Place
The R.W. Kern Center is located on a previously developed area of Hampshire College’s master-planned campus, surrounded by earlier development. Originally, the site had been used as an orchard, and had some level of contaminated soil due to pesticide use in the 1960s and 70s. The project team studied several locations on campus for the RWKC; the current site was chosen as the best location to meet the goals of creating a denser campus core, offering a warm welcome to visitors, and leaving peripheral areas of campus as more natural spaces.
The on-site landscape surrounding the RWKC includes native and naturalized species that emulate the indigenous ecosystem. In establishing the design, the landscape architect decided to return the existing disturbed site to a meadow form of native plant community in the first succession, and to largely maintain this ecosystem over the course of the site’s planned use. The meadow preserves the native vegetation, creates an aesthetically pleasing plant community, is easy to maintain, and supports a range of wildlife. The design intent is for a self-sustaining landscape that will thrive in the natural conditions of the site without active irrigation or maintenance once plants have been established. Strategic placement of rain gardens allows 100 percent of rainwater to infiltrate on site.
