The current IMP reveals a significant need for new academic space in addition to student life and athletics, while still proposing continued residential growth. 

A focus on new and expanded academic facilities is a reflection of decades of academic program growth, continuous faculty additions, research expansion and the University’s long range academic vision. While the University is on a rising trajectory of academic reputation and achievements, it has also retained a significant stock of older academic facilities, many of which are not well suited to contemporary research and instruction.

In addition to priorities for academic space, the current IMP focuses on increasing campus student life amenities as a part of a concerted University effort to improve the campus experience for students living in Northeastern housing and to convince more students to choose on-campus housing, thereby reducing off-campus student apartments in nearby Boston neighborhoods.

Aerial photographs of the Northeastern campus taken as recently as a decade ago, show a campus pockmarked with surface parking lots, vacant parcels and fragmented, poorly defined common spaces. Since then, the University has developed a series of pleasant public spaces, resulting in a cohesive campus environment and a dramatically improved on-campus experience.

The following goals remain as guiding principles of the IMP:

• The elimination of surface parking lots and focus on a walkable campus continue to be priorities of the University as it seeks to infill its campus in strategic locations.
• Enhance the physical environment, and both the campus aesthetics and experience;
• Design an open campus that engages with its nearby neighborhoods;
• Create vitality at the core and the edges;
• Plan for multi-use buildings to create an integrated, mixed-use urban campus;
• Realize growth potential and improved connections across the MBTA tracks; and
• Ensure a sustainable and innovative campus for the 21st Century.

Principles for Architectural Design

The diversity of buildings from Northeastern’s distinct periods of growth, complemented by the older buildings acquired and repurposed by the University, has created an evolving and vibrant campus environment. The master plan proposes to nurture and refine this vibrancy through future phases of development. The architectural character of the proposed master plan campus buildings will further contribute to the diversity and richness of the campus not by emulating or replicating existing styles. Rather the new facilities will be governed by their own expression of contemporary and distinct architecture. As Northeastern evolves as a research university, the campus architecture will aspire to express contemporary and creative designs of enduring quality and character. The architecture of the current master plan will also be an expression of sustainability and high performance systems that are principals of the master plan.

While new buildings will vary stylistically from previous architectural styles, the consistent theme that will tie new designs to the existing campus will be the fact that they are buildings that make a place, define and reinforce campus pedestrian circulation and contribute to the public realm of the campus and the neighborhoods.

The Columbus Lot development (a portion of which will be the site of the ISEC) introduces organic formal gestures intended to be distinguished from the generally rectilinear pattern of the original campus. These proposed bold forms also define an elegant and episodic sequence of open spaces that link the campus and the communities on both sides of the MBTA tracks. The unique character of new precincts should not be seen as a deviation from earlier styles, but as a continuation of a layered and rich campus built on architectural variety and a carefully cultivated network of landscaped pedestrian spaces.