Fostering Community Living for Students
Previously overflow parking for University Village and containing small storage, xučyun ruwway triples the existing supply of university-owned housing for single graduate students by adding 761 apartment-style units. For social connection and well-being beyond the apartments, a series of courtyards provide more than 55,000 square feet of space for passive, social and active uses.
Situated next to the Village Creek, an immense native riparian habitat with high ecological value due to the oak canopy, the planting strategy includes native Oaks, compatible trees and vegetation that extends the California Oak habitat and urban forest eco-corridor. This re-oaking approach aims to restore the ecologically diverse and distinctive ecosystem in our cities, while also providing shade, conserving water, and sequestering carbon.
The landscape offers a multitude of experiences for individuals and groups of all sizes. Students can lounge and relax in the Garden Courtyard’s hammocks, nooks, pollinator gardens, barbecues, and picnic tables in the Social Courtyard, and use new multi-use lawns and terraces of the Active Courtyard. Mirroring the courtyards, the streetscape design along Jackson Street moves from passive to social with the use of a meandering sidewalk and seating.
Image Credit: Bruce Damonte
UC Berkeley consulted with East Bay Ohlone tribes to name the campus building. Albany and Berkeley are part of the “xučyun” region within the ancestral and unceded homeland of the East Bay Ohlone people, and in Chochenyo, the language of the Ohlone, “ruwway” means a home or a house.
