Eastern States Exposition
West Springfield, Massachusetts
The Eastern States Exposition Campus Master Plan focuses on celebrating the ESE’s past as well as its future. The Campus Master Plan assists the ESE in evaluating their campus’s physical alignment with the organization’s goals and purpose. Working closely at various scales of temporal and spatial analysis, Berkshire Design visited the campus multiple times throughout the calendar year and interviewed event attendees, met with stakeholders, and organizational department heads. Berkshire design reviewed previous planning approaches, the deep cultural history of the exposition grounds, its relationship to New England’s farming and agricultural history, and how that in turn those relationships shaped the initial vision and current realization of the grounds. Working closing with the ESE leadership the team explored alternative configurations, and placement of programmatic elements on campus to increase safety and eliminate animal/ pedestrian/ vehicle conflicts, as well as improve wayfinding, legibility and access during large events and small events throughout the year.