Trinity College

Work for Trinity College was transformative in many ways: the university was a catalyst for Hartford's urban renewal, and the experience planted a seed for my future education as a designer. Founded as Washington College in 1823, Trinity College—a private liberal arts college—is the second-oldest college in Connecticut. As a community cornerstone, the college believed it had to revitalize the city after a half-decade or more of staggering job and population loss.

Context is the foundation of any project I start, and the signage project for Trinity reached well beyond the campus gates. Hartford was once known as a capital city for insurance, defence, and manufacturing. Starting early- to mid-1990s, defence spending came to a halt, and related industries sustained losses. In 1994, the Colt’s Manufacturing Company—personal munitions—vacated Hartford amid financial difficulties. Once the Insurance Captial of the world, the migration of insurers from Hartford reduced many employment opportunities. Hartford’s convention centre, along with the Summit and the 410-room Hilton, closed down. Once an industrial capital, Hartford saw industry sectors disappear, like radial engine manufacturing and the loss of Columbia (formerly Pope) Bicycles. Even technology played a role in saying goodbye to the last of the Underwood and the Royal typewriter empires.

As the Hartford Courant reported in 1993, business dropped off 25 to 32 percent in just the first three months of the year. There was a similar spike in poverty. In 1970, Hartford's poverty rate was 17%. By 1990, that number nearly doubled to a rate of 27.5%.

Every year, American families plan college road trips. These vacations take families and teenagers across the country to visit sites and tour candidate campuses. Trinity College was mostly surrounded by urban decay, and surveys revealed that parents were deciding before ever seeing the campus, sometimes only blocks away from campus amidst the civic decrepitude. By 1995, Trinity knew it had both a problem and an obligation and set forth on an ambitious campus Master Plan.

Not only did they hire Two Twelve Associates to work with architects and planners Cooper Robertson on the Master Plan, but they also hired Two Twelve to develop a wayfinding strategy for the city—at Trinity’s cost—and helped the city with the implementation. The college worked with Hartford to identify key business corridors, and the city introduced business relocation incentives. We even worked with the DOT to rethink how to direct visitors from the highway to the campus: along routes that showed off the best of what Hartford had to offer, not necessarily the fastest route; a strategy I commonly use to this day.

The campus project was a different story. The design process was truly collaborative. I learned of the dangers of using sodium-based lights because of their limited colour range, and how and why the campus refurbished historic lamp standards to limit light pollution. Instead of employing more speed limit signs, I worked with landscape architects to introduce trees with a lower canopy and to narrow roadways, opting from 45° parking to parallel parking. I learned that changing the environment reduced speed, thus mitigating the need for signage. After all, our job was not to populate the landscape with signage. The collaborative experience was enlightening.

From working with planners and officials rerouting traffic to landscape architects on an issue of road speed, I realized that I was relieved I did not pursue an architecture degree; instead, I was engrossed in urban planning. This project seeded my interest in furthering my education, though I would not pursue a graduate degree for at least a decade and a half.

Hartford’s economic history, especially the 1990s, was tumultuous. The city has turned around, due in part to the commitment of institutions like Trinity College; Hartford is once again on the incline.

Firm of Record: Cooper Robertson (masterplan and project management) Environmental graphic design team: Two Twelve Associates Design: David Gibson (principal in charge), John deWolf (project manager and lead design), Amy Donaldson (design), Dianna Zantopp (design), Lisa Mooney (campus master plan book design) Client: Trinity College Timeframe: 1996–1998 Location: Hartford, Connecticut, USA

Consultants: Berridge Lewinberg Greenberg Dark Gabor (urban planning), William Rawn Associates (urban planning and landscape architecture), Glatting Jackson Kercher Anglin (urban planning), and Lopez Rinehart (urban planning).