---
title: Campus
abstract: Can we move beyond Le Corbusier?
categories:
- work
- culture
content-tags:
- architecture
- environment
external: https://safelyignored.com/campus
---
A career consulting with Big Corporations has exposed me to a dizzying number of suburban corporate campuses around the world. Louise Mozingo's [Pastoral Capitalism](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/pastoral-capitalism) (well described by the author [here](http://ced.berkeley.edu/frameworks/2012/pastoral-capitalism/)) offers a dispassionate survey of the rise of the dominant architectural form.

That dispassion highlights for me, by stark contrast, how much I despise these sprawling complexes. With many, the original university mimicry has been long forgotten in favor of more surface parking. The more recent or well-to-do firms usually have lovely places to stroll around, though, that provide a stark contrast to the cubicle farms surrounding them.

The best examples, such as Microsoft's, are genuinely pleasant to stroll around. But when you board a bus or train from the middle of a thriving urban neighborhood, leave the city, and exit to take a long walk past parking garages to enter, it's hard to suspend disbelief and forget you are in a machine with a single master. I've yet to see one large enough to support a diversity of lunch options to maintain any illusion of social integration for more than a week, either. Apple's new spaceship looks like it will be lovely, and Facebook's captive housing will support more diversity of space, but even a beautiful factory reminds you of your place.

I do hope everyone is paying attention to [what Amazon is doing in Seattle](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/us/as-amazon-stretches-seattles-downtown-is-reshaped.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all). The management needs of Mozingo's three forces are unlikely to change, but the decentralization of cities is damaging to culture and environment so I hope our corporate overlords will stop reinforcing the pastoral. Or at least integrate some farming so our cows can walk, too.
