SEPTEMBER 2014
Smith college main entrance design proposal
With Plan it Green Landscape Architecture we were one of three firms hired to make a proposal for the main entrance of Smith College
Create, build a large scale “Entrance Pergola” structure, if you will, that frames and straddles the entire intersection. In any direction one traveling in a vehicle, on foot, in chair, on bicycle will feel like they are entering through and under a “porte cochere”, sans roof, type place maker.
This structure will clearly read as a prominent celebratory entrance into Smith College.
The steel structure is designed and intended to feel light, transparent, with strong historical reference to the 1875 Smith main gate.
The new main entrance gate will only be ornamented over the actual gateway entrance across College Lane and it will take its ornamental inspiration as reference only. It will not be an historic period reconstruction, but will instead be a 21st century contemporary design that follows Smith College’s current public image motif identities by using the college logo “SC” letters including them as mirrored images to both reduce the letters from alphabet into simple graphic shapes that can be seen equally from each side. Also the logo of sporting spirit fire can exist appropriately in the four towers flame light urns.
The four towers, with stone bases, similar to the existing pillars, anchor the eye level view of the pergola arches that establish this open to sky reference sense of a porte cochere place of entry.
This structure will clearly read as a prominent celebratory entrance into Smith College.
The steel structure is designed and intended to feel light, transparent, with strong historical reference to the 1875 Smith main gate.
The new main entrance gate will only be ornamented over the actual gateway entrance across College Lane and it will take its ornamental inspiration as reference only. It will not be an historic period reconstruction, but will instead be a 21st century contemporary design that follows Smith College’s current public image motif identities by using the college logo “SC” letters including them as mirrored images to both reduce the letters from alphabet into simple graphic shapes that can be seen equally from each side. Also the logo of sporting spirit fire can exist appropriately in the four towers flame light urns.
The four towers, with stone bases, similar to the existing pillars, anchor the eye level view of the pergola arches that establish this open to sky reference sense of a porte cochere place of entry.