Master Plan for the Loughborough University of Technology : An Endless Campus ? Master Plan for the Loughborough University of Technology : ¿ Un campus infinito ?

The Master Plan for the Loughborough University of Technology is a 143-page document that gathers the work undertaken by the institution to become a university, thus benefiting from the educational policies derived from the 1963 Robbins report in Britain. Arup Associates authored in 1966 a proposal whose main characteristic is its ascription to an infinite grid strategy and a systematized project. The different diagrams and growth schemes represent the geometric synthesis of some compositional and constructive rules: three grids overlap to produce a germ drawing to which a growth pattern is added for its territorial extension. For the sake of flexibility and adaptability, the project tries to avoid architectural obsolescence through the achievement of a “universal space unit”. Hence, a “discipline” is established whose definition turns out to be a succession of limitations. Through the reconstruction of the design process for the Loughborough University, the multiple meanings of the limit concept are portrayed in parallel to its idea of a continuous and endless campus. A strict internal order, an intentionally open reading of the territory and a constructive standardization produce a kind of visual exhaustion of the whole that could be understood as a limit of spatial nature.

the university. Currently, the institution is called Loughborough University.
The three years between the approval of the Robbins report and the granting of the university status represented a frenzy of coordinated work between different actors. In July 1963, the Joint Standing Committee on Planning and Development 4 was set up with two fundamental objectives: the drafting of the petition for the Royal Charter -that was finally granted on April 16, 1966-, and the preparation of a plan for the physical development of the campus. Both purposes included a general reflection on the institution's identity and role: on the one hand, the consideration of technology as a discipline at the service of industrial advancement, and on the other, the assumption of the university as a complete training environment that should provide, beyond teaching, a community and social context. of the Civil Engineering building -still under construction-were included in The Architectural Review monograph entitled "The New Universities". 9 Besides, Arup Associates had been editing its journal since 1966, and technical issues related to the prefabricated concrete elements and the service facilities were outlined in their quarterly issues. 10 The interest aroused by this new university is undoubtedly related to its consideration of an infinite grid and a systematized design. The different diagrams and growth schemes [ Fig. 2] are self-explanatory: they show the geometric synthesis of some compositional and constructive rules.

Master Plan: the game rules
The Loughborough University master plan does not explain what the campus buildings will look like, nor does it conclude in a list of functional needs that relate to precise urban or time planning. It is an atypical document, very balanced in its drawing and written content, without the usual planimetry appendix. 11 Arup Associates simply proposed an instruction manual. The narrative is the result of research involving various agents (the client, experts in pedagogy at the University of Oxford and local authorities) where the main problem is formulated and consequently a solution is offered. The campus should be an adaptable entity that would grow from 1,500 to 5,000 users in the following 10 years. 12 There is almost no variable determined in the brief, and the few data that could be concise -such as the site or the existing academic buildings-, seem to be diluted on purpose: "Specific proposals for the size, height, use and relationship of buildings should be avoided, simply because the data upon which such proposals would be based may well turn out to be inaccurate". 13 The university required spaces for formal and informal learning. The first included the departments' and schools' demands (lecture rooms, seminar rooms, and laboratories) while the latter derived from the overwhelming need to accommodate the majority of the students on campus since the city had a scarcity of lodgings.
However, there was no stable program: certain departments were given priorities, but new ones were to come and offer other degrees.
The institution was also not guaranteed continuous financing. While it was the University Grants Committee that managed state funds, the dependence on political changes was evident. In particular, public subsidies for educational buildings were easier to obtain than those related to residential needs, and therefore the master plan urged the university to find funding alternatives. 14 Furthermore, the new university was to be located on adjacent 90-acres (36-hectares) land of crops recently acquired southwest of the existing facilities.
Commonly in British universities, the peri-urban condition of the campus is on purpose, since some isolation from the urban centre is sought to achieve a concentration's atmosphere for the students. Consequently, the location also provides the design with a particular degree of autonomy. The site's description by Arup Associates is neutral and concise: the roads bordered the plot (some of them still underway), and the topography was briefly mentioned (slope from south to north). However, there is no diverse reading of the territory that would make geographical or landscape opportunities emerge.
Finally, the authors of the master plan denied any potential relationship with the pre-existing building, which they described as "finite structures [designed] to satisfy particular, specialized functions" 15 and therefore very limited for their reconversion.
Thus, stripped of any contextual conditioner, the drawing board is blank and available to define "one universal and adaptable building type" 16 that is configured 9 Michael Brawne, "The New Universities", The Architectural Review 147, no. 878 (1970). as a set of conveniently related elements so that they can assume all variation and change.
