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HE 035 564

Rickes, Persis, Ed.

Special Planning for Special Spaces. Selected Articles from"Planning for Higher Education."

Society for Coll. and Univ. Planning, Ann Arbor, MI.ISBN-0-9601608-5-X1997-00-00146p.-

Society for College and University Planning, 4251 PlymouthRoad, Suite D, Ann Arbor, MI 48105 ($29.95). Tel: 313 -998-7832; Fax:,313-998-6532; e-mail: scup@umich.edu; Web site:http://www.scup.org.Books (010) -- Collected Works General (020) GuidesNon- Classroom (055)

EDRS Price MF01/PC06 Plus Postage.

Architecture; *Educational Facilities Planning; FacilitiesManagement; *Higher Education; Library Facilities; MusicFacilities; Recreational Facilities; Scholarly Journals

This collection contains articles from the journal "Planningfor Higher Education" organized around four core spaces commonly found on acollege or university campus. Following an introduction, Section 2, "CulturalSpaces," contains these articles: (1) "Planning the Successful PerformingArts Facility" (Wendell Brase, v18 n3); (2) "Frontier Acoustics for MusicBuildings" (Russell Cooper, v21 n2); (3) "Art Buildings and ideology" (GrahamGund and Jonilla Dorsten, v23 n1); (4) "Planning for Museums on Campus" (GailDexter Lord and Margaret May, v24 n2); and (5) "Planning for Performing ArtsCenters" [book -review] (Richard Pilbrow, v25 n2). Section 3, "InstructionalSpaces," contains: (6) "Classrooms for the 21st Century" (Michael Owu, v20n3); (7) "Design Criteria for Effective Classrooms" (Wendell Brase, v17 nl);(8) "What Kind of Workstations for the Laboratories?" (Nolan Watson, v24 nl);(9) "What Size Libraries for 2010?" (Michael Matier and C. Clinton Sidle, v21n4); (10) "Designing Better Classrooms" [book review] (Hunt McKinnon, v21n2); (11) "Everything You've Wanted To Know about Laboratory Design" [bookreview] (Michael Reagan, Janet Ross, and Ray Porfilio, v23 n2); (12)

"Designing Tomorrow's Laboratories" [book review] (Larry Anderson, v20 nl);and (13) "Controlling the Cost of Science Facilities" [book review] (FredTepfer, v22 n3). Section 4, "Student Spaces," contains: (14) "New-WaveStudent Housing" (Earl Flansburgh, v19 n3); (15) "The Outburst of StudentRecreation Centers" (David Body, v25 n1); (16) "The New CollegeBookstore" (John Finefrock, v21 n3); (17) "Residence Halls as a Place ToLearn" [book review] (Carmen Guevara Neuberger, v23 n3); and (18) "GenderEquity in Athletics: What Does the Law Require?" [book review] (Marsha Moss,v24 n3). The final section, "Outdoor Spaces," contains: (19) "The NeglectedCampus Landscape" (Michel Van Yahres and Syd Knight, v23 n4); (20)

"Approaches to Contemporary Landscape Design" (Carol Johnson, v22 n2); (21)"Campus Architecture That Shapes Behavior" (James Burlage and Wendell Brase,v23 n3); and (22) "Landscapes, Work, and People" (book review] (GeorgeAnselevicius, v23 n2). Each article contains references. (Contains 3 tablesand 29 figures.) (SLD)

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Society for College and University PlanningAnn Arbor, Michigan

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Society for College and University Planning, Ann Arbor, Michigan USA 48105-2785

© 1997 by the Society for College and University PlanningAll rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 0-9601608-5-X

All articles originally published inPlanning for Higher Education

ISSN 076-0938

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ContentsI. PREFACE & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

II. CULTURAL SPACES

ARTICLES

3 Planning the Successful PerformingArts Facility

10 Frontier Acoustics for Music Buildings

18 Art Buildings and Ideology

27 Planning for Museums on Campus

BOOK REVIEWS

33 Planning for Performing Arts Centers

III. INSTRUCTIONAL SPACES

Wendell BraseVOLUME 18, NUMBER 3

Russell CooperVOLUME 21, NUMBER 2

Graham Gund and Jonilla DorstenVOLUME 23, NUMBER 1

Gail Dexter Lord and Margaret MayVOLUME 24, NUMBER 2

Reviewed by Richard PilbrowVOLUME 25, NUMBER 2

ARTICLES

39485865

Classrooms for the 21st Century

Design Criteria forEffective Classrooms

What Kind of Workstations forthe Laboratories?

