Ten Minutes Wide: Human Walking Capacities and the Experiential Quality of Campus Design

Whether a campus is large or small, the idea of a 10-minute walk is an important human-scaled design standard that affects an institution in significant ways beyond just getting students to class on time. Designing a 10-minute walk seems like a simple exercise. Based on earlier information, all one needs to do is provide a walking surface and make it approximately 2,400 feet long. But in reality, this is a much more complex design problem. Beyond answering the question of "why" a 10-minute walk is important, many master plans fail to suggest "how" to effectively create one. The author reviewed 37 campus master plans and categorized all stated design goals for walking paths into three main categories: (1) functional; (2) aesthetic; and (3) experiential. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the experiential qualities of campus walks can be altered through physical design and the purposeful manipulation of the perception of time. More specifically, the intent of the study was to determine which objects along a path's route contribute to James's notion of "varied and interesting experiences" or constitute Rapoport's "high information trips" and subsequently alter the awareness and duration of time. A secondary purpose was to suggest how these findings can be applied to enhance the experiential nature of future campus walks. (Contains 6 figures.)