As the planner and/or designer of many university or college campus landscapes, GWSM, Inc. has found it important to understand the impact and relationship any specific landscape may have on the entire campus. This would include not only the physical campus, but also the programmatic, philosophical, historical, and traditional campus. The campus landscape might be a "one-time" service, with a project having to fit into the campus master plan and fabric; or it may be a "continuing" service involving many projects over time.

Washington and Lee University of Lexington, Virginia has been one such continuing client for the firm, with services in both campus planning and campus landscape architecture projects. Washington and Lee University is a Liberal Arts university located in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, just north of Roanoke, in the City of Lexington. The school was founded in 1798 as Washington Academy and in 1871 became Washington and Lee University, shortly after General Robert E. Lee was its president in the later half of the 19th century. The campus has a renowned academic standing, in addition to its historical significance to Virginia and the United States.

The firm's professional relationship with Washington and Lee began in 1967 with the preparation of a landscape planting master plan for the historic front campus, and that relationship has continued through today. The programming for the 1985 master plan, prepared by a planning team coordinated by the LA, called for a site selection to accomodate a theater and related facilities for a teaching drama/theater program. Due to its proximity to the campus and to the City of Lexington, the site selected was an abandoned railroad station and gasoline station with a regional gasoline storage facility on the site. This would allow for its use as an academic facility for the university and also as a cultural service to the city.

With the site selected, the theater project was given to a design architect in 1983 and the building programming was started. The program included a 450 seat theater, an experimental "black box" theater, lobby with art gallery, classrooms, faculty offices, scene shop, prop room, graphics room, and receiving area, all included in an approximately 50,000 square foot building.

The site program for the Landscape Architect included the immediate building facilities: shipping and receiving access, parking, a "grand" entrance, campus access, preserving the adjacent historical railroad station, preservation of the stream known as Wood's Creek, and consideration of adjacent residential structures. In addition, the site support program dealt with the impact that the center would have on both the campus and the city. This included additional parking, pedestrian access over Route 60, realignment of several city streets, and consideration for future land acquisition and use for university facilities.

The resulting building design complimented the tradition of the old Washington and Lee Campus with its red brick and white columns. The grand entrance was a "gatehouse" concept collecting theatergoers from both the adjacent community and the campus. The theater architects of Ford, Powell, Carson of San Antonio, Tecas, and the campus building architects of Marcellus Wright, Cox & Smith of Richmond designed a building that fit well into the site and complimented the Washington and Lee University campus architecture and the scale of the architecture of the adjacent City of Lexington.

The landscape solutions included the molding of the existing site to accept the large theater structure or the stage "fly". This takes advantage of the existing site terrain placing the high part of the structure at the lowest end of the site and allowing the existing slope to form the base for the main theater seating. The building entrances/exits were placed to allow access to the various base plains of existing streets and walkways. The existing railroad trestle and bridge over Route 60 was preserved and renovated to accommodate a pedestrian bridge from main campus to the center. This separates pedestrians from vehicular traffic.

The dominant architectural element is the multi-storied porticoed "gatehouse" that fronts on the "grand fan" entrance plaza. The gatehouse acts as the vertical pedestrian circulation channel for the many access elevations. The site required major retaining walls to accommodate the surrounding varied grade changes. A combination of brick retaining walls with brick coursing to match the theater building along with poured-in-place concrete retaining, scored and sandblasted to give the idea of limestone pieces, were designed to retain these grade changes. The intent was to have all site walls as an extension of the building architecture and detail.

Many of the site materials and amenities were taken from main campus site standards, such as brick paving and patterns, concrete paving textures, light posts, and benches. The iron railings reflected a specific theater building design. The fan plaza has been paved with precast concrete pavers in the "Classico" style with a fishscale pattern. The color blend was chosen to reflect the granite set paving of the Old Richmond streets. Cast-in-place concrete strips radiate from the gatehouse center to act as the spokes of the fan and to define parking for special events.

A courtyard set 15 feet lower than the fan court acts as an intermission court for the main theater and a main entrance for the experimental theater. The old railroad station, presently used for stage props, has been preserved and a parking lot/courtyard was designed along adjacent city streets at an elevation 15 feet higher than the fan plaza.

The lower floor of the building was set several feet higher than the flood plain. The natural edge of Wood's Creek was preserved and reinforce with wildflower plantings. The plantings around the entire site include variations of Liriope, Juniper, Heller's Holly, Foster's Holly, Zelkova, and Sophora.

The Lenfest Center For the Performing Arts was completed in 1991 and totaled $10.5 million. As a cultural center and educational facility for both Washington and Lee University and the City of Lexington, Virginia, the center continues to be a success. As another example of the Landscape Architect's ongoing relationship with the university, it is a strong source of pride. LASN