Creating a lush contemplative space for students, staff, and visitors to enjoy year-round
In 2018, Yale Divinity School wanted to transform two underutilized courtyards into places where students and faculty can socialize and reflect. Working with Yale University, our design team realized that vision.
For this project, our team developed programming opportunities as well as researched the original design of the courtyards that had been lost over time. Beatrix Farrand, one of the founding members of the American Society of Landscape Architects, was Yale’s campus landscape architect during the original construction of the Divinity School—much of her original work had been lost to history. Through research and investigation, we interpreted Farrand’s landscape design principles and applied them to this project.
The main space is divided into two courtyards by the Marquand Chapel. The northeast courtyard was designed for entertainment and social functions, and features a bluestone patio, a corten steel fire pit, café tables and chairs, and a surrounding granite seat wall. The southeast courtyard provides a meditative space featuring a labyrinth surrounded by plantings, benches for seating and landform. The two courtyards are tied together with new bluestone pathways along with refurbished pedestrian lights and new ambient lighting at the seat walls, and at key plantings in the form of tree up lights.
Now complete, the project provides a new outdoor space for students and faculty to connect with one another and get in touch with the natural world.
At a Glance
- Offices
Phillip Champagne, Landscape Architect
Nothing is as rewarding as creating a public amenity, bringing the community’s vision to fruition and enhancing quality of life.
Travis Ewen, Associate
I seek to blend issues of ecology, resilience, mobility and promote access to beautiful and meaningful open space for all.
Thomas Hammerberg, Landscape Architect
In our work, you get to be a designer and quite often an end user. Enhancing and beautifying our communities is what landscape architects do.
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