by Caleb Fort
Daily Lobo
It's important for UNM to have a master plan for its Rio Rancho campus, said Roger Schluntz, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning.
"The question is, are we going to take 220 acres and turn 160 acres of it into a parking lot?" he said. "If we don't do anything and just let the campus happen, we'll end up with something that looks like a shopping center."
Schluntz and more than 10 other people participated in a design charette for the campus from Nov. 12 to 15. A charette is an intensive meeting to come up with design ideas.
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The Board of Regents and Patrick Lyons, commissioner of public lands, completed a trade Oct. 16 that gives UNM 222 acres near Rio Rancho's planned city center.
The design team came up with several ideas to make the campus sustainable, including water recycling and solar and wind power.
"We accept that this ought to be a demonstration of sustainability for the University," said Schluntz, who came out of sabbatical to participate in the project. "This could be a test site to show the state that it is possible to build something like this."
Ric Richardson, dean of the school of architecture, said he went into the charette with the idea of the sustainability.
"It is all about global warming in the end," he said. "I think that this institution needs to start now, from fixing (main) campus and building the new one right to educating our students about this. It's not just because it's neat. It's not just that other people are talking about it. This is something that we need to do."
The campus should be carbon neutral, which means that net effects of construction and use of the campus will not add carbon to the atmosphere, he said.
"Sustainability and global warming were the driving questions, not just how we can get a good deal on construction," he said. "It's really great to see that those are a
concern."
Other ideas included terraced parking and ways to make smooth transitions from the surrounding desert to the campus.
The regents will review a report of the charette at their meeting Tuesday.
The campus could eventually support 12,000 students.
The drafts created by the design team are rough drafts, Richardson said.
"This is the first cut at design," he said. "What we end up with will be something entirely different from complete acceptance or mixing and matching, but we have set the tone. These are ideas that really legitimize the prospect of building a sustainable place."
UNM will hire someone to master plan the campus, Schluntz said.
It's important to have a plan when construction starts,
he said.
"The infrastructure now is very important," he said. "Once you have the beginning in place, it's going to be there forever. These first initial steps will have a large impact on how the campus develops in the future."
Schluntz said the hardest part of constructing the campus will be getting money and making sure there are students to use the buildings.
"Getting both of those right at the same time is very difficult," he said. "We have to juggle those two factors and try to stay the course with a clear plan and
concept."
