HOW UC MERCED REINVENTS THE POSSIBLE

摘要

Much will be written in coming years about the University of California, Merced. Some will marvel at how the institution started with an empty grassland field in 2002 and rose to its present stature as a major research university of nearly 9,000 undergraduate and graduate students on a residential campus of 14 buildings. Others will study its groundbreaking achievements in sustainability, now a template of best practice in higher education. Many will learn from the school's historic public-private partnership (P3), the largest ever executed in the U.S. Watching over all this since the inception of the master plan is Michael Duncan, FAIA, senior design partner in Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's San Francisco office. "This project is a privilege. Usually, higher education buildings are done one by one, with a master plan goal set out many decades in the future. Rarely does it come together so rapidly and at this scale," Duncan says.