Public meeting / The open campus in Sao Carlos Brazil / Imagining USP Sao Carlos campus with no walls

Parent project: open campus at a physical level is an open campus at a cultural level

• Summary: Imagining if the USP Sao Carlos campus could be a model example of an open campus, connecting better the USP community with the city community, breaking its walls with a purpose. Are we ready? Can we combine our good intents with technology to make this a reality?

• Audience: Entrepreneurs, USP alumni, USP community, everyone.

• This meeting: ""

• Participants: Marcio S Galli
• Text Language: en-US
• Tags: Open campus, digital security, hidden security, social-awareness, campus, barriers. campus culture

Introduction

I have studied at a major university in Brazil, known as one of the best. It's University of Sao Paulo, or USP. In the days that I did computer science, a long time ago, the campus entrances didn't have an officer to check on each visitor entering. At that time, more people from the city could access the campus. The transit of people in the campus did make sense because the area is in the middle of the city — it was a good shortcut for people to reach the other side. Besides being a passage to different city areas, I remember that non-students kids used to compete with the sports courts that were mainly available to USP students. Those were the days when they started to improve the campus security.

Breaking all the walls

The USP campus of São Carlos is gated with 2 main entrances that are monitored with cameras and security officers. Entering in the campus is not prohibited but you have to talk with the officer and tell them what you are going to do there. This is the most recent thing I can recall so I would need to check to see what's the situation in 2020.

Since I left that campus, from 2000, I started to envision how would things look, and what would represent to the USP community and the city community, if USP São Carlos have decided to make a bold move, to break all the walls, to move security to another style of security.

This "breaking the walls" initiative may involve multiple subjects and of course needs to be part of a broader discussion. However, in the context of this motivation-writing, the following points are categories that I consider important to this discussion:

• Embracing - the wider community is welcome to be inside the campus, they can walk, they can relax, they can learn, they can connect in new ways.

• Values - the wider community is a protector of the campus, of the university, and the culture. The campus is a protector of the community, of the city, of the society.

• Goals — the wider community is also part the same social causes, they learn about the campus goal, they learn about the university goals. There is a connection and they also offer impact. They are not consumers, they are protagonists.

• Safety — everyone needs to feel safer, and part of feeling safe is trust. The new safety model would count on logistics, technology, and style, to become a hybrid model.

• Nature — the campus respects nature truly in the sense that technology and humans and natural elements are in place, together, truly an ecosystem.

• Design — there is no way on earth that a place with the best minds and good intentions end up being ugly. Design needs to be part of the story. And design is not beauty for the sake of creating illusions or symbols of beautiful things that not not meaningful to the community. Design in this context relates to the visible and invisible interaction elements where function and form elegantly touches human hearts and elevates their spirit.