Wake Tech South campus is a visual gem

When I did my campus and "game day" project in Indiana a few years back, I looked forward to exploring the campuses that I visited. They took me to new places and parts of the state.

True, there was so much alike at every campus; each school had arenas, stadiums and other athletics facilities, a student center and a library, for instance. But each also had its own personality. That personality could be found in its choice of architecture, its landscaping or even how it exploited its proximity to a natural resource such as a lake or forest.

I visited and photographed the "big four" universities in North Carolina -- Wake Forest, UNC-Chapel Hill, NCSU and Duke -- all before I ever moved here. On Saturday, I drove a couple miles from home to the 138-acre South campus of Wake Technical Community College to take photographs.

The South campus is also referred to as the Wake Tech's main campus; it was the original location when the multi-site system opened in 1963. I'd passed Wake Tech more than a dozen times while driving down U.S. 401 on the campus' western perimeter since moving to North Carolina in July, always in intrigued what lay behind the natural buffer of streets.

After my visit Saturday, I can say that behind those trees is a striking, nicely landscaped (and very well maintained) campus with buildings -- certainly the administration, physical education and library structures -- that pleasantly convey an eye for distinguished architecture.

Old McCullers Road serves as the northern boundary of Wake Tech South, which is located in an unincorporated area between Raleigh and Fuquay-Varina. As you drive by on 401, you can see portions of the aqua-colored glass facade of Montague Hall (the administration building), set off by its bright orange brick accents, between the tall tree buffer. Montague is the building featured in the photo leading off the post.  Not far from Montague is the all-orange-brick physical education building.

There is a huge amount of parking available -- all on open lots. I can't remember seeing so much parking space available at a campus before. And Wake Tech did well to landscape access to the east parking lots with another mini-forest and a creek, over which students and visitors use a wooden foot bridge to reach campus and vice versa.

While doing my "game day" visits in Indiana, I stumbled upon some campus gems. It started with a February 2011 visit to Hanover College* to shoot a basketball game. When I saw how pretty Hanover College was (it overlooks the Ohio River) -- even in winter -- the light bulb went on upstairs to maybe check out other campuses in the state, although I first came back to Hanover that fall for a football game.

To view a larger version of any image in this post, simply click on the image. This is particularly helpful when viewing the blog using a mobile device. To see a full gallery of images from my shoot at Wake Tech Community College, follow the link in this sentence

Photo geek stuff: I shot all photos with a Canon 6D and Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD lens equipped with a B+W polarizing filter. All compositions were bracketed for three exposures to enable me to process them through Photomatix high-dynamic range (HDR) software. Almost all of the pictures in the post are HDR images.

* The idea to pursue the campus visits as a project came to me when I was at Hanover in 2011, although I'd already made one visit to another campus (Franklin College) for a football game in 2009.

Two more views of Montague Hall, the one above taken from the side opposite that shown in the lead-off photo, and the one below taken through several of the many trees offering shade in a nicely landscaped relaxation area a few yards behind the location shown above. 

If Montague Hall is not the most distinguished building on campus, then the Physical Education facility is. Above and below are two views of the bright-orange brick structure. The second photo below has the building in the background of a path leading to the aforementioned relaxation area, which is shown from one angle in the third photo below. 
  

The Student Services Building (above) shown from one end of the structure. Below is a show of the building's dual access doors at the midpoint of the structure. And just beyond the Student Services Building is the campus bookstore (second below). 

The south side of Howell Library (above), which faces one of the many parking lots on campus. Between Howell and Building E (the building for computer and engineering classes) is the snaky concrete walk shown below in a picture taken sideways from the top-floor overlook of the library. The library, Building C (math and science), Pucher/LeMay Hall (computer labs and IT classrooms) and Holding Hall, the campus' first building, form a square with a clay based plaza shaded by trees and sprinkled with picnic tables and, at this time of year, flowering spring trees. You see samples of the plaza in the second and third photos below.

To access massive parking lots on the east side of campus, students and/or visitors cross over one of two wooden pedestrian bridges over a creek (first photo below) before arriving at the lot (second below).

More parking can be seen on the south end from this view from the top floor of Building C.

The side of Pucher/LeMay Hall facing the plaza (above) and the campus bus stop (below), on the west side of Holding Hall (second below).  

A natural area of trees (above and below), which use picnic tables to invite students and faculty to enjoy the scenery, separate the campus from busy U.S. 401 on the west side of campus. The road you see below is an access drive on the campus side of the buffer, which is to the right.