From master plan to new campus
Admittedly, when I look back over the past weeks and months, there has been a lot going on on our campus - a new Campus Welcome Center with security-relevant redundant server and storage systems for the university computer center, a renovated university library and construction sites everywhere that should put our university in the top league when it comes to climate neutrality. Modernization and new construction is taking place everywhere in order to make the campus more sustainable, barrier-free, climate-friendly and digital, and to make it fit for modern, equipment-intensive engineering research and modern, interdisciplinary teaching. But is that enough? Or could our campus be even more attractive, for example by ensuring that cars no longer drive and park on campus? Or by setting up more rooms for exchange, creating sufficient space for new work or coworking?
Ralf Harrie (Photo: Jana Dünnhaupt)
In order to design the campus and meet as many requirements, wishes and needs as possible, a project team is formed. This team develops concrete project content for the planned campus design with regard to the structural-spatial concept, the traffic concept and the open space concept. The implementation will later be supported by the specialist departments. The decision-making body for the campus design project is the steering committee or board, represented by the university management. Ralf Harrie is the interface between the project team and the board. What do you have to do there? “My tasks as 'Staff Unit Project Management Construction' are to define the project objectives, check the specifications, plan the project, implement the project in the project team and report to the steering committee on agreed dates, milestones, project completion and other events,” says the business lawyer and business administrator.
“In short, I am primarily responsible for the planning, implementation and management of this project. This includes managing a team of employees who are involved in implementing the project, as well as communicating with the specialist departments. Consequently, I am the point of contact for everyone involved.”
In spring, a master plan for the campus at Universitätsplatz was presented by the consulting firm Drees & Sommer SE Berlin and a World Café on campus design was held, in which various wishes and suggestions from all parts of the university were collected and discussed. “All of these suggestions now need to be examined within the project team in terms of priorities, feasibility and usefulness and incorporated into the overall concept,” explains Ralf Harrie. “A project structure plan must then be created from this, and milestones must be determined and checked.”
Great interest in a mobility concept for the campus
Mr. Harrie, how ready do you think the university's employees and students are for a redesign of the campus? I'm thinking of a car-free campus or the creation of recreational areas. “Basically, there seems to be a great deal of interest in making the campus traffic-calmed and generating a separate mobility concept for the campus. The creation of green spaces and attractive recreational areas as well as a security concept are important aspects of the overall project alongside the energy concept. Of course, equal consideration is being given to how the campus can be more ideally integrated into the city and how the infrastructure for students and staff can be improved,” says Ralf Harrie. Sustainability will always be a central topic. “Sustainability is reflected in many of the project's individual measures:
The project team will be made up of stakeholders from across the university, such as representatives from EU GREEN work package 8 (campus life), the Senate Climate Commission and the Sustainability Office. By getting involved in these groups, among others, employees and students can contribute their ideas to the campus design.
Author: INES PERL