What Size libraries for 2010?

BOOK REVIEWS

72 Designing Better Classrooms

74

7678

Everything You've Wanted to KnowAbout Laboratory Design

Designing Tomorrow's Laboratories

Controlling the Cost ofScience Facilities

Michael OwuVOLUME 20, NUMBER 3

Wendell BraseVOLUME 17, NUMBER 1

Nolan WatsonVOLUME 24, NUMBER 1

Michael Matier and C. Clinton SidleVOLUME 21, NUMBER 4

Reviewed by Hunt McKinnonVOLUME 21, NUMBER 2

Reviewed by Michael Reagan,Janet Ross, and Ray PorfilioVOLUME 23, NUMBER 2

Reviewed by Larry AndersonVOLUME 20, NUMBER 1

Reviewed by Fred TepferVOLUME 22, NUMBER 3

IV. STUDENT SPACES

ARTICLES

8393

100

New-Wave Student Housing

The Outburst ofStudent Recreation Centers

The New College Bookstore

BOOK REVIEWS

106 Residence Halls as a Place to Learn

109 Gender Equity in Athletics:What Does the Law Require?

V. OUTDOOR SPACES

Earl FlansburghVOLUME 19, NUMBER 3

David BodyVOLUME 25, NUMBER 1

John FinefrockVOLUME 21, NUMBER 3

Reviewed byCarmen Guevara NeubergerVOLUME 23, NUMBER 3

Reviewed by Marsha MossVOLUME 24, NUMBER 3

ARTICLES

113 The Neglected Campus Landscape

120 Approaches toContemporary Landscape Design

127 Improving Campus Signs

133 Campus ArchitectureThat Shapes Behavior

Michel Van Yahres and Syd KnightVOLUME 23, NUMBER 4

Carol JohnsonVOLUME 22, NUMBER 2

Robert BrownVOLUME 21, NUMBER 2

James Burlage and Wendell BraseVOLUME 23, NUMBER 3

BOOK REVIEWS139 Landscapes, Work, and People Reviewed by George AnseleviciusVOLUME 23, NUMBER 2

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iv

PREFACEIn some sense all campus spaces are special, but perhaps some are more special than others,requiring a unique planning twist The intent of this edited anthology is to step back and fo-cus on a few of these spaces in the hopes of providing new insights and strategic planningtools for occupants and planners alike.

This book is organized around four core space types typically found on a college or uni-versity campus in one form or another: cultural, instructional, student, and outdoor spaces.Many types of campus spaces exist, including those recognized formally by NCES in itsPostsecondary Education Facilities Inventory and Classification Manual as well as some thatmight defy more conventional classification structures. It was thought that the four groupingsincluded here best typify and reflect institutional character and identity. The manner in whichthese spaces are expressed, in both form and function, is an indelible statement of how theinstitution regards the role these spaces play in everyday campus life.

Planning for Higher Education (PHE), the premier journal of the Society for College andUniversity Planning (SCUP), proved to be a rich fount of articles and inspiration for this vol-ume. Some choices were difficult ones, and many more pieces would have been included ifspace permitted. Authors of those pieces selected for inclusion were invited to provide a post-script, if appropriate, and some elected to do so. In one instance, an author gave an older,well-regarded article an entire facelift.

In addition to the articles, select book reviews are interwoven throughout PHE consis-tently identifies and reviews new literature in the field. The presence of a special selection ofthese reviews greatly expands the planning resources available to the reader.

Cultural Spaces are examined in four articles and one book review in the initial section.Although not all campuses may be fortunate enough to have freestanding, dedicated perfor-mance or display spaces, such spaces undoubtedly exist in some fashion and greatly enhancethe institutional experience. In the first article, Wendell Brase provides a comprehensive andproactive series of suggestions for avoiding some of the pitfalls associated with planning aperforming arts facility. Russell Cooper, in the second article, explores the means for address-ing acoustical considerations in music buildings. Art buildings have moved to center stage,according to Graham Gund and Jonilla Dorsten in the third article, who go on to explore theassociated planning implications. Gail Dexter Lord and Margaret May, in the fourth article,note that there are 600 museums governed by public and private education institutions in theUnited States; the authors suggest ways for a campus to integrate its museum into the aca-.demic and administrative structure.