"Our proposal is to develop a pattern or discipline which will ensure a sense of order and continuity in the development, but which will be flexible enough to provide the framework within which future requirements can be met". 17 It is not surprising to find in this definition the essence and terminology of an architecture characteristic of that time. Continuous patterns as support for flexibility and change were regular in the 1960s. On the one hand, the constant visibility of the debates held within Team 10 must be considered, and especially those by the Dutch structuralist sector, the British Alison and Peter Smithson, and the Frenchbased firm Candilis-Josic-Woods. 18 Actually, this master plan design would fit perfectly in that typology of low height and high density that Alison Smithson would coin years later as a mat-building. 19 The "pattern or discipline" will be a unique geometric basis where the functional programme will come to nestle and the result will be an urban hybrid. 20 On the other hand, and especially regarding the British and German new universities, several research projects were carried out at that time to study systematized planning that would optimize both the designs and the construction The definition of a discipline The previous textual quote contains a term -"discipline"-and a specific annotation -"which will ensure a sense of order (...)"-and both contents are essential for the design strategy understanding. In fact, the chapter "Development of a discipline" is the central text of the master plan, which contains most of the drawings and diagrams, and in which lies the proposal comprehension. In the book index, this section is preceded by "The Problem" and "The Brief" and followed by the texts related to the master plan's description, the structure's definition and services' provision. The definition of the discipline, also called the compositional pattern, turns out to be the detailed reasoning by which the dimensions and interaction between various three-dimensional and overlapping grids are established. It is about "ensuring a sense of order" by defining those things that can be done and those that cannot.
The starting point is the academic spaces' needs, which are classified into three types. First, there are heavy or industrial laboratories, then specialized spaces or research laboratories and, finally, generic teaching spaces, such as classrooms and seminars. The goal is to find, for the first two space types, a universal and useful relationship for the partition's position, the structural elements and the service routes. The results of this inquiry would be subject to verification in the case of the generic spaces, with less functional requirements. A first grid arises from this argument: a tartan network that alternates 3-foot (91cm) and 9-inch (23cm) strips in two directions. The narrow tape will allow to house any partition type (brick, concrete) and the 3-foot one adjusts to the dimensional range of any teaching space, in addition to being a multiple of 9 inches [ Fig. 3a].
The second grid to be defined is the structural one. According to the research carried out, specialized teaching spaces require a 50-foot (15m) span so that large surfaces are guaranteed without intermediate pillars. Equally the optimum height for teaching spaces seems to be 10 feet (3m). Hence, the structural module is 50x50 feet -bidirectionality is intended for greater flexibility-and 10 feet high. The beams are estimated at 5 feet (1.5m) height, an adequate dimension to host the services routes and even for eventual access for registration. The heavy laboratories' ceiling can thus reach 25 feet (7.5m) through a double-height spatial configuration. To allow specific openings in the floors, a modular pattern of ribs subdivides the 50-foot frames. When both partitions and structure grids overlap, one is shifted away from the other: it is about preventing the services pipes, normally integrated into the partitions, from coinciding with main structural elements (beams or ribs) [Fig. 3a]. The third and final grid relates to the growth system of the structural module. Instead of adding the 50x50 feet units indefinitely and in both directions, a 15-foot (4.5m) span is used in between modules. Circulation corridors integrating stairs and lifts will fit in this new dimension, which can also be considered an eventual extension of a 50-foot space. The new tartan fabric is called "master grid" and will allow for buildings to have different final shapes [ Fig. 3b].
The germ drawing of the master plan for the Loughborough University [ Fig. 1] is the result of superimposing these three grids besides pointing out the services routes. As the legend of the drawing specifies, the L-pillars frame the master grid, the structural beams and ribs are shaded in grey, and the partitions grid underlays the whole. The services pipes will find their place between the beam and the first rib of each span, in both directions. The three-dimensional representation of the space unit [ Fig. 4] helps to visualize the superposition of elements. Only a few additional lines of the master plan argue that the design result, although originating from academic spaces, will be equally valid to accommodate the less demanding residential needs in terms of dimensions and facilities.
The last illustration included in the main chapter explaining the "discipline" is the one titled "Growth pattern" [Fig. 2], and together with the gridded space unit, both compositional schemes were the most widespread in the contemporary architectural magazines. L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui included its coloured representation for the issue cover focused on new universities [ Fig. 5], and although it should be noted that the drawing was rotated 90º from the original (probably due to graphic layout reasons), its coding is more understandable than existing black and white versions. However, this graphic characteristic is not explicit in the project drafting.
