Bard College Comprehensive Campus Landscape Plan

Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects is leading a comprehensive planning process for Bard’s 930-acre campus. The goals of the comprehensive plan include bringing harmony among Bard’s many historic landscapes and ecological assets and developing the tools needed to make sensitive and thoughtful planning decisions. Other priorities include increasing the quality of the physical and aesthetic connections between old, new, and future facilities; recalibrating the relationship between humans and their environment; envisioning a campus that is inclusive, adaptive, educational, and connected. The plan will engage the Bard community to develop a long-term vision for the campus. A significant goal of the plan is to provide the necessary steps to achieving this ambitious and resilient vision.

The plan's diverse stakeholder committee, consisting of Bard faculty, staff, students, and community members, will examine and provide critical input on many aspects of the landscape, namely: how to meet the increased demand for outdoor social spaces, how to treat and improve campus-wide circulation for all abilities, and how to create a palette of landscape materials to visually unify the campus. NBW and its team of sub-consultants will re-examine campus spatial organization, update Bard's outdoor lighting infrastructure, and provide strategies for climate resiliency.