Did you know that the largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright structures on a single site are on a campus? Students at Southern Florida College in Lakeland, Florida do. Their days are spend wandering in and among the 12 buildings, which were built over a 20 year period beginning in the late 1930s. And thanks to preservation efforts that began in 2007, the building’s and Wright’s fountain, the Water Dome, are looking as beautiful as they did when they were first built.  “Of course,what makes a campus space most beautiful is…the life of the university. A group of students sitting in the quad, a bustling study commons, or a stadium brimming with school spirit,” said Jennifer Amster, principal at Brown Jurkowski Architectural Collaborative.  In Pictures: America’s Most Beautiful College Campuses  In other words, choosing a school shouldn’t–and rarely does–come down to what it looks like. And treating campuses like candidates in a beauty contest is about as far as you can get from academic consideration. That said, prospective students consistently cite campus aesthetics as a school-choice consideration. And schools, aware that this is the case, acknowledge that shaping enrollment demands both looks and brains. So, we asked a group of university architects, campus experts and students to tell us which schools are turning their heads—and why. Here, a brief and hardly comprehensive list of our findings—not in any particular order.  The College of the Atlantic made the list because, let’s face it, beauty is as beauty does. This school, located on Maine’s Mount Desert Isle, was the first college in the United States to pledge carbon neutrality. And every element of its campus, both physically and academically, demonstrates the school’s thorough-going commitment to environmental sustainability. Of course, nobody’s complaining about those coastal views, heirloom apple orchards, or the fact that classes take place on the school’s 80-plus acre farm, 5 acres of certified organic farmland and 65 acres of forest.  In stark contrast to COA’s natural setting is the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. But admirers of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the master of international modern architecture, pointed to this school’s cluster of steel-and-glass buildings, including S.R. Crown Hall, Alumni Hall and the Chapel, as the epitome of beauty and order. Furthermore, great modern architects, such as Rem Koolhaas, continue to be admired and included in the growth of the campus. In other words, the school exhibits an independent and longterm vision for the look of its campus.  In Pictures: America’s Most Beautiful College Campuses  Snow-capped mountain views in an urban setting is already a sweet deal. And in Seattle, the University of Washington offers this, and more. But what’s really beautiful about “U Dub”, as its called by its student body, is how respectfully it is integrated into the city at large. Far from divorced from life beyond its borders, campus outreach is huge. In spite of its high academic reputation, self-importance is considered the opposite of cool. Pretty as it is what makes it beautiful is its humility.
From a Mies van der Rohe marvel to an earth-friendly wonderland, these places of higher learning are a sight for sore eyes.