1. Stanford University, CA - From above, Stanford bears a couple indicators of its ground-level beauty, which benefits from a California climate and Texas-sized endowment. Most buildings are hybrids (or derivatives) of the Richardsonian Romanesque and Mission Revival styles (hence, the red-tiled roofs, plaster, and rough-hewn stones). Thanks to Frederick Law Olmsted’s consultations, the campus is on a generally flat plot of land and is littered with (un-Olmsted) scenic quads and predictably-dignified axial orientations. Stanford also benefits from being one of the largest campuses by size, which has allowed it to have the semi-wooded area at the top of the screenshot.
2. Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR - Lewis & Clark is lucky for a couple big reasons: (1) Portland has many expansive (and hilly and lush and full of footpaths) parks and (2) Lewis & Clark is next to one big one, Tryon Creek State Park. Plus, as the screenshot shows, the campus itself has a high tree quotient, is walkable due to its small size, and has allowed the naturally hilly terrain to shape the campus’ growth.
3. United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD - Notwithstanding the Chesapeake Bay’s odd hue in the screenshot, the Naval Academy’s waterfront location is a big plus. Annapolis is arguably America’s sailing capital (I think the city even trademarked that phrase), boasting historic neighborhoods, many marinas and sailing clubs, and plenty of opportunities to enjoy the water. As for the school’s campus, it benefits from institutional traditions and a nation’s willingness to memorialize them in the form of stately buildings and well-tended landscaping.
4. Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA - (1) Intimate campus, (2) California climate, (3) urban location, etc. There are plenty other colleges in/near Los Angeles that benefit from these things; but Occidental didn’t assume these alone are enough to ensure beauty (see Pepperdine, below). The small campus also has plenty of impossibly picturesque red tile-roofed buildings similar to those found at Stanford. But really, Occidental’s repeated selection as a film location is the best evidence of its beauty (e.g., Orange County, Pat and Mike, Clueless). Apparently the campus in the movies that looks too-good-to-be-true really does exist.
5. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis - I admit, that the U’s campus has a few low points; the West Bank has that “Martian landscape” vibe, and the only good thing about the “Superblock” dorms is their impersonal nickname. But on the flip side, campus straddles path-lined cliffs overlooking the Mississippi River, has one of the best campus “malls” you’ll find (designed by Cass Gilbert), a great view of Minneapolis’ nearby skyline, and big clump of picturesque buildings surrounding the original center of campus called “The Knoll.” Even better, they just finished a new, horse shoe-shaped stadium (with a terrible name), which replaces the unfortunate series of parking lots in the screenshot’s upper-right hand corner, and by 2014, a light-rail line will run right through campus between Minneapolis and St. Paul.
6. University of Cincinnati, OH - Although its campus isn’t half bad (densely located on hill in historic city, etc.), I actually selected Cincinnati due to its singular focus on cultivating modern architecture (for better or worse) designed by the highest profile architects out there. As a result, it’s campus has a decidedly different vibe (read: modern, and not slavishly bent on rehashing older buildings) and is interesting in large part because of the many discrete examples of modern architecture - not so much because of their cohesiveness. Students in the college’s excellent design school can just go on a walk if they want to see representative works by Frank Gehry, Morphosis, Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, or Charles Gwathmey, among others.
7. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA - Harvard freshmen are among the luckiest college students; they get to live in extremely picturesque/historic buildings in the center of an equally picturesque/historic campus made up of quads, red bricks, painted clapboards, river paths, proximate commercial areas, and the best that 19th-century revivalism had to offer.
8. University of California - Santa Cruz - If this list’s numbers meant anything, UCSC’s campus would be number one, even though its impossibly photogenic campus doesn’t look like much from the air. Located on the rising edge of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the campus has the least traditional layout on this list, perhaps in part due to its young (and decidedly progressive) heritage, and certainly due to its hilly placement just above the seaside town of Santa Cruz (nearly 1000 feet of elevation change from the top to the bottom of the screenshot). Parks and (former) ranch lands ring the campus, which itself consists of the “Great Meadow” (bottom of screenshot), ravines, creeks, paths, redwood groves, and a number of random “curiosities” made by students.
9. University of Chicago, IL - If UCSC is the most beautiful on the list, the University of Chicago campus is the most beautiful urban campus, taking up a prime location in Hyde Park’s mix of parks, respectable homes, and green corridors leading to Lake Michigan. Whereas Chicago has one of the best collections of modern architecture in the world, the University of Chicago has one of the best collections of neo-Gothic buildings in the world, thanks to the deep pockets of its founding benefactor, John D. Rockefeller, who thought “emulating” Oxford University’s look might jump start his own institution’s academic prestige. Those lofty aspirations led to Henry Ives Cobb’s quad-centric master plan, which emphasized a certain stylistic regularity and has gradually given way to a smattering of later, notable buildings (e.g., SOM’s Brutalist Rugenstein Library, Mies van der Rohe’s Social Service Admin Building, and Eero Saarinen’s Law School Building).
10. University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN - Notre Dame’s campus reminds me of University of Chicago’s campus. As the screenshot shows, it also has tons of quads, and a generally homogeneous collection of campus buildings, albeit in a less exciting setting (sorry, South Bend). But hey, when you have a lore-laden stadium near the center of campus, which itself has an extra long (and lush) mall and Golden Dome to boot, you’re doing pretty well.
source : http://structurehub.com
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