The next section of this volume addresses Instructional Spaces through a combination offour articles and four book reviews. Although such space may comprise a relatively smallportion of an institution's total space inventory, it frequently receives a significant amount ofplanning attention. In the first article, Michael Owu issues a clear call for assessing classroomspace and provides some specific recommendations for doing so. Wendell Brase carries thisthread into the second article, where he articulates numerous additional design criteria asso-ciated with successful classrooms. This article has been substantially updated especially forthis volume. Workstation design in science laboratories is explored by Nolan Watson in thethird article. Libraries can be considered a special type of instructional space and one articleis included here. According to Michael Matter and C. Clinton Sidle in the fourth and finalarticle in this section, library space needs are doubling every fifteen years and strategies mustbe found for coping with this spiraling need.

Student Spaces juxtaposes three articles and two book reviews on three very differenttypes of student-related spaces. In the first article, Earl Flansburgh offers up the viewpoint

that student housing may be one of the most pressing campus planning matters of this de-cade. The student recreation center is an emerging building type, according to David Bodyin the second article, joining elements of a gymnasium and a student center. In the third ar-ticle, John Fmefrock tells us that bookstores sell more than just books and are being seen asa new kind of campus gathering space.

The final section in this volume, Outdoor Spaces, brings together four articles and onebook review. In the first article, Michel Van Yahres and Syd Knight contemplate the impactof the spaces between the buildings, areas that are often neglected. This space is significantfor a number of reasons, including the fact that high school seniors rely heavily upon the ap-pearance of buildings and grounds when deciding whether to attend a particular campus.These thoughts and concerns are echoed by Carol Johnson in the second article, who goeson to describe additional ways in which the landscape can nurture the scholarly life. In thethird article, Robert Brown addresses a more practical day-to-day issue, that of improvingsignage on campus. In the fourth and final article in this particular section, James Burlageand Wendell Brase provide a thought-provoking piece on how campus architecture influ-ences social behavior both inside and outside the physical spaces we build for ourselves.They suggest ways we can creatively integrate these two types of spaces for mutual benefit.

Persis C. Rickes

Boston, Massachusetts

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSFirst, this volume would not exist without George Keller's professional and conscientiouseditorship of the Society's Planning for Higher Education, from whence these articles came.His commitment to editorial excellence has been a guiding beacon for the association, andthe quality of his efforts are reflected herein.

Thanks also are due to staff members in the Society's central office who dedicated theirtime, expertise, and insight to see this project through to a successful conclusion. Amongthese individuals are Jolene L. Knapp, the Society's Executive Director; Susanne Kocsis,Assistant Director of Print Media, who shepherded this volume through publication; andTerry Calhoun, Assistant Director of Electronic Media, who originated the concept for thebook and whose infectious good cheer kept it on track. Thanks also are due to MeredithWhiteley, Chair of the Society's Publications Advisory Committee, who has provided bound-less energy and thoughtful leadership to this committee. It has been my distinct pleasure towork with each and every one of you.

In my office, I would like to thank Monica C. Meyerhoff for her quiet perseverance andassistance with some of the technical tasks associated with developing and assembling thisvolume.

Finally, this compilation would not have been possible without the fine work of the au-thors whose work is represented here. My deepest gratitude to you one and all.

A NOTE ON THE EDITORDr. Persis C. Rickes has been an active member of SCUP for more than a decade. She is cur-rently co-chair of the Membership Committee, active on the Publications Advisory Commit-tee, and a member of the North Atlantic Regional Council. She is also a past RegionalRepresentative and has served on a number of ad hoc committees as well.

Dr. Rickes is founder and principal of Rickes Associates, a Boston-based higher educa-tion consulting firm dedicated to campus and facilities planning. She has worked with a vari-ety of colleges and universities throughout the northeastern United States.

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CulturalSpa

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This article summarizes planning and project man-agement strategies that have proven effective in cre-ating successful projects.

