The Vertical University will have six major campuses, each at a different elevation and focused on a different theme. Each campus of the BELT will have its own community resource center, serving as a multi-purpose community space for research, education, demonstration, conservation, design, and many other uses. These resource centers will serve as the ‘mainframes’ where monitoring data can be synthesized. Small satellite stations will be outfitted in each of the campuses to monitor temperature, humidity, and other physical parameters, assisting with climate change research. These bio-stations will also have a user interface allowing community members to provide observational data such as bird counts.
This past year, we identified the locations of the 6 campuses, defined the themes and even embarked on designing the campuses themselves.
Each campus will contain small footprint guest houses in the form of micro-pods designed by the BELT studio design team. Storing seeds, which is a traditional practice, is critical for protecting against natural disasters and loss of agricultural biodiversity, which is extremely rich in eastern Nepal. In Situ conservation within the campuses along with arboretums will provide another means of seed conservation within the BELT.
Priyanka Bista, Marco Cestarroli, Rajeev Goyal