To finish the synopsis of our project:

The description of The School ends with its ideas on how to redesign the college campus and its relationship with its surrounding community. The most innovative of these ideas is what we call the “nomad campus”. This model goes radically against traditional campus structures by eliminating the majority of college-owned buildings and replaces them with mixed-use spaces obtained through community partnerships. A few examples might look like these:

Instead of a classroom for your british literature course, you meet in the ratskeller of a german bar  which is unoccupied during the day
Your soil science course operates a garden laboratory on vacant city-owned property and uses indoor lab space at the local public high school after hours
The philosophy and religion course meets in the empty bell-tower room at the episcopal church
All-college assemblies are held in the community theater
Library resources are obtained through the public library system and partnerships with nearby universities
Workshop space could be shared with museum, film, or set-design fabricators who need seasonal shop and storage space.

With this method of replacing owned space with borrowed or shared space, the college is able to drastically reduce its overhead while simultaneously increasing its connection to the community. Essentially, the college’s campus is the neighborhood where it is founded. All campus partnerships will be arranged within an area of two square miles within that neighborhood. All students will be required to live in this geography as well, thereby creating a campus that–although effectually invisible–is as proximate and connected as most traditional, insular campuses.

The entire model hinges on the fact that there is an abundance of quality spaces and resources in a given neighborhood that could be readily occupied by this small college operation during off-peak or un-utilized hours. Through these community partnerships, The Saxifrage School will be able to fully operate while owning as few as two buildings; one building for the administrative offices and campus headquarters, and another, larger building, to house campus supplies, necessary storage for courses and faculty, as well as any vehicles and equipment. This space would also function as a large warehouse and shop space for oversized course projects and demonstrations.

We have surveyed several neighborhoods and believe that the nomad campus model can work because it will be beneficial not just for the College, but for the community as well. Unless they specifically request otherwise, all campus partners will be mutually compensated for their contribution of space and resources. In many cases, as to a church who needs help with the cost of building maintenance, the compensation will be monetary; in others, as in the case of a bar or cafe which provides classroom space, the goodwill and relationships with hundreds of potential local customers may be sufficient compensation in itself. In the case of a more specialized partnership, like sharing a lab space with a public high school, the partnership might require the College invest in improving the space and purchasing new equipment in order to meet their more advanced needs. The high school would then benefit from the improvements as well as potential guest lectures from college professors or students or even having access to a pool of available tutors a few times a semester. In every partnership their are multiple ways the College and the Partner can benefit from the mutualistic relationship.

While the impetus for the nomad campus model was an economic one, we believe it also lends itself to our goal of community integration. Too many colleges isolate themselves from their geographic neighbors by creating insular, contiguous campuses or by becoming so large that their non-college neighbors feel resentfully consumed by the campus. In the first case, the college intentionally separates itself from the neighborhood, in the other it integrates, but overwhelms the neighborhood, essentially eliminating the possibility for meaningful integration. In both cases, communities suffer from a loss in taxable properties and in land that can be used by the entire population. College’s operation are often wholly self-contained and, aside from employment, offer very little benefit–economic or otherwise–to their neighborhoods.

As mentioned, our vision is that the College and its community would have a mutualistic relationships. Rather than have students eat in a college cafeteria, they will support local grocers, restaurants, and farmers. Instead of overwhelming students with on-campus events, we will encourage them to attend and create public ones. No college-operated dormitories will exist, instead students will rent houses from local landlords, supporting both the owners and the City (through tax revenue). The College will be kept intentionally small–about 400 students and 55 faculty/staff–so as to not overwhelm the neighborhood. Everyone, students and faculty/staff, will be asked or required to live in the campus’ two-mile geography.