Varney Circle

Why we need your help.

The replacement of Snyder Hall on McCarthy Mall is among several significant projects of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Long Range Development Plan, which the Board of Regents approved last September. In place of the current Snyder Hall, on the same site, the university contemplates a new, sustainable, high-performance, multi-purpose building. Plans for this new facility create a unique opportunity to revisit the cultural and aesthetic significance of the surrounding landscape and open space, in particular Varney Circle and Fountain.

Ada Susan Varney, for whom Varney Circle is named, was a popular teacher in the Territorial Normal and Training School, which merged with the Teachers College of the University of Hawaiʻi in 1931. Varney Fountain, at the center of the circle is the work of Cornelia McIntyre Foley and Henry H. Remple and was constructed in 1932.

Varney Circle serves as a symbolic hub connecting the original UH Mānoa quad with McCarthy Mall, Campus Center, Hawaiʻi Hall, Fine Arts, and the Queen Liliʻuokalani Center. In concert with the UH Mānoa Campus Framework team and the UH Office of Project Delivery, the University of Hawaiʻi Community Design Center (UHCDC) agreed to organize a focused, proof-of-concept “Design Tank” to help explore Varney Circle's full potential. Over the course of this two-day charrette, Design Tank participants—landscape architects, architects, urbanists, and built environments students—will explore new ideas, concepts, cultural connectedness, and images that help envision the future of this historically significant campus focal point.

To strengthen this process, we need your input. We hope you’ll help shape the future of our campus by completing this brief survey on Varney Circle and Fountain and contributing your ideas. Your participation will both inform this "Design Tank" and guide future planning and design work surrounding this significant center of the UH Mānoa campus.

Take the Varney Circle Survey HERE (survey is now closed)

To share your ideas please visit our WHITEBOARD (whiteboard is no longer taking new responses). You will need a new username and password (not your UH login) to sign-in/register and participate. This username will appear publicly. For anonymity, make up a username that protects your identity.

Varney Circle Feedback Timeline

Launch website
June 2020

Host Design Tank
July 2020

Synthesize and share
July 2020

Present outcomes to leadership
August 2020

Integrate ideas into long range planning documents
December 2020

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