficient access to academic resources and amenities that support the development of the whole student.
- The Arts and Culture Corridor Framework identifies a corridor that connects the Wharton Center for the Performing Arts north to Kresge Art Center, the Auditorium, and Broad Art Museum. This spine not only unifies the university’s multiple facilities for visual and performing arts but also ties it to the vibrant retail and dining district along Grand River Avenue, thereby stitching the university’s artistic mission with East Lansing’s cultural context.
Academic Crescent: the plan intentionally concentrates academic and research facilities along a crescent.
Research Gateways: the plan anticipates sites for partnerships that advance its teaching, research, and outreach mission.
Campus Life Nodes: the plan integrates campus nodes to promote student health and wellbeing throughout the day.
Arts and Culture Corridor: creative inquiry and the arts are fundamental to advancing knowledge and developing a vibrant campus community.
Academic Crescent: the plan intentionally concentrates academic and research facilities along a crescent.
Research Gateways: the plan anticipates sites for partnerships that advance its teaching, research, and outreach mission.
Campus Life Nodes: the plan integrates campus nodes to promote student health and wellbeing throughout the day.
Arts and Culture Corridor: creative inquiry and the arts are fundamental to advancing knowledge and developing a vibrant campus community.
A New Public Realm
Vision 2050 amplifies the existing diversity of open space to create a cohesive network of paths, gardens, plazas, and quads that promote non-motorized mobility across campus. Within each precinct, iconic and memorable open spaces provide visual connectivity between buildings and opportunities to showcase learning and discovery within the public realm. A clear hierarchy of bike and pedestrian paths, separated from the vehicular network, intuitively knits the campus’s precincts together. Along the primary pedestrian corridors, more intimate parks and plazas adjacent to key buildings support outdoor gatherings and offer the campus community places to find solace and connection with the natural environment.
Strategic investments in the streetscape and public realm improve connections between major resources such as the Red Cedar River corridor and Baker Woodlot
The plan recommends implementing three thematic landscape strategies across MSU’s campus to advance the public realm framework. The first strategy aims to expand the academic experience through the introduction of outdoor recreation facilities and landscapes to encourage wandering and discovery. The second involves activating the MSU landscape across the 4 seasons through careful programming,uniting the campus community around cultural celebrations and seasonal spectacles. Lastly, the plan strives to celebrate the diversity of its place through expanding the campus’s existing woodlands and introducing pollinator gardens to appeal to the senses, support ecological biodiversity, and create counterpoints to more formal campus landscapes.
The plan envisions a greenbelt buffer from the interstate highway for research, recreation, and natural resources management that link the precinct to the university’s teaching, research and outreach mission
Regardless of the time of year, careful programming in coordination with the adjacent student life functions should enhance the university’s identity and reflect the diversity of people who make up the MSU community
Completed in December 2023, the MSU Land Use and Facilities Plan provides flexibility for the university to make detailed and optimal decisions regarding MSU’s facilities and land resources that will guide the institution’s next twenty five years of development.
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