[ Fig. 4 Although the university was conceived from a homogenous and non-hierarchy grid, and the growth pattern was represented on an abstract square frame, the directionality of the site is finally considered when the master grid is adapted to the 90-acre land [Fig. 6]. No correspondence to the cardinal points is found, but simply "the master grid pattern has been set out to run parallel with the main longitudinal contours". 26 Subsequently, this merely functional justification is clarified by referring to services supplies along the northwest road. makes a comparison of the historical flow of gridded architectural works to a reading of its components -the points, the areas, the lines of the network-and as a consequence, he identifies the grid lines to the infrastructural vision of the architecture and the urban planning of the 1960s and 1970s. Actually, the structural understanding of urban services led Shadrach Woods to write Stem, 28 and it was from that seminal text that he imagined his natural evolution to the concept of Thus, the grid is both a pattern organization of lines that work as communication channels and a homogenous surface that feeds a utopian picture. However, when defining the "discipline", the Arup Associates firm uses the grid as a succession of limitations.

The grid: a succession of limitations
The first limitation is self-imposed, which has to do with wanting to establish an order. In an article about the University of Loughborough that appeared in the Arup Journal, one of the architects of the master plan team, David Thomas, assesses the planning grid application in the first building developed, the Civil Engineering building. The first of the conclusions says: "There must be an absolutely ruthless observance of the grid pattern. Any divergence from this discipline quickly causes widespread chaos. Observing the discipline must become second nature to all members of the design group". 33 The second specifies that "the actual dimensions of the grid network are relatively unimportant -it is the principle that counts-, but we have so far found no reason to vary the basic dimensions of 3 ft. and 9 in". 34 The design delimitation is based on its composition: lines drawn are boundaries that mark what can be done in each of the intervals, and that possibility is simply limited to what the discipline says.
The second limitation is accepted but not assumed. The land available for the campus and its outline are perfectly described in the master plan: "It is not possible to expand the existing developments much further, so the bulk of the expansion will have to be accommodated on the undeveloped 90 acres". 35 If the surface is clearly defined, why the design does not enable any strategy for the grid to be ended?
Why does the network extend in the drawings showing indeterminate edges that resemble the fabric fringes? The answer to these questions has to do with the will to neutralize the proposal, also with the grid's autonomy concerning the land's nature. Finishing the fabric would mean singling it out, and this could only happen by making a detailed reading of the boundary's particular conditions. inside and outside it, rather than to make a contribution to the galaxy of modern architectural fashion". 39 However, it is undeniable that the visuality tops out due to repetition, a fact that may be named as a limit of spatial nature. Mechanisms The work must be valued within its temporal context. The firm Arup itself recognizes that university experiences were an opportunity to conceive prefabricated concrete systems of rapid production for large buildings. The projects developed for Loughborough, Birmingham, Cambridge and East Anglia tested the technological and industrial processes. They also acknowledge that the experimentation was useful for other residential and office buildings commissions. 42 Furthermore, the master plan proposal may be framed in the persuasive and excessive programming of the postwar architecture that used scientific methods to uncover a high degree of indeterminacy between form and function and whose flexibility has now been reinterpreted since the ambiguity and the generic spaces. 43 The contextual issue is not exempt from the consideration of collective and interdisciplinary authorship. Indeed, both the analysis phase and the design process were carried out by a team of seven people, including two architects, two structural that: " [Arup Associates team] have interpreted in terms of buildings and layout the flexibility which is essential in the ever-changing field of technology (...)". 44 Be that as it may, the particularity of this project is an inherent approach to the unlimited that coexists, in its concretion, with all possible meanings of the term "limit".
Thus, it is the concern for the obsolescence of buildings the reason that moves the design strategy: "The more closely a building is tailored to its function, whatever it is, the more quickly it will become out of date". 45 Consequently, the answer focuses on the search for a "universal spatial unit". The word "universal" here responds to its meaning of containing all its possible variations, but just as Mies van der Rohe did with his search for universality related to the isotropic and democratic space, 46 the concept involves refining the design of its particularities to assemble a new whole.
This whole is conceptually infinite and seemingly valid for any situation.
In the opposite direction to the previous reasoning, the master plan for Loughborough University is based on various restrictions. The lines that define the dimensional ranges act as functional boundaries: one or another activity will be housed within the strips of the network. The graticule end looks fortuitous but this characteristic is simulated: the plot was delimited from the very beginning. The time limitation is never expressly defined, but there is an insistence on compositional rules that will guarantee a procedural unity forever. Hence, all these design operations refer us to a sort of cheating or visual illusion. Background and figure are confused in both the near and distant gaze -from the first of the grids to the master plot-and finally, the proposal looks like a complex cage that can only be opened with a limited combinatorial series.