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Georgia Southern University (GSU) is a 675-acre campus in Statesboro, the largest university in southern Georgia, with 130 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in seven colleges and a student body of 16,000, representing every state in the union and some 80 nations. The school was founded in 1906, offering a two-year program in agricultural and mechanics, progressing to a four-year teacher?EUR??,,????'?????<????????????EUR??,,??s college beginning in the 1920s. In 1990, GSU became a full-fledged university, the first in southern Georgia.
The university is home to the Center for Wildlife Education and Lamar Q. Ball Raptor Center, the Museum of Natural and Cultural History, and a botanical garden. On the sports field, GSU has won six national football championships in the NCAA I-AA division.
Statesboro is in east central Georgia, only 50 miles from the Atlantic and 46 miles northwest of historic Savannah. In 1803, an act of the Georgia legislature, created Bulloch County and Statesborough, a gift of 200 acres from one George Sibbald of Augusta. Settlers began migrating to the area around1810. North Carolinians plying the timber and turpentine trade came to harvest the pines; farmers soon followed when it was learned the cleared land was sufficiently fertile.
Over the last nine years, Chuck Taylor, ASLA, the landscape architect and planner for the GSU campus, has put his designer?EUR??,,????'?????<????????????EUR??,,??s touch to the school, master planning and implementing a sense of continuity?EUR??,,????'?????<???????????polished brick walkways, fountains, grand entry gates, columns, period lamp posts and cast iron bollards. The campus features lakes, spreading lawns and venerable trees: oak, magnolia, longleaf pine, crape myrtle, dogwood, pecan, bald cypress, red cedar and sabal palmetto.
Oladele Ogunseitan, a professor of social ecology at the University of California, Irvine, recently did a survey of 379 people on the Irvine campus to discover how they rated features in the urban landscape and their sense well-being?EUR??,,????'?????<???????????what the professor called topophilia (see www.landscapearchitect.com). The results, published in
the February 2005 journal of Environmental Health Perspectives, showed that students felt that flowers and bodies of water in the campus landscape were particularly enhancing to mental well-being. Given that, GSU students must be quite serene in their environment. When a university employs a landscape architect, it?EUR??,,????'?????<????????????EUR??,,??s to create a signature look, one that makes a distinctive impression, that entices perspective students to make it their home away from home. GSU reports it has ?EUR??,,????'?????<????????invested more than $200 million in a renaissance of buildings and beautification.
?EUR??,,????'?????<????????I?EUR??,,????'?????<????????????EUR??,,??m creating an image, an identity, a feel, something that lets people know this is Georgia Southern University, not just another building in the community,?EUR??,,????'?????<???????? Chuck Taylor says. He has helped refine and unify Georgia Southern?EUR??,,????'?????<????????????EUR??,,??s look. ?EUR??,,????'?????<????????We replaced and expanding the cracked concrete sidewalks with brick walkways, dismantling old sheds on the edges of campus, constructed entry gates and fountains and moved parking lots and roads to improve traffic flow,?EUR??,,????'?????<???????? he explains.
Chuck Taylor is a graduate of the University of Illinois landscape architecture program. He spend seven years in Dallas doing land development for Centennial Homes, then four years of construction management in St. Louis, Mo., before accepting the position of landscape architect and campus planner for GSU.
In 2002, Chuck Taylor?EUR??,,????'?????<????????????EUR??,,??s outdoor exhibit designs at the university?EUR??,,????'?????<????????????EUR??,,??s Center for Wildlife Education won a Merit award from the Georgia Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Mr. Taylor was the principal designer and project manager for a team that designed and constructed the education center with six habitats that displayed several species of birds of prey in their natural environment. There is a 20-seat outdoor amphitheater for the raptor shows, plus a children?EUR??,,????'?????<????????????EUR??,,??s discovery trail with 17 exploratory stations (eagles, hawks, owls, and falcons), a reptile exhibit and an ecology pavilion for hands-on programs.
Chuck Taylor recently won another Merit award from the Georgia ASLA chapter for his pro bono redesign of Triangle Park in downtown Statesboro, the ?EUR??,,????'?????<????????Stewardship?EUR??,,????'?????<???????? feature in the March 2005 LASN (see ?EUR??,,????'?????<????????Triangle Park Takes Shape?EUR??,,????'?????<???????? p. 250).
When I spoke to Chuck Taylor recently on the phone to discuss his work at GSU, I told him I wanted to let the GSU campus photography do the talking about his work. So, enough words! Enjoy the tour of GSU.
Francisco Uviña, University of New Mexico
Hardscape Oasis in Litchfield Park
Ash Nochian, Ph.D. Landscape Architect
November 12th, 2025
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