Mary Jo Olenick is this month’s Buildings & Grounds guest blogger.

Over the past decade, we’ve heard a great deal about the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration on college campuses. Institutional policies now reward the “teaming” of formerly isolated disciplines in both teaching and research. Medical education, for example, increasingly includes courses in the humanities, and behavioral, social, and physical scientists increasingly work together in public-health research. In response, planners and designers have been asked to develop buildings that encourage interaction.

So why, when we walk into many of these shiny new buildings, do they feel so empty?

In a previous blog post, I observed that real interaction occurs in public spaces designed to support specific functions, not in spaces designed simply as generic gathering areas. Another impediment to interdisciplinary collaboration is the politics of space. In some respects, you might say that the politics of space is embedded in the traditional culture of academe—the more space you have, the more important you and/or your department are.

Even in colleges that are committed to sustainable design (where you might think wasteful space would be anathema), you find faculty members with multiple offices; research labs that are used for storage; and classrooms that remain underutilized for entire semesters. Frequently this phenomenon is perpetuated by hard boundaries between academic units. Wouldn’t rethinking how space is allocated allow us to use it more efficiently and effectively?

Another factor in this equation is the inflationary effect instigated, in many cases, by our revered industry practice of benchmarking. This is not to say that researching what other institutions are doing is not valuable—it is. However, over the past few years I have seen a steady creep in space benchmarks, particularly in research and residential categories. I have heard some clients say, “If XXX College is providing YYY square feet per faculty member for research and we offer a bit more, we can attract and retain high-caliber faculty.” Little by little, our academic buildings have become less densely populated.

We need to reinvigorate our buildings from a human-energy perspective. In large buildings, we need to think about creating nodes of occupied space. We also need to identify functions that will attract large numbers of people, creating a “beehive effect.” Technology could be our ally here if we can create shared spaces that incorporate the latest techno-communication tools—and that are different from the standard office or conference room.

I understand that academia is risk-averse. And certainly users have difficulty believing that less space could really offer them more. However, facility planners and programmers need to bring more than default positions to the table—that’s our obligation to building users, who may be brilliant teachers and researchers but who do not understand the art and science of building design.

Many users assume that, in debates over plans for new buildings, they need to fight for maximizing functionality and usable space because the architects mostly care about design. But it’s not an either/or equation. A tight fit may be one key to highly functional space that also sparks creativity.

Mary Jo Olenick is an architect who leads the S/L/A/M Collaborative’s higher-education practice. She has been contributing to Buildings & Grounds during March. Read her earlier posts here and here.