Page 20 - College Planning & Management, May 2018

SPACES FOR LEARNING
hall, and an assembly stair are among the other amenities. Outdoors, walking trails and gathering spaces provide alternative perspectives for students to learn through other senses and scenery.
Design of the technology infrastructure was completed in concert with the space planning to optimize speed, performance, mobility, connectivity and security. The robust mediascape includes animation, video production, green rooms, robotics, fab labs, and maker studios.
The first three floors of the center are ded- icated to the Students in Academically Gifted Education (SAGE) program for the North Kansas City School District. The fourth floor comprises administrative offices, while the fifth floor is exclusively occupied by North- west Missouri State University (NWMSU) students. The fifth floor has 12 classrooms with advanced technology and flexible furni- ture to meet the needs of students.
University students in the education department work with the SAGE students, testing the notion that this new, urban school allows students to learn, teach,
and mentor all under one roof. Although collaboration is a key aspect of the center, the design also provides safe, secure access for the SAGE students, separate from the NWMSU students, while also maintaining a simple flow within the building.
Collaborative, Flexible, and Social
Among many other examples created on campuses in recent years:
• High-tech, welcoming spaces within
William Jewell College’s Pryor Learning Commons in Liberty, MO, that foster col- laboration between students and between students and instructors. The building’s studios, labs, and lounges are intended
to reflect and foster student engagement, according to the university. And students who are collaborating are engaged.
• Technology-rich collaborative study nooks open to hallways as well as lecture halls furnished with mounted swivel seats to enable discussions between seating tiers, all within Frey Hall at New
THE STEPS TO LEARNING. Stairs are a trending learning space, merging aesthetics and functionality to create col- laboration. In these areas, informal, productive gathering and communicating is encouraged.
\{Many students \{ find lectures less
than compelling; likewise, the
imperative of physically being in a classroom or hall for that purpose.
York’s Stony Brook University.
• Well-equipped, glassed-in student
study rooms in vivid color at Rowan University’s Campbell Library in New Jersey; and various spaces enabling ad hoc collaboration in the HUB-Robeson Center at Pennsylvania State University (PSU), including study areas open to the interior’s main thoroughfare.
The drive for collaboration is incorpo- rating an interior feature—stairs—not traditionally associated with providing a spot for shared work and study. For instance, PSU’s HUB-Robeson Center also has a grand bleacher staircase ideal for encounters, interaction, and collaboration. The NIC campus, seen on page 18, also includes an assembly stair. Another grand staircase at a key thoroughfare provides opportunities for interaction and collaboration or individual work, lunch breaks, or people watching, at Case Western University Center in Cleveland, OH. Bradley University in Illinois provides a different take: collaborative study tables on landings attached to a steel staircase.
In various cases, a sleek, leading-edge am- bience is evident, as is the fundamental con- cept of designing campus spaces that match how many students prefer to learn today.
Architectural firm SmithGroupJJR has worked on related projects for, among oth- ers, New York Law School, whose library includes collaborative study and work- spaces, and American University’s Tenley Campus law school in Washington, DC. As Robert Bull, principal, SmithGroupJJR, ex- plains, the latter design features so-called sidebars—spots near lecture halls that enable spontaneous interactions between students and between faculty and students.
A nearby interior feature on the Tenley Campus, an underground commons— well-lit with skylights—provides a social area with comfortable furniture where classmates tend to run into each other. The interaction in the space, which serves as the campus crossroads, also provides an entry, so to speak, to other dynamics that educational interiors face: Students also tend to run into faculty members in the
20 COLLEGE PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / MAY 2018
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