The University of Texas Health Science Center retained the Texas based landscape architects to develop a Master Plan, based on the institution's strategic plan, that would position the Institution as the Nation's Premier Academic Health Care Center. The landscape architects were additionally tasked with creating the mechanism to communicate the tenants of the process and the plan to a widely varied audience. From students, faculty and staff, to legislators, fund raisers, administrators and ultimately to Hillary Clinton's Health Reform Committee, the numbers of people from which the landscape architect solicited input was enormous. A communication mechanism had to be created that could excite, solicit, engage and promote the institution to achieve its heady goal. The landscape architects created a multi-faceted "Advance Planning Mechanism" that was both multi-media as well as multi-language. Public hearings, vision sessions, legislative receptions, congressional testimony all were scripted and crafted by the landscape architects to communicate the plan.

To communicate the process and to solicit input into the planning of the University, the landscape architects created a process diagram titled The Advance Planning Mechanism. The giant freehand diagram was developed by the team and the University as the road map for the project. Its graphic technique was purposely free hand and loose to convey spontaneity and flexibility. The landscape architects additionally created a "vision room" at the University as a project "war room". Even the dynamics of the room were carefully crafted to foster communication. (The design of the vision room was an AIA award recipient.)

Every aspect of the process was communicated so as to reach consensus amongst the diverse and often divergent institution.

A sketch book (item #1) was developed as a communication tool to capture many of the concepts graphically that effervesced during the process. Purposefully loose and printed on strathmore, the "probe" contained a tear out page at the end of each section to solicit responses from the client group. Responses were sketched in subsequent chapters of the probe and ultimately collected into a document.

A printed supplement to the Texas Medical Center's Monthly Journal (item #2) was crafted by the team to reach the multi-institutional constituency outside the University to further communicate the process and the plan. This large run printed overview was circulated amongst the Texas Medical Center's 50,000 employees.

An off campus, day long retreat was held that, for the first time, gathered the Presidents of all the Universities of the area and the CEO's or President's of all the institutions within the Texas Medical Center to participate in the process. This session was video taped for distribution throughout the region. Local media covered the event as well.

To best communicate the completed plan, (item #3) the team recalled the first process diagram that initiated the effort. The plan's documentation no longer was free hand and loose. The documented plan was no longer a sketch book or probe. Concepts now were fixed, data was now finite, issues now resolved, costs were firm and the plan's communication focused and resolved.

The landscape architects who master planned the University of Texas Health Science Center identified early on, in the year long effort, that the most critical aspect of the assignment was how best to communicate the process as well as the product. A vast and diverse client group, a specialized and technical professional community (within the Texas Medical Center) and a national sense of urgency in health care reform was requiring fresh new interactive means of communication to rapidly tranfect change.

This is a very successful example of how landscape architects have the unique ability to communicate in multi-media languages. Their techniques can foster input, solicit involvement, articulate process and garner approval in venues that are highly credible and significantly successful. The impact of the communication plan developed for the implementation of the University of Texas Master Plan has already provided early on approval of may of the plan's components. The long term significant of those facilities that now are approved because of the communication efforts of the landscape architects will forever change the University, the Texas Medical Center and the City of Houston.