There have been a lot of questions regarding the Talley Renovation and Addition Project, and for good reason. The project is long-term, and the construction presents inconveniences to students who make use of the current Talley student center; having said that, the decision is not one that has been made lightly. The gravity of a decision to invest time and money into a new student center has been carefully considered according to the goals of NC State as a university and community.
In one of my recent blog posts, I promised I would expand on how Talley fits into the master plan for NC State University. In 2007, that master plan was cooperatively drawn by numerous members of the NC State community. A set of guiding principles was included in this plan to ensure a cohesive set of goals that the campus community would pursue. The project to renovate the Talley Student Center falls very exactly into these goals.
The first guiding principle listed is a commitment to the master planning process. The process heavily emphasizes excellence in design and effective use of campus space, neither of which the current Talley can claim to, given the sheer number of students on campus. Talley was built in 1972, for a campus of 14,000 students. The current Talley does not make space accessible to the current population of over 30,000 students. Even the space within Talley that is used regularly lacks the grandeur deserving of NC State. The wheel-chair ramp is even too steep for practical accessibility, eliminating entirely the notion that the design of Talley Student Center gives the student body a legitimate reason to cling to the building as it is.
The ideology of sustainability is another qualifier by which the current student center needs to adapt and change. “The vision of NC State is to become sustainable according to the Bruntland Commission’s definition; ‘meeting the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.” It’s problematic asbestos, plumbing and electrical issues, failing elevators, and inadequate size for a growing student body of over 33,000 come to mind. Minor renovations and repairs are the practical equivalent of putting a chewed up piece of gum over a crack in the Hoover dam. It is no longer sensible in this economy to continually spend on these repairs when the building cannot provide sufficient service to the university.
The third guiding principle most directly related to the Talley Renovation and Addition project is the idea of Mixed-Use Activities, defined in the master plan as, “…the integration of a variety of activities and functions in open spaces and buildings in order to encourage contact and communication between people and the cross-fertilization of ideas.” The bright, open new building has been designed to foster travel through the area, provide a view into the various spaces where students congregate to eat, play, study and collaborate, and the great lawn will become a gathering place for social activities such as concerts, outdoor movies and other events.
To learn more about the physical master plan, read “A Campus of Neighborhoods and Paths,” found on NC State’s Facilities Division’s web site.