by David Page
"A line and a plane" Renowned Scottish architect David Page who devised the University's campus plan wrote this piece on the City Centre campus for the Dundee Institute of Architects' publication - Dialogue.
Approached from the south, Dundee University is quietly and elegantly embedded into the upwardly sweeping, domestically-scaled charm of the Perth Road. Sometimes it hides behind the walls of historical fabric built for other purposes, at other times it asserts itself as a boldly-scaled insertion. There are two outstanding landmarks at either end of the Perth Road drag. To the east, the University Tower by Robert Matthew rises from its forecourt garden - a vertically stacked tower on a plinth of shared resources, with a midway expressed box, all in a Scandinavian-inspired hybrid cut of stone and timber. At the other, western end, one of the great mini megastructures of Britain, Jimmy Paul's architecture school which slides back into the hill behind with its horizontal flexible platforms of shared display and activity spaces.
Good buildings anticipate. They do so because they exploit the potentials sometimes hidden to the unknowing eye, and implicit in these two buildings is the underlying post war view that the university's growth lay to the north of the Perth Road extending to the Hawkhill, and not to its immediate south cascading down towards the Tay. So whereas the Architecture School's twin, the Crawford building, dies into the hill, the architecture building's upper floors cut onto its top, skillfully negotiating the rise from street to hilltop with a little doorway anticipating the campus as it looks northwards. At the same time, the Robert Matthew Tower, whilst providing a good front door to the central university facilities with its generously carved-out foyer, also anticipates that direct link northwards through its oversized pend.
Imagine then a line and a plane.
Imagine a line drawn through the pend of the Tower, coinciding with Smalls Wynd, that links Perth Road to the northern campus edge at Hawkhill and beyond. Take all the unnecessary traffic movement out, pave it from wall to wall so it becomes a pleasant place to walk, and on its edges bring the front doors, shops and displays which advertise the university functions. Create plenty of activity so that folk gravitate towards it for coffee, chats and entertainment: an ideal activity street, relatively sheltered by the buildings along its edge.
At the same time, imagine a plane extending eastwards to Smalls Wynd from the hilltop door of the architecture building. A few things might be skimmed away in our imaginary plane. The squash and tennis courts would be replaced and likewise some of the residences. The result would be a plane sweeping down the east-facing slope past the student union, embracing the Jam Factory and Chapel, and sleeving through to meet the university main street on Smalls Wynd. Our plane, in contrast to the busy line of hard-surfaced university main street, would be seen as a stretched relaxation and release space, a green breathing space, an escape from academic intensity for which the students were the strongest advocates: somewhere to lie out in, hide even, near to the sound of water, wildlife, and smells of nature.
This intensively-used line and plane have become the coat-hangers for the campus vision, but its shared public space is more than a common resource for access and enjoyable use. In building the mental map of our environment, we can also use our knowledge of the relationships between university disciplines and build our sense of the university as a whole within its city context. Historically we have identified universities through significant, focal-point buildings, such as Scott's Glasgow University or Adam's Edinburgh University. Irrespective of their ability to accommodate the best guess at the rate of expansion, these focal-point buildings were rapidly extended. No matter the scale of the conception, the need to grow - and success breeds growth - led from the monolithic, all-encompassing facility to an aggregation of activities in various buildings. In that respect, the University of Dundee was no different, with its exponential growth of courses. From being symbols of interconnectivity, with an outward unity of architectural expression and taste, universities become assemblages. When reviewing the university estate, the inevitable question is to ask if there is any order to this growth, and to redefine what holds it together.
The line and plane are potentially crucial here, as the faculties can begin to share a common space. To the west, Art, Architecture and Design plus the Biological Sciences share the landscaped plane with Engineering and the Arts in the east, all in turn linked along the line of Smalls Wynd to the Perth Road and Hawkhill. At the same time, taking an outsider's view, we can think of the green in the city along the line of Smalls Wynd as an oasis of cultured calm within the intensity of academic aspiration.
Campus plans anticipate the future. So what does this plan anticipate?
The answer lies in the line of Smalls Wynd and the plane of University Green which consolidate the ambition to grow northwards over Hawkhill, confirming the vision of earlier campus builders to occupy the hill by acquisition and removal of the existing tenements and warehouses. Now covered in car parks, residual uses and sports halls, the university realises that this under-utilised landscape can be this early century's opportunity to create a new frontage and face, a contemporary echo of the Perth Road.
It is on this northern Hawkhill edge that our generation of architects will show their skills, their anticipation which will turn the campus into one of those intricate, enjoyable, refreshing places to be, to spend time and be proud to learn in. The new campus plan will be conceived in that light, progressive rather than radical, emerging from an understanding of need. That need, to reflect a university made up of brilliant individualism but linked with a sense of common purpose: to serve the world. Universities are remarkable entities. They cluster and congregate an amazing variety of users and uses which we need to represent and even anticipate for the future.