2010 - 2011 Spring Semester
Improvement Project for Emu Campus: “Designing A Pedestrian/Student- Friendly Campus”
Instructors: Prof. Dr. Naciye Doratli, Prof. Dr. Sebnem Hoskara
Students: Abolfazel Dehghan Mongabadi, Amir Rashidi, Nima Mosavi, Sina Mosavi
This semester, the students are asked to re-evaluate the existing campus of EMU and develop an improvement project for a user/pedestrian friendly campus, based on the future requirements.
EMU has established 30 years ago and immediately took its place amongst the best universities in the Mediterranean region. It is an international university with 14,000 students from 70 different countries, and almost 1,000 instructors from 35 different countries. The campus is set in 2,200 acres of land just at the edge of the city Famagusta. EMU has many educational facilities-faculties with sufficient equipment; besides, there is fully-equipped health center, post-office and a wide choice of catering outlets and shops to serve students' every need. A thriving calendar of social and cultural activities enlivens the campus throughout the academic year, and the university's very own radio and television channels add further color to life in the EMU community.
In this urban design studio, the project OF 'Designing a Student / Pedestrian Friendly Campus' will address the overall revision of the functional, aesthetic, and environmental quality of the EMU campus. It will include the reconfiguration of the campus, its facilities (buildings and outdoor spaces), and its interconnection with an impact on the local community and environment. Student (Pedestrian) Friendly Campus design will also include landscaping, outdoor features and furnishings, all types of transportation systems (pedestrian, bicycle, vehicle, transit), and the quality of the dormitory arrangements and recreational opportunities.
The new EMU campus, in the end, will be expected to be a student-oriented, sustainable, modern and IT-based campus, depending on the needs of the users. Thus, the students of this studio should also aim at "creating an efficient, eco-friendly" campus with comfortable, and culturally-rich environment to encourage inter-personal interaction and enable EMU to better fulfill its missions.
Employing a Student / Pedestrian Friendly Campus initiative depends on committing to four rooted action categories that together will tangibly improve the quality of campus life. These action categories will reflect a campus that: (1) highlights EMU's history and traditions by way of a campus structure that creatively promotes cohesive landscaping, architecture, and land use stewardship by way of thoughtfully recovering the ideas of congenial neighborhoods and mixed use planning; (2) preserves and expands open spaces that invite leisure, gatherings, congeniality, and conversation; (3) celebrates the creative and diverse underpinnings of all civilizations and societies through art and culture; and (4) recognizes that successful living and learning laboratory spaces, when overlapping and integrated, reinforce one another and thereby define the entire campus as a model of positive life and growth experiences.
