The Landscape Architecture Bureau was challenged to re-imagine Stanford University’s  Washington campus on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, DC.  The design challenge was to form, on the University’s only open space, the Connecticut Avenue streetscape, integrated intimate spaces for conversations among students, seating and respite for passersby walking to the nearby National Zoo, and a new identity for the campus based on Stanford’s core values of academic excellence, environmental stewardship and social equality. 

The streetscape was treated as one extended surface, folded and warped to provide accessibility, punctuated by a series of low walls to provide seating for students, neighborhood residents and tourists, to form and protect planted areas and to impart a playful, theatrical character to the public face of the university.  The scheme uses native plantings, root trenching, local materials, and low voltage lighting to promote visible sustainability and ensure longevity of the plantings, which normally suffer in such tight urban settings.