Master Plan Consultant Team

The master plan team engaged with Rutgers University’s physical master planning effort is a collaboration between Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) and Sasaki Associates, and includes sustainability consultant Buro Happold, transportation consultant Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, and cost consultant Toscano Clements Taylor.

The RAMSA/Sasaki association is not simply a team of qualified strangers but one with over two decades of highly successful collaborations on a variety of projects involving issues similar to those facing Rutgers as it plans for the future. The two firms are currently collaborating on the campuses of the University of Nebraska and the University of Kentucky, and RAMSA has completed buildings and precinct plans within the context of master plans developed by Sasaki at the University of Michigan, Penn State University, the College of William and Mary, and Rice University.

For the Rutgers University physical master plan, RAMSA will lead the team's Master Planning, Design Guidelines, and Adaptive Re-Use phases, and will participate in the Master Planning phase in collaboration with Sasaki. Sasaki will lead the Space Programming and Space Utilization phases, which include existing conditions analysis, classroom utilization study, and benchmarking against Rutgers’ peer institutions. Together, the two firms will identify near and long-term development on the Rutgers campuses, taking into consideration student enrollment, campus and community life, and ideas of identity and a sense of place, and put in the context of physical campus environments with buildings and infrastructure, landscape, bio habitats, transportation systems, utilities and energy use, and historical significance.

The master plan effort will dovetail with the Strategic Plan and Sustainable Framework Plan in an integrated approach to planning for the future of Rutgers.

 Master Plan Consultant Team chart

Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA)

Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP, is a 250-person firm of architects, interior designers, and supporting staff. Over its 44-year history, the firm has established an international reputation as a leading design firm with wide experience in residential, commercial, and institutional work. RAMSA maintains an attention to detail and commitment to design quality that has earned international recognition, numerous awards and citations for design excellence, including National Honor Awards of the American Institute of Architects, and a lengthening list of repeat clients.

Sasaki Associates (Sasaki)

Sasaki is an international design firm that is actively engaged in many aspects of the built environment—architecture, civil engineering, graphic design, interior design, landscape architecture, planning and urban design, and strategic planning. Sasaki looks first and foremost to achieving the client’s goals, believing that a natural outgrowth of such a partnership is the enrichment of the public, institutional, and private realms in which we work. A purposeful cross-pollination of skills among our range of professionals results in a synthesis of economic reality, environmental sustainability, cultural awareness, and aesthetics. An emerging area of our business, Sasaki Strategies, provides strategic planning, space planning, and financial planning know-how to complement our design services with a range of innovative, real-time graphic-interface decision support systems.

Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc. (VHB)

VHB offers the focus and personal attention of a small consulting firm backed by the in-house resources of a 900-person, multidisciplinary company. VHB brings an integrated approach to each client and project with the requisite skills in transportation, civil engineering, environmental resource planning, community planning, and landscape architecture. By incorporating an innovative and sustainable design approach within the practice, VHB creates environments that endure.

VHB will collaborate with the master planning team on the transportation element of this project, ensuring that it supports and coordinates with the overall physical master plan. Its work will include an overall assessment of the current Rutgers University transportation system and its guiding policies, including traffic and parking, Rutgers buses, other public transit, pedestrian and bicycle connections, infrastructure, and TDM programs.

Buro Happold

Buro Happold is a team of technical experts and strategic advisers specializing in all areas of sustainable development: energy and carbon consulting, stormwater planning, infrastructure and transportation design, and ecological planning.

Buro Happold will develop a sustainability framework for Rutgers, which includes guidelines, benchmarks, and target reductions with the use of key performance indicators to support the following: campus energy consumption and demand, on-site water and solid waste treatment and reuse, sustainable transportation, ecological preservation and habitat enhancement, and microclimate enhancement. This framework document would outline a proposal for a sustainability management system that would be used as a sustainability policy and guideline for the design of Rutgers University’s physical master plan as well as on-going operations.

Toscano Clements Taylor (+C+)

Toscano Clements Taylor Cost Estimators is an independent cost-estimating and cost-management firm with numerous minority and small business certifications. With offices in New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C, +C+ has national experience and in-depth local knowledge across the United States, and a comprehensive and proactive approach to cost estimating and cost management with expertise across a broad range of market segments and project types.

+C+’s role on the master plan project will be to provide planning-level cost information including operating costs and planning-level anticipated construction costs for the master plan.