IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2017 - 40

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Higher education design is embarking on a new frontier
as universities adapt to pedagogical changes and a more
competitive enrollment environment.
Evolved methods of learning drive some of that change:
the venerable lecture hall, for example, still exists but has
diminished in importance in favor of flexible spaces where
students and faculty can congregate in smaller groups.
Other shifts are driven by evolving classroom technology
and an enrollment climate in which prospective students
can view school spaces online with the click of a button. To
put it simply, students expect more.
We asked three experts in education design what
distinguishes the next generation of campus facilities-and
what changes designers should anticipate on the horizon.
Perspective: The lecture hall lives on, but several
design innovations are focused just outside the
entrance of that space. What's behind the growing
importance of those areas?
LOUIS BECKER, DESIGN DIRECTOR AND
PRINCIPAL PARTNER, HENNING LARSEN
ARCHITECTS, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK: You

still need to have formal classrooms and auditoriums,
but they are now supplemented in equal amount
and importance with informal learning spaces where
students test their knowledge with other students, or
where they come out of a lecture and want to discuss it
with fellow students. We need to cater to that, to create
a place where a couple of students can digest what just
happened-whether it's a space to stand, sit, or hang.

40

perspective

iida.org/perspective

SHP Leading Design provided facility assessment services
in order to develop the program, space plan, and design
for the relocation of Bowling Green State University's
department of architecture and environmental design to a
single, shared location on campus.

You can support that spatially with a sofa-like environment
or a row of chairs on a balcony that overlooks a big space.
You're able to concentrate, but you're still part of what's
happening. This also points out that you need some spaces
that are bigger. That doesn't have to be a central atrium, but
it should be a space that signals clearly to people using
the facility that this is the central part that celebrates
collaboration.
DAVID BROZ, AIA, LEED AP, EDUCATION PRACTICE
AREA LEADER, GENSLER, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, USA:

We call those spaces front porches. They also give the
professor a chance to have real-time office hours. Rather
than saying, "All right, if you've got questions from that
three-hour lecture I just gave you, see me on Thursday at 11,"
it's like, "I'm going to hang outside for a little while, guys,
and bring your questions immediately." I think that responds
really well to millennials and the generations that follow.
They expect real-time feedback. Right or wrong, they expect
to text a professor at 11 p.m. and get a response immediately.
Today's college student can put a pair of earphones on,
flip up their laptop, and they feel like they're alone because
they're in their own world. But what's powerful about that
for a very social university student is that they can look up
from their laptop and see their buddy walking across the
hall and, all of a sudden, they're together. Alone or together,
there's that energy of the collective.
In those larger spaces, I think visual privacy is paramount.
We're putting a lot of movable, writable surfaces that are 5 or
6 feet tall in these common areas, and the students can literally
pull them together and create a little room on demand.
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