Minneapolis — Ira Fink, a well-known planning consultant, talked about using office space smartly on Monday at the Society for College and University Planning. In a packed room, he went over some of the history of space standards, which seem to be derived from 100-year-old studies of high-school classrooms.
Labs and research areas are big space eaters, he said, in part because they are owned by departments. And they are protected spaces, not always used well. You can get a sense of how often a room is used, he said, by walking in, looking for a newspaper, and checking the date. He once walked into a room and found a newspaper that was 10 years old.
Offices are also big space users—from what I’ve seen, they can consume up to a quarter of space on a campus. He showed pictures of faculty offices and noted that paper, whether piled on the desks or stashed in file cabinets, takes up a lot of that space. There must be better ways to store paper, he said, ways that might allow colleges to make their office space more efficient.
Someone asked about his policy for windows in offices. “I think the rule of thumb is put a window in every faculty office,” he said, and the audience laughed. But that doesn’t always happen, he added more seriously. “People like to look outside. … This is not about buildings, this is about people. Faculty are the capital of the university, and you need to treat them with some diligence, and say, We respect you. Part of this respect is that we’ll give you a good office space.”
Some campuses are in a “zero-sum game” for space, Mr. Fink said—they are trying not to add space. The University of Illinois, which has struggled with a terrible state economy and deferred-maintenance needs, is one such institution. The University of Michigan and Stanford University are trying to get a handle on space by charging for it, he said. Algonquin College, in Ontario, is another institution that has constrained growth, as The Chronicle has reported.
A deeper consideration of energy use is “the newest thing that is going to happen in space” planning, Mr. Fink said. Buildings should be well metered, to consider all kinds of utility uses, and colleges should consider how space affects energy costs, he said. They should also find ways to separate high-energy-use spaces (like labs, where air is flushed and replenished several times an hour) from low-use spaces. “You can think about partitioning your buildings to put the high-energy use on one side and the low-energy use on another side.”
He ended with some words of encouragement: “You’re in a high-payoff business—you can save your campuses lots of money.” But planners need to be patient and to understand how all the numbers work—construction numbers, efficiency numbers, square-footage numbers. “You need to be convincing to your decision makers,” he said, “and then you need to know that no matter what you do, the impact is going to be slow and incremental, unless you are in a new campus or a high-growth area.”
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10 Responses to When Planning Offices, Remember: Give Faculty Members a Window
11260805 - July 13, 2010 at 3:43 pm
If it weren’t for the support and admin staff, though, many faculty couldn’t function worth $&@#!. Their having a window won’t make a hill-o-beans difference if they don’t have a good staff surrounding them. Oh, yeah – they’re people, too. An occasional planned window near an office entrance could be a helpful psychological boon to everyone, not just the faculty member.
cotrlib - July 13, 2010 at 4:06 pm
Well put, faculty are only one quarter of the equation at any college or university and most faculty would have a hared time teaching effectively without the support staff that ensures day-to-day functioning of the building, computer & technical systems, registration (no need for faculty if you don’t have students), etc.. Buildings should be designed with ALL users in mind and not just one group and windows, particularly ones that open, go a long way to improve everyone’s psychological health.
always1999 - July 13, 2010 at 4:09 pm
totally agree with the above posters….support and admin staff need windows, too. Especially in the summer when most of the support and admin are here, working, and the faculty are out and about “doing research out in the field.”
jrb244 - July 13, 2010 at 4:46 pm
From what I’ve seen in my 25 years working in education administration is that faculty don’t use their offices much. They have more flex time and often work from home. Give windows to the full time staff who have to be in their offices all day every day.
22228715 - July 13, 2010 at 5:52 pm
“Newspaper”? What’s that? Is that what you call it when you print out an article, from your screen to the printer?(Maybe the newspaper was 10 years old because the occupants of the space have been reading the Chronicle online for a decade. Egad, I can’t remember the last year I saw a hard copy of the Chronicle…)
frankmhowell - July 13, 2010 at 8:31 pm
This article has several important points. As a faculty at three universities, I was fortunate enough to have a window each time, even with I was in the 2nd oldest building on campus and sharing an office with another Assistant Professor! Faculty vary so much; some ‘live’ in their offices while other use them minimally and work in the lab, library, or home office.Now at a University System office, it seems clear to me that we’ve spent far too little on data systems which reliably monitor room/space use. Moreover, the maintenance, updating, and renovation funding sources are often out of kilter with who benefits from the use. For instance, Departments often have to pay for the “frills” which, if they control the room, makes them less interested in “sharing”. Why should a “controlling” Department pay for a $300 bulb in a video projector when several other departments use the room? Better thinking and administration about space on campus is sorely needed!
osholes - July 14, 2010 at 6:36 am
I agree that all employees should have useful and attractive offices and that windows are nice. When we designed our new building, the staff were invited to meetings with the architects about the location and design of their offices and the choice of their furniture. They attended the meetings and in the end were pleased with the results. I don’t understand, however, why the case for staff offices has to be made by insulting faculty.
22228715 - July 14, 2010 at 7:43 am
When I was a graduate student, the most spacious and well-furnished office in the building was on the interior corridor of a boxy structure. When it became vacant, none of the faculty wanted it because it did not have a window. So, while some faculty made do with cramped offices with sliver windows, I luxuriated in my ‘grad assistant’ office with a u-shaped desk, multiple floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and a conference table. Faculty would stop by with prospective students and joke, “See, this is how well we treat graduate assistants!” No complaints here about a faculty culture that measures prestige by window square footage!
skocpol - July 14, 2010 at 9:57 am
Note: Windows are proportional to perimeter; interior space is proportional to area. The larger the building, the relatively scarcer the window resource. However, a skylit atrium can bring in daylight to adjacent balcony-like hallways, encouraging people in offices along there to emerge, and maybe even to interact.
panacea - July 14, 2010 at 12:08 pm
The design of the health technologies center where I teach was designed for interactivity with students. Classrooms are on one side of the hall, faculty offices on the other.The advantage to faculty is everyone gets a window in their office (great for me; in our old building windowed offices were handed out based on seniority). The disadvantage is it gets pretty noisy sometimes, especially in the Fall when we have the most students running about.Sunlight plays a direct role on mood; allowing both faculty and staff access to windows lets the light in and promotes overall mental health.