Campus Space
Imagine a university campus that’s busy in the summer with loads of students in classes. Or, a campus that runs three shifts of classes a day, like an auto making plant. Would it work for some teachers to forego dedicated offices if they could access office space when needed? What if students paid 20 percent less to attend classes scheduled at unpopular times, such as on Friday afternoons or Saturdays? The scenarios may sound draconian but they’ve all been deployed or considered as campus administrators seek to optimize the use of campus space to meet the needs of more students while also containing costs.
The need for space optimization in campus and building design is obvious. Many of today’s campus buildings are underutilized. If you walk through campuses in the early morning or late afternoon, you’ll see plenty of empty classrooms or 35-seat ones hosting small groups of students. Even if classrooms are underutilized, there’s still the cost to maintain, heat and cool them. Next to personnel, facilities are typically the second biggest campus expense.
New ways of teaching and learning are also affecting campus space optimization. Today’s teachers and students want more flexible space. Buildings filled with 35-seat classrooms and large lecture auditoriums are no longer viewed as optimal. Teachers and students want more spaces for small group work, or rooms where they can move among each other. They want smaller tables to foster working clusters and working laboratories that eat up more space. Having enough space is key, but it’s also critical to have the right kind of space.
So how do campuses reallocate space for the best and most optimal use? Very carefully, I would argue. Space optimization requires a delicate balancing act of efficiency and quality and many stakeholders, including faculty and students, may have strong emotional reactions to changes.
One campus might very well reduce space shortfalls by scheduling more classes in the early morning, for instance. Yet research has shown that college-age students don’t soak up as much information in the early mornings as they do at other times of the day.
On another campus, an obvious answer might be to shift more classes to afternoons, but they might then interfere with athletics, which can play a huge role in campus culture and an institution’s ability to attract and retain students. To make good choices, campus administrators need good data but that is often missing.
The Society for College and University Planning last collected data on campus-space inventories in 2007 with a survey of more than 280 institutions. The society’s goal was to collect the data to “provide a sense of the size and growth patterns of college and university facilities,” its website says. It stopped its annual survey because it was “unable to generate sufficient participation rates to make the data useful over the long term.” That leaves gaps in space information that have existed since 1974, the last time the federal government collected such data, the society said.
As we look at redesigning campus space, adding new space—or a combination of the two—we look for defendable, compelling data to back up our plans and give campus administrators a platform from which to advocate. We count students, classroom hours and classroom days. We walk the space. We watch how it is being used, or not. If faculty complains about not enough classroom space, we question whether that is really the issue, or whether the problem lies in that they simply need fewer fixed seats and more tables with wheels? Looking farther into the future, we weigh how the growth of online classes may affect campus space. As space planners and architects, it’s on us to recognize that space isn’t just about putting students in seats, but about putting students in the right kinds of spaces, at the right time for each individual institution.
The stakes of good planning are high. Students often decide whether to attend a college based on the quality, quantity and feel of the space. I expect space optimization—against the backdrop of growing enrollments and desires to keep tuition hikes in check—to play an increasingly large role in campus design.
This post was written with contributions from Timothy F. Winstead, AIA, LEED AP
