Few if any of North Carolina State University's founders foresaw the growth that the University has experienced. Early design efforts focused on a much smaller campus than today's 2,000 acres and more than eight million square feet of built space, accommodating a community of over 30,000 people.

From the University's pastoral beginning along Pullen Road, enrollment and facilities grew slowly but steadily until the end of the First World War, after which they accelerated. Plans of the 1920s called for grouping buildings that housed linked activities, such as the agriculture and engineering groupings on the North Campus, classrooms around the Court of North Carolina, the executive group near Holladay Hall, athletics around Riddick Stadium, and student residence south of the railroad. These plans were effective for their purposes, but they were not intended to provide a framework for a campus that would accommodate 30,000 as of 2005. Much of the University's present design has evolved organically from earlier development, nurtured by numerous staff and faculty members with an interest in the University's physical environment. Many of the courtyards, open spaces, and walkways in the older sections of the campus appear to have been part of an original intention but in fact were nurtured and developed by people who came later.

During the Great Depression, the University lost several graduate programs, and its progress was in jeopardy. Planning for expansive growth was not a priority. After the Second World War, however, enrollment surged, many graduate programs were restored or initiated, and the University embarked on an optimistic course of growth that continues to the present. Some temporary buildings constructed after the war to support the resurgent student population remained in use until the 1980s.

North Carolina State's first postwar physical masterplan was created in 1958, the same year the University's first modern long-range strategic plan was written. The physical master plan brought some coherence to a burgeoning campus. While it was meant to help the University achieve other long-range strategic goals, it was never a part of the strategic planning process. Adherence to the masterplan was desirable but not mandatory.

The 1958 plan divided academic from student activity into the North and the South Campuses, respectively. It established a central pedestrian area (University Plaza or the Brickyard), suggested moving vehicular traffic to the campus's periphery and dispersed new construction into all areas of a 600-acre campus.

In 1960 the University established the Campus Planning Office, which updated the 1958 plan. It envisioned a compact, high rise, pedestrian-scaled campus based on a ten-minute walking radius--all essential services were to be within a ten-minute walk from a central location. The plan for the University's urban center was thus established.

When the Facilities Planning Division was established in 1963, it re-emphasized several points of the 1958 plan, including zoning of the academic campus around D. H. Hill Library and focusing student activities on a new South Campus student center and gymnasium.

a 1968 in-house report, endorsed the compact campus center but also suggested some decentralization through dispersal of activities. This marked the emergence of the idea that the campus could be a group of neighborhoods. The University was growing into an academic town in parallel with Raleigh's growth into a mid-size city.

Not coincidentally, it was during this period that Edwin F. Harris took a lead role in campus planning. Harris's career at NCSU began in the 1950s as an undergraduate. Graduating in 1957, he worked for several years as a drafting instructor before being promoted to Campus Planning Consultant in 1966. Four years later, he ascended to the position of director of the Facilities Planning Division, a title that eventually evolved into University Architect. During Harris's time as NCSU's chief of design, the University constructed more than 60 buildings at a total cost of $333 million.

Harris's influence on NCSU's physical environment is palpable. Central to his design philosophy was the idea that spaces between buildings are important. In accordance with this view, he tried to organize the main campus into series of "academic neighborhoods," focused around open spaces and courtyards. The hope was that these commons areas would foster communication and community. Harris's communal vision is most evident, though, on NCSU's Centennial Campus. There, various clusters--academic neighborhoods by another name--combine to form what he and others termed an academical village.