From College to Campus, Marson Korbi

Abstract: Beyond monastic tradition, rules, statutes, and codes regulating conduct and behaviors gave origin to university colleges and the figure of the student. Starting from the Middle Ages, plans for education were introduced by reformers, moralists, and educators of different times to re-formulate pedagogical agendas.
Key moments in the history of western education are the rise of university colleges, like those in Paris and Oxford; their territorial spread in scholastic Europe from the 13th century; the investment of patrons in building the so-called sapienza; and the hegemony of the Jesuit’s educational project. For centuries the collegium was associated with the form of the courtyard within the city. However, in the 19th century, the invention of the ‘American campus’ - as a result of the liberal reforms of Thomas Jefferson - brought to the gradual disappearance of the college.
Focusing on these paradigmatic examples, this presentation will discuss the relationship between statutes, pedagogical rules, and architectural form, from the origins of the college to the rise of the idyllic campus. The latter, a new radical paradigm, was purposely built to escape the city and to re-question the traditions of ‘monastic’ rules. In these examples, rules, statutes, and the academic program of the college founders influenced the typological configuration of buildings. The composition of corridors, courtyards, halls and rooms varied depending on the different needs for privacy, communal life, and educational ideology.