While the designers have developed plans to revitalize the Visual Arts complex of California State University, Fullerton, they hoped to create a space that would encourage students to stay on campus as much as possible.
Many students from Fullerton go to campus at home. This means that they need comfortable places to do their homework, meet teachers or talk to classmates. Otherwise, they run the risk of going home and jumping for lessons or missing academic aid.
The new visual arts complex, which cost the university around $ 65 million, includes two new buildings as well as two other renovated areas. In addition to creating modern installations that allow students to focus on careers in animation, playing art or graphics, designers have thought of the basic needs of students: access to WiFi; A place to define their computer; An adequate shade of the California sun; Even comfortable seats.
Ideally, if the students feel comfortable staying on the campus throughout the day, they will also want to be in Fullerton in the long term, explains Christina Delgado, project manager of the Fullerton visual complex.
While colleges are looking for means to hire and retain students, especially since the registration numbers continue to decrease, they focus on the design of the campus, explains Delgado, who is also the group leader of arts, community and education in HGA, the design company that led the latest FULLERTON construction project.
For colleges and schools from kindergarten to 12th year, buildings are supposed to prepare students for the next stage of their lives, says Delgado. For young students, this is perhaps the next level or school, she says. Buildings from kindergarten to 12th year should have a variety of spaces – such as music rooms or scientific laboratories – which allow students to explore their interests and be excited for university.
Instead of simply providing class space, higher emergency establishments reflect on the ways they can prepare students to take the next step in their careers. With this, say the experts, the need to leave the campus, collaborate with peers and design flexible spaces that will develop both with the student population and the programs that a college offers.
“You must be able to make spaces … in which people want to be,” explains Delgado. “It is not only a question of learning a skill and leaving. It's about having an entire life experience. ”
Adapt to a new generation
Delgado considers Fullerton's new visual arts complex as a “micro-campus” or a collection of buildings where everyone has a similar orientation. The designers tried to use wider entries or corridors to provide more space to students to take a break between the lessons, she said.
The designers also took advantage of Fullerton's warmer climate. One of the final touches of the project is outdoor furniture, for example, explains Arnold Holland, dean of Fullerton's College of the Arts.
“Students will have places inside and outside to be simply on campus,” explains Holland. “They shouldn't have the impression of having to go to their car or leave the campus by the next class.”
Campus also focuses on the creation of more spaces for collaboration, according to experts. The visual arts complex has a new computer laboratory which is not necessarily for class time, but rather allows students to collaborate with each other, says Holland.
The space helps students feel more comfortable working or approaching their teachers, says Delgado. In recent years, faculty members have noticed that students came to college Feel anxious or shy. A lot Do not assist during office hours Because they can't find their teacher's office or they feel intimidated.
In one of the new buildings of Fullerton, the teachers' offices are built around a large collaborative space. This means that all offices are easier to find because they are in a single central place. And this gives students the opportunity to meet their teachers outside an office, which can be scary, says Delgado.
“For many, many years, we have put teachers everywhere,” says Holland. “It would be possible for a student to have a meeting with a member of the faculty in the construction of A, then it is enough to run to go to the construction E.”
Now everyone is in the same place. “The suites are right next to each other,” he says. “And we have these areas so that students can (come out) when they try to go from the member of the faculty to the member of the faculty B.”
Colleges across the country update spaces such as libraries and scientific laboratories to be more collaborative, explains Lalit Agarwal, president and chief executive officer, an organization that supports the staff of educational facilities.
In the past, university libraries were “books of books with corners and corners where people could lower their heads and do their homework,” said Agarwal.
Today, many of these books are moved or digitized, he says. Libraries become open and collaborative – furniture can be reorganized and students can work together comfortably, he said.
Career preparation
Colleges use physical spaces to push students to the next steps in their career.
In Fullerton, the buildings were designed as a “virgin canvas”, says Delgado. The walls have been left mainly empty so that student art can serve as decorations, and the first floors have large windows that allow people to see the work of art from the outside.
The complex includes two student galleries and a public gallery, so students are working to show their work for a general audience. Students and teachers can also use “critical spaces” designated to assess student projects, says Delgado.
The world of visual arts can be particularly inaccessible; Campus design should help students feel more comfortable working in the field before diploma.
“You want people to want to come and learn, but to keep them on campus, you have to show them:” Oh, I can really do it and I have the tools to do it “”, explains Delgado.
Colleges adopt the need for students to get out of the classroom, explains Ladale Winling, history professor at Virginia Tech and author of the book “Building the Ivory Tower: Universities and Metropolitan Development in the Twentieth Century”, which was released in 2017. Schools create community partnerships, encouraging students to do professional workshops and create means Beyond traditional lesions.
However, this means that campuses become larger, spreading in the surrounding communities and neighborhoods, adds Winling. While communities and colleges often count on each other, the sprawl of the campus can create tensions between local residents and administrators – and teachers and students could be caught in the middle.
“These types of community negotiations are very difficult,” says Winling. They are politically sensitive because a member of the faculty can try to develop a student project or a relationship with an institution that has been or that will be moved by an expansion of the campus.
This can help alleviate tensions if designers may think beyond students who use a building and also consider community uses, says Delgado. For example, a local high school recently used the Fullerton gallery space for choral performance.
“The acoustics are quite crazy,” she adds. “You listen to this choir singing in the Big Gallery Space, which is not acoustically designed for musical performance, but my boy, is it an impact and noisy and incredible and resonant.”
Flexibility is the key
The new campus buildings must be flexible even in the expected uses of the college, says Agarwal. Flexibility allows a more effective investment and allows students to explore several careers.
In the past, students have generally taken a job at university and stayed in this work for the rest of their careers. Now students want to explore the options and be exposed to a variety of different areas, he said. Colleges must offer them a chance to experiment.
Audrey Sorensen at the Advocate Facility group, Appe, said that some colleges create spaces that can change even throughout the day. And in the long term, rather than having a building dedicated to a single department or task that only works, colleges can build spaces that change with a rapid development area, she says.
In Fullerton, many rooms have been designed to adapt to the growing use of technology in the arts, said Holland. There is an additional space for the new wiring, for example, and the rooms have space to install ventilation if they have to be used for paint.
“We do not know what is going on,” says Sorensen, “but we know that if we meet these current and future needs – with flexible spaces that can change the uses whenever we need it, even depending on the time of day, it is a huge advantage for what (colleges) devote to it compared to that of trying silo in spaces in dedicated roles.”
In the end, it is a question of ensuring that students want to be in school and stay in school, adds Delgado. When first -year students arrive in college after high school, their new campus classrooms should help them feel prepared for their field and delighted to find a job.
“I continue to return to the elimination of barriers,” she says. “How can we keep students and teachers, very frankly, want to be here?” The design changes accordingly. “
