Preserving history while keeping up with innovation can be difficult for any institution—particularly when dealing with the infrastructure of a historic college campus in an era of rapid advancement in building technology. It’s a circumstance being faced by universities around the world, and with its new East End Transformation, Washington University in St. Louis is taking on the challenge of reinvigorating 20% of its campus, while addressing sustainability across the board.

Construction on the midtown campus started in 1900, and since that time, the school has continued to build within the framework of two original master plans: an 1895 landscape-based scheme by Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot, and an 1899 block configuration by Philadelphia’s Cope and Stewardson. Both plans left room for interpretation, envisioning the east end of campus as a green space, without buildings. In Cope and Stewardson’s plan, which was built out, an allée of oak trees leads from Collegiate Gothic historic core to the far eastern edge of campus. [...]

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