Bistro-style tables provide seating in front of Mendenhall next to the oval as a part of Framework 3.0’s effort to revamp the Oval. Credit: Davis Beatty | Lantern Reporter
For many Ohio State students, the Oval embodies the essence of college life, from clubs selling cookies to students playing Spikeball as the weather grows warm.
This hub of campus activity, however, is about to receive a few enhancements to better accommodate its dynamic nature.
Through trial and error, university landscape architect Aaron Rumbaugh said he has been exploring how to improve the Oval by implementing flexible seating, whether that be in the form of rocking chairs, hammock poles or picnic tables.
“We want to go through and refresh [the Oval] a little bit and try to figure out ways that students can maintain what they do on the Oval daily anyway, but also give them other ways to interact,” Rumbaugh said.
Revamping the Oval is part of Framework 3.0, the next phase of transforming Ohio State’s main campus. Within the subcategory “Core South,” the university’s main goal for the Oval is to create a space that connects those using campus buildings with the broader community, the Framework 3.0 website states.
“We call it a living, breathing plan because it tries to give a snapshot at that moment in time of what things could be,” university spokesperson Dan Hedman said.
First, Rumbaugh said he and his team added about 20 movable rocking chairs that students can adjust to meet their needs, whether that means grouping different chairs together or moving select seats beneath a tree for some shade.
“I don’t think that little piece of flexibility was in the Oval before we added those,” Rumbaugh said.
To further their efforts he and his team turned toward a new initiative: the installation of poles around Mirror Lake to help students hang their hammocks with greater ease.
However, this effort also ran into some roadblocks due to a lack of signage explaining the poles’ intended use caused them to remain relatively vacant, according to a Jan. 28 Ohio State News article.
“Maybe we buy a hammock ourselves and hook it up,” Rumbaugh said in the article. “Hopefully, that’s successful and we can start installing the posts around campus.”
The team’s next step is to focus on introducing seating around the buildings that border the Oval. Rumbaugh said his team purchased multiple types of seating — including high-top bar-style tables, bistro-style tables and half-style picnic tables — that can act as both bleachers and tables.
In addition, Rumbaugh plans to add planters to inject some more greenery and color into the Oval and its surrounding areas. Based on student feedback, Rumbaugh said he is open to adjusting the final design.
“Some of [these ideas] may fail — it might not be a good idea, which is fine,” Rumbaugh said. “I think that’s the intent; we want to see what works and what doesn’t.”
In every decision, Rumbaugh said his goal is to improve campus’ general environment and students’ day-to-day experiences.
“[We want to] make it, one, more comfortable for them, more convenient for them and provide them just different ways to interact with the campus,” Rumbaugh said.
Rumbaugh said he considers many factors while planning, such as how water and trees impact the area, maintenance requirements and how students and others routinely interact with the space.
“I have to figure out how all those things work together a little bit,” Rumbaugh said.
As an Ohio State alum, Rumbaugh said he understands campus from a student’s perspective and applies that experience as the university’s landscape architect.
“I think the desire to come back to a place that I spent a lot of time at before — and I had projects that I worked on here before — I think that desire started to kind of get going, and the ability to kind of make a little [bit] of an impact on the environment, and to do something that’s good for the school,” Rumbaugh said.
Hedman said he thinks it’s exciting that someone like Rumbaugh can look at the general blueprint for Framework 3.0 and then work with people connected to the university to deliver on a shared vision.
“It’s taking the next step in a long-term vision — [trying] to put pen to paper and [trying] to bring it to life,” Hedman said.
