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After Bumps and Bribery Charges, Frank Gehry's Library Opens at Princeton
For its trouble, the university has gotten a structure that will probably inspire and delight those who work in it. (Photo by Brian Wilson, Princeton U.)
• News Analysis: The 'Green Era' Should Propagate Smarter Buildings
Academic Centers for Athletes Draw Donors
More than a dozen university athletics programs have added lavish new facilities in recent years, and academic-services budgets are soaring, a Chronicle survey finds.
Lessons From Katrina Improve Colleges' Evacuations for Hurricane Gustav
College officials across the Gulf Coast were cautiously relieved that the damage wasn't more severe.
Other News
As Credit Crisis Freezes Colleges, Worries Mount
Colleges have often considered themselves recession-proof. But this week’s events compounded an already-difficult year for many institutions.
Princeton’s Campus Plan Comes Into Full Bloom
The plan "treats the campus as a series of neighborhoods and encourages increasing density."
Loren Pope, Admissions Adviser and Author Known for 'Usonian' House, Dies
In 1939, when he was a $50-a-week newspaper copy editor, he commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design a 1,200-square-foot house that is now a museum.
New campus buildings
Multimedia
A Green Building as a Billboard for Science
(A 2006 Chronicle video)
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About Buildings & Grounds
Buildings & Grounds is written by Scott Carlson (left) and Lawrence Biemiller (right). Scott Carlson writes about architecture, facilties, energy, and sustainability, among other topics. Lawrence Biemiller writes about architecture and facilities and contributes to Notes from Academe. What's happening on your campus? Let us know.
Guest Blogger: Embracing the Millennials' Seamless Embrace of Technology
Mark McVay, one of this month’s guest bloggers, is design director in the Los Angeles office of the architecture firm SmithGroup.
Campus architects and planners design buildings to stand the test of time and remain permanent parts of a campus fabric. But one of the biggest challenges the designers confront is continuously adapting to changing technologies, curricula, pedagogy, and enrollment. The most successful campus buildings not only make such adaptations, but also enhance campus culture through significant place-making.
 Mark McVay |
The current “Millennial” generation, however, is introducing new ways of interacting in and using space, and is challenging decades-old planning standards. The Millennials’ seamless embrace of technology is driving some of the biggest changes.
Digital teaching tools are now commonplace. Distance learning now links students and faculty members around the globe. But maybe the most serious consequence of the digital revolution is that it is redefining the social aspect of learning. Millennials take digital technologies and improvements for granted. Chatting, texting, and network-gaming environments create global interaction.
The impact of all this on learning spaces is subtle, but significant. Whereas previous generations use electronics primarily on an individual basis, Millennials see them as opportunities for dynamic social interaction. Clusters of students huddle around a computer sharing ideas—and approaching full immersion.
The key here is the simultaneity of input. It’s not uncommon to see a student who has a cell phone beside one ear and an iPod earbud in the other—and who is typing on a laptop with a display split between a term paper and a streaming YouTube video. The Millennial generation effortlessly juggles multiple sources of simultaneous information.
Designing for this generation means providing wireless Internet access and readily accessible power. It means keeping in mind wire management and ergonomics. And it means encouraging changes in behavior that maximize interaction at both the local and universal scales.
Classroom-planning models that focus on maximum efficiency often fall short in supporting impromptu student clusters, an aspect of interaction that these students take for granted. The old notion of a public square can now be recreated in multiple locations throughout a campus—even in the classroom. Architects must plan environments that support more information throughput, and thereby improve the quality of learning.
These developments give us opportunities to increase the experiential component of learning—and we’ve only begun to scratch the surface. The shifting roles of spectators and participants in networked gaming environments are also intriguing, and could have dramatic effects if applied in classrooms.
How can architects and planners create academic spaces that respond to this changing culture? Should we create a wireless, networked “dinner theater” space with tiered seating and lounge furnishings? Or perhaps a spherical classroom arrangement mirroring the multi-user interaction—student to student, row to row, and instructor to students? Both of these ideas illustrate challenges to the static monologue of a traditional classroom.
And how does this culture affect the public space of a campus? Will this multiple-simultaneous condition pervade the fabric of an institution, or will it remain only a private experience, the clicking and tapping of so many individual screens? Only one thing is certain: The answer will likely come from a careful discussion with these unique individuals for whom technology has always been second nature—if we can get them to turn off their iPods. —Mark McVay
Buildings & Grounds | Tuesday April 1, 2008 | Permalink | Contact usComments
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Because of the uncertainty posed by changing technology, we filled a new building with furnniture on wheels, carts of laptops, and plenty of wireless nodes. The only fixed computers are the teacher’s multimedia stations.
— JCM Apr 1, 04:18 PM #
Hi Mark et al:
Glad to read the design world is asking itself these questions. I am not especially adept at space planning in the work context, but typically respond strongly to the atmospheric ambiance wherever I am.
In response to JCM’s post we have asked for a similar scenario for next year’s budgeting cycle in support of our strategic initiatives re technology needs at our library.
Currently those in the library field are very focused on the issues you raise. While we have extended or public space to provide a sea of computing workplaces, we must reconfigure every 2-3 years based on the continually evolving technology. With ipods, laptops & wireless we have more need than most areas on campus for IT support and collaborative furnishings.
To deliver library services we are exploring the model of one-desk for Circulation, Computing and Reference assistance. We are also debating going completely virtual to provide Reference help.
Lots of considerations but acting on any of the options requires more fluidity and tolerance for ‘failure’ than our institution readily accepts.
But we’re almost ready to commit to one of the 2 options (at least at our smaller 2nd campus) ;-)
Marlene (from a CC in the Southwest)
— Marlene Apr 1, 04:21 PM #
As a student of a large American University, I would like to comment that though our library is updated to accomodate the latest in technology, I find myself searching for a seat next to an available plug point. Point is that there are many but all are taken; every seat requires an electrical plug point and every corner needs to have high speed wi-fi
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