University of Guelph Student Residences

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Changing Lives & Improving Life

University of Guelph Student Residences, Guelph Ontario

Architectural landscape design of a 25,000 square metre campus residence, featuring Colonnades along the front of the residences provide sheltered walkways throughout the site, as well as intimate courtyards

Status: Built

created by the walls of the buildings envelope neighbourhoods. The trees were transplanted throughout the new grounds to sustain their growth patterns and maintain their natural beauty and maintain habitat connections to the adjacent arboretum.

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Preservation of Mature Trees The existing site was a field of trees around a tower. The trees grew well over the years. The university has a vibrant arboriculture department as well as the arboretum. Gratefully this ensured existing trees were preserved by transplanting to new locations with the use of large trees spades.

Transplanting Historic Trees Several of the existing trees were of historic value. Those that were larger than 200 DBH were transplanted using ancient methods of tree transplanting. This involved manually digging, manually balling and burlapping and mechanically craned to new locations.

The Green Commons The existing trees were distributed around the new student residences filling the planting needs of the grounds.

Student Residences Each residence has been designed with outdoor patio space fronting an open lawn. The patios are generous in size and simple in design. They back onto the greens spaces that permeate the housing.

Circulation Routes Existing tree relocations layered around new pathways to the student residences and extend the adjacent arboretum trees into the site

The Site Plan The extensions of the arboretum to the east both literally and figuratively lead the design. The planting palette and placements of the relocated trees in concert with new plantings we determined carefully with expert impute from arboretum staff.

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