Planning the SuccessfulPerforming Arts FacilityWendell Brase

Editor's Note: This article has been edited by the author especially for this volume.

Introduction

milniversities and colleges areincreasingly turning attentiontoward plans to upgrade theirperforming arts facilities.Relatively few fully successfulperformance or instructional

spaces for music, theater, or dance havebeen built during the past fifteen years.New interest is now developing at a timewhen few recent successes can be reliedupon as planning models.

This situation poses a problem of largeproportions for the institution which is now

Wendell C. Brase is Vice Chancellor Administra-tive and Business Services at the University ofCalifornia, Irvine. With nineteen years of experi-ence in the UC system (thirteen years at UC SantaCruz, six years at UCI), Mr. Brase is responsiblefor UC Irvine's administrative, financial, and busi-ness services including a comprehensive pro-gram of process improvement and administrativestreamlining (recently awarded first-place inNACUBO's Higher Education Awards Program).Earlier in his career, Brase was Associate Direc-tor of the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at theUniversity of Rochester, a laser-fusion project, andAssistant Director of the Eastman School of Mu-sic. He has published several articles in Planningfor Higher Education, has been a Director of theSociety for College and University Planning, isactive in NACUBO, and holds two degrees fromthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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planning either I &R (instruction and re-search) or performance facilities for a mu-sic, theater, or dance program. The stakesare high. The track record of performingarts facilities built by institutions of highereducation includes many partial successesas well as some outright failures. And suchfailures are extremely expensive.

Causes of Project Failure

This paper will identify major causes of fail-ure of such projects and then summarizeplanning and project management strate-gies that have proven effective in creatingsuccessful projects, based on direct experi-ence with about thirty performing arts capi-tal projects in institutional settings. Mostinstances of failure of such projects fall intothree categories:

Cost overrunsFunctional nonperformanceUser disappointment

In discussing cost overruns, let us as-sume that the budget is adequate toachieve the institution's objectives for aproject, not that the budget was inadequatein the first instance. "Functional nonperfor-mance" means that the completed facilityfails to satisfy the users' reasonable andstated functional objectives. "User disap-pointment" refers to a different matter: thesituation when unstated objectives are not

met, or when there is confusion about func-tional objectives, or when there is disagree-ment about whether the "real" objectiveshave been understood and attained. Thiskind of project failure is as real as functionalnonperformance gauged by objective mea-sures, and it is characteristic of capitalprojects in the performing-arts domain, forreasons that this paper will attempt to illu-minate.

These three categories of project fail-ure-cost overruns, functional nonperfor-mance, and user disappointment-find theirroots in programming and design in the fol-lowing rough proportions:'

Programming Design

Cost overruns 80% 20%

Functionalnonperformance 60% 40%

User disappointment 95% 5%

So far I have painted a dismal picture.The good news is that the right kind ofplanning and project-management processcan work effectively to prevent the kinds ofproblems and failures that are virtuallyguaranteed in the absence of good plan-ning. Notice that "planning and projectmanagement" are regarded as part of thesame process. That is lesson number onewhen it comes to a performing-arts projectmany planning issues are so subtle thatthey become lost unless there is rigorousattention to detail in all stages of execution-design development, working drawings,specifications, plan-check, construction,and inspection.

Perhaps the most essential insight theplanner in a college or university must bringto the task of planning a performing-arts I&Ror performance facility is how different theprocess and the outcome must be from thatof planning a similar facility outside of theinstitutional setting. This is not obvious tomost administrators or planners. A good off-campus theater or concert hall would notnecessarily be considered a good on-campusfacility by faculty and students. The former isa public performance facility first and fore-

most; the latter is a laboratory facility inwhich the public performance aspect is ofsecondary importance. This is why joint plan-ning processes which endeavor to providefor the needs of an off-campus communityand of a faculty so often fail, not because fac-ulty or community performing-arts organiza-tions are so difficult to work with-as oneoften hears when the process breaks down-but because their objectives are different.Even when the joint planning process ini-tially seems to work, the plan that emerges isoften flawed: compromise ridden in an at-tempt to satisfy all participants and substan-tially over budget for the same reason.

The same pattern can unfold within aninstitution. Many participants in the planningprocess from within a college or universitywill think of a performing-arts project