Universities, suggested the late Sir David Watson (professor of higher education at Oxford, vice-chancellor at Brighton) can be viewed as property companies with education tacked on. Estate issues consume vast amounts of time and money – and prompt emotional debate – within universities.
Everyone’s aim is to create noble buildings and campuses that will attract talented staff and students, boosting the university’s standing in the competitive international league. But some new buildings end up attracting criticism and controversy – they’re judged weird and kinky, and they fail to fulfill their function as icons.
Starchitects break conventions
Ambitious university leaders bring together the powerful combination of “starchitects” and wealthy sponsors eager to provide funds for flagship buildings bearing their names. Starchitects play with the ideas of crumbling buildings, irregular shapes and angular geometries, rather than conventional vertical planes and rectilinear structures. Their designs hint that universities are organisations whose mission is to question traditional ways of thinking, to break down conventions.
Daniel Libeskind’s London Metropolitan University Graduate Centre is one example. The Ocad University (formerly the Ontario College of Art and Design) in Toronto, is another. Designed by the UK’s Alsop architects, it seems to stride above the city on colourful skinny legs; its gigantic, hovering form implying that art education is important, distinct and elevated from the mundane world below.
The renowned US architect Frank Gehry recently completed the Dr Chau Chak Wing building for the University of Technology in Sydney, described by the Australian governor general, Sir Peter Cosgrove, as “the most beautiful squashed brown paper bag I’ve ever seen”. (Hopefully it will not result in a legal suit, like Gehry’s earlier project, MIT’s leaking Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence department, the Ray and Maria Stata Centre).
The Rolex Learning Centre at Switzerland’s Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), is an imaginative library, study and conference centre; an undulating “swiss cheese” with floors that rise up internal hills and dip down into valleys so that even the floor yells that this building – and by implication, the university – is special. EPFL president Patrick Aebischer says: “We needed to invent new spaces… We needed this kind of flagship building.”
Universities also want to be known for being at the forefront of sustainability. So a key trend in architectural innovation is the creation of imaginative, green, sustainable buildings.
Plans for Vietnam’s FPT University in Ho Chi Minh City feature an entire campus of environmentally innovative buildings designed by Vo Trong Nghia architects, a direction pioneered by Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and Delft Technical University.
Do staff and students actually benefit?
Do such ambitious buildings really work for the staff and students for whom they are designed? What aspects of the new buildings stimulate better teaching, learning and research? Might more restrained and elegantly designed buildings meet university requirements just as well? Can unpretentious, cheap buildings erected rapidly by design and build contractors, satisfy users?
We need much more solid evidence to answer these questions with conviction. Research on “post-occupancy evaluation” – how buildings are perceived by those who use them – is still rather unusual, although it is always recommended.
University estate directors have collaborated on a methodology for conducting post-occupancy evaluation through the Higher Education Design Quality Forum (HEDQF) – but few apply it.
Thought they know lessons learned could bring quick-fix improvements to the new building – and help future projects – HE leaders are usually reluctant to run the risk of unearthing any tricky issues after the budget has been spent.
A mixed picture
So what do we know? From the available research, some interesting findings emerge.
National Student Survey results for 2015 show that 86% of undergraduates are satisfied with their learning resources (library, IT and access to specialised equipment, facilities and rooms.) Good news, but it does not illuminate whether particular buildings or features are positive.
Other research shows that the staff are generally less satisfied with their facilities than students are, which could mean they negatively impact on their research and teaching. But this year’s sector efficiency report led by Sir Ian Diamond rates 85% of HE space as good to excellent.
Meanwhile Carbon Buzz data demonstrates that actual energy use and carbon emissions in new university buildings are double that predicted at the design stage.http://www.carbonbuzz.org/evidencetab.jsp
Radical shifts in the way students earn and digital technologies for teaching and learning – virtual learning environments, lecturecasts, online quizzes, webinars, skype tutorials, flipped classrooms, Moocs – make new demands on buildings, data connectivity and infrastructure. They also raise the prospect that education can be delivered without going to a place called a university.
When asked their views, students commonly complain about poor internal air quality and temperature, and express the need for more spaces for group work with their peers, more computers and computer rooms. They want “make spaces” for creative experimentation, and more social learning spaces, and they want these spaces to be open 24/7.
All university buildings – the new and the old – need to respond to evolving requirements. Flexibility and adaptability through time is one of the most precious attributes of all HE buildings.
After all, European universities and their architecture have already endured for more than a millennium, and more than 800 years in the UK. All have grown dramatically in the last century and continue to grow, even as online learning accelerates. Their future success and survival will be aided by better and more adaptable buildings, based on a well-researched evidence base.
Source:Flashy university buildings: do they live up to the hype?