Design Guidelines - Philosophy for Development

Design guidelines set forth a framework of architectural and landscape elements that are based on the most desirable parts of the campus, its best buildings and open spaces, and the relationship between the two. It is the responsibility of every designer who works at UTSA to build on the strengths of those places held in esteem by the community of students, faculty and staff. These guidelines are intended to define the spirit of the built environment at UTSA by providing a structured and ordered set of coherent design elements. Architectural design guidelines should both permit a richness of diversity in human experience and provide safeguards to prevent chaos and disorientation.

As new projects are built and the campus more closely resembles the vision of the master plan, the separate areas of the campus will become more unified. The network of open spaces and the use of materials, paving, lighting, and other elements found in these guidelines will provide a consistency that will link the academic areas to the housing, recreation and athletic facilities at this 600-acre campus.

The Comprehensive Planning Guide of 1971 established the initial organizing principles that are still valid and evident today. The campus planning follows the 1573 New World City Building Regulations of Spanish King Philip V, known as the "Law of the Indies." These rules included the organization of streets (the pedestrian paseo system) around a central courtyard (the Sombrilla Plaza), providing building arcades at the street level and rotating the street grid from true north so that sunlight reaches all faces of the plazas and paseos at some time during the day.

The importance of paseos and their interior equivalent, gallerias, should be maintained in all future work. The paseos, broad pedestrian streets that extend from the Sombrilla Plaza, should be maintained as communal spaces and should not be obstructed by buildings. All paseos should be developed with protected view corridors of live oaks and cedar elms. Paseos should also allow for flexibility in future development. In the future, a shuttle tram may run along some of these arteries to connect different areas of the campus.

Paseos should be treated like the streets in a city. There should be public events at intervals, like a small amphitheater in front of the lobby of the new University Center. Their edges should be enlivened with additional service retail such as the café in the Business Building or the copy shop in the University Center. Effective solar shading systems, like those in the Sombrilla Plaza and South Paseo, would help improve the comfort of other paseos and plazas. Care should be taken to ensure and maintain the primacy of the pedestrian and to prevent any conflicts with vehicular traffic.

As future development extends the paseo network beyond the eight minute walk established by the original master plan, these streets will need greater diversity to enrich one's experience. Paseos will need more spatial modulation where they extend into the landscape. This has been achieved in the past with third floor bridges. These elevated connections improve circulation and supply welcomed shade at the paseo level for summer foot traffic. A cylindrical stair tower at the University Center is within the view corridor of the West Paseo. The tower serves as a successful intermediate point along that path. Future buildings should maintain the consistent edge of the paseo, but public functions such as stair towers or buildings entrances may project slightly into the view corridor.

The vertical organization set out in the original plan should be continued in new buildings. Building services are located at grade, primary lecture halls are at the paseo level, secondary classrooms are on the third level, and faculty offices are on the top floor. The height between floors should be maintained in all new buildings, as these levels are often connected at an upper floor. In certain buildings, it might be more appropriate to intersperse faculty offices throughout the building, and laboratories and other low-traffic functions might be located on a top floor. Because the first buildings were located around the top of a small hill, it is possible to add an additional floor to new buildings located lower on the hill without making the new buildings visually taller than the original campus core. Also, buildings with laboratory or research functions may be taller yet, as less intensively used spaces like wet labs may be located on upper floors without creating circulation problems. Buildings sited on sloping sites may have main entrances on the paseo level at the third floor, instead of the second floor as in the original buildings. This will shorten travel times by minimizing vertical travel distances.

A thirty-foot planning grid was established for the campus with a typical sub-module of five feet. This grid should be extended into the design of the buildings themselves by expressing the thirty foot structural bay and the five foot module.

New buildings, where they define the edge of a paseo, should incorporate arcades and porches along the paseos and front elevations to provide shade for pedestrians as they walk through the campus. This consistent meter of arcades and the rhythm of the façades will allow buildings to relate to each other across the paseos and will give scale and measure to the built environment. This modulated sense of proportion will allow for overall consistency yet still permit design variation. The design of windows should relate to the five-foot module. All windows should be proportioned in either square or vertical formats. The individual window units with these proportions can then be assembled into horizontal bands, provided a vertical pier or mullion separates them. The bulk of these guidelines address the specifics of building and landscape materials. The initial warm-colored concrete palette of the first structures is still valid today for the primary enclosure. Due to changes in cement manufacturing techniques and the construction environment, poured-in-place concrete may no longer be the obvious material choice, but this general color range can be obtained by precast concrete or native limestone such as Cordova Cream and Ole Yella.

Additional wall materials such as stucco should have a harmonious earth-toned color or a complementary sage-green color. Using these natural colored materials will unite the campus with its surroundings. These guidelines encourage the use of warm colors on surfaces such as arcade ceilings and stucco wall systems to harmonize with the primary system of enclosure. A selection of secondary colors should be incorporated into the doors, windows and painted ornamental metals. This palette is intended to be complementary to the warm earth tones of the masonry, comprised of muted tertiary colors. Bright, natural metals, such as the metal panels on the Biosciences Building, should be avoided, especially at the pedestrian level. Small quantities of luminous primary and secondary colors are acceptable in accent areas, like the use of decorative ceramic tiles placed where they may be easily appreciated.

