Initial Master Plans - continued

According to the architects' correspondence, early layout schemes for the proposed campus grew from two opposing concepts: one favoring a formal arrangement of building "to give order and cohesion to the unruly site", and the other, "to accept the superb site, with its contours, forest trees and view" and develop the campus informally.

Throughout 1954 different versions of space requirements, enrolment projections, and timetables were circulated from the many Carleton committees and among the architects. One collection of assumptions, titled "Basis for Planning Carleton College Site" and dated 2 June 1954, states that full-time enrolment is expected to be 2000 by 1975, and that development should be phased in two stages, the first to accommodate 1000 full-time students. Another series of detailed planning assumptions, those titled "Carleton College Master Plan" and dated 11 August 1954, contains a three phase plan to accommodate 1000, 2000, and finally 4000 full-time students. A third series of assumptions, dated 7 June 1954, gives 500, 1000 and 2000 as the student populations upon which to develop a campus design.

		Architectural perspective renderings of the proposed main court (current quadrangle) 1957. Watson Balharrie.
		NAC

At that time some of the administration's concerns seem to have been for reducing building requirements for the first phase considerably below that necessary to accommodate 1000 students. Even while the final touches were being made on the final version of the subsequently approved master plan, the building advisory committee and others were studying specific details of building requirements for only 600 full-time students.