The first buildings had a limited number of windows. The amount of glazing should be increased in future buildings, particularly at the paseo level. Future buildings on campus should maintain a minimum of 20 percent and a maximum of 33 percent glass. This will permit views into structures without the potential for excessive glass curtain walls. Clear glass should be used at entries and along the paseos to allow a greater sense of transparency, which will increase the sense of academic life and security felt on campus. The glass used in future buildings should be either gray-tinted or clear except in special and limited applications. With few exceptions, translucent gridded wall systems should be avoided on campus.

Sloped roof elements were used very sparingly on the original buildings. Some new buildings, however, have incorporated either clay tile or metal panel roofing. One of these buildings, the new Main Building, is as tall as the original buildings. In order for this new academic building to relate to the design of the original buildings, its tile roof is placed above the height of the parapet of the original buildings and the roof is set back from the edge of the outer wall. This contextual adaptation should help the new building to relate with the originals, and this same crisp parapet edge should be established on other new academic buildings of similar height.

Well-designed exterior lighting can have a positive impact on the quality of a campus in the evening hours. UTSA’s campus should feel secure and should have a sense of community. These qualities will become increasingly important as new recreational facilities and additional residential buildings bring more people to the 1604 Campus at night. The detail of the handcrafted punched metal and ceramic light fixtures on campus should serve as models for specialty lighting for future buildings. Arcades and entries should be well lit and inviting. New parking lots should not be illuminated with the sodium-lamped fixtures currently found on campus; instead, parking lots should have metal halide lamps mounted on medium height poles. This cleaner white light affords greater visibility and accurate color perception and does not have the murky visual qualities of sodium vapor. Also, placing fixtures closer to the ground will make them less obtrusive during the day.

Future development should continue to respect the natural environment. The master plan identifies a portion of the campus that is reserved as a recharge area for the Edwards Aquifer. All rainwater in this area should be allowed to filter into the aquifer, and parking lots and major buildings should not be located there. For the other parts of the campus, the TNRCC requires that rainwater must be collected from all new buildings, drives and impervious walkways. This rainwater must be filtered to remove a substantial portion of the suspended solids. Lakes shown in the master plan (first proposed in 1971) will assist in the collection and filtration of storm water runoff.

New buildings should employ shading techniques such as deeply set windows or building projections and sunscreens appropriate to the architectural vocabulary of the building. Passive shading systems allow larger window areas that not only afford views to the open landscape from within, but also allow a visual connection from the outside to the activities within the building. Shading should be added to existing paseos and should be incorporated into future development. Additional trees should be planted along the paseos to provide more shade and comfort. Where practical, shading should be provided from the parking lots to the buildings. This document includes open space guidelines which build on the original forward-thinking proposals of the 1971 Comprehensive Planning Guide by continuing the use of native xeriscape plant materials that add color and texture to the public spaces. Since the initial campus development, the network of paseos has grown to the point that additional design should be undertaken to give each public space its own visual identity. These guidelines will encourage a hierarchy of spaces with specific materials and details. Additional open spaces that provide opportunities for gathering should be developed to accommodate informal and structured groups. These unique academic and social assemblies can strengthen the mission of the institution. These guidelines address the continued use of wood and metal furniture to facilitate individual and group settings.

The university’s development program reflects a need to substantially increase the outdoor recreation areas. New playing fields, walking paths, and picnic pavilions will greatly enhance the recreational opportunities of the campus. Other types of open spaces will range from small areas of formal plantings (perhaps at a courtyard or building edge) to large and completely undisturbed areas of open space. These guidelines include a list of recommended plant materials and recommended planting sizes at the time of installation.

The design of sidewalks and pathways has a large impact on the perceived enjoyment of open spaces. The 1604 Campus has always had a vocabulary of saw-cut exposed aggregate concrete sidewalks, with some areas lined in brick pavers. This pattern has contributed to the success of the paseos and plazas. The warm color of these pathways is in keeping with the tone of the buildings and should be maintained in future designs. As the campus grows and new development extends the networks of paseos, hardscape surfaces should continue this system of a primary paving material with a contrasting accent. Variations in paseo character may also be appropriate within the constraint of maintaining the basic rhythm of the paving pattern. Alternate designs might include inserting a contrasting material such as brick, tile, or stone in the center of a framed panel. Care should be taken to integrate the hardscape paving with landscape planting to afford the best pedestrian experience.

The university art program at UTSA should be continued and strongly supported in future development. Among the strongest public art projects are those in which the university’s representatives, artists and architects work in a truly collaborative process. In order to ensure that art fits seamlessly into the built environment, potential locations for public art projects should be jointly established by architects, artists, and university personnel. For centuries, active integration of arts programs into buildings has served to enrich the human experience.

Ease of wayfinding and orientation on a campus are essential to the first-time and infrequent visitor and must be thought through carefully as the size of the campus continues to grow. A greater sense of orientation would also occur if the paseos were named and buildings were given addresses. The names of these paseos could be rooted in the past of the institution or in local history.

Recent development has built on the strengths of the early campus and has continued the network of open spaces. These new buildings have used the original character of materials and have added a few new materials that have contributed greater diversity. These guidelines were established to help unite future buildings and public spaces with the existing architectural and landscape vocabulary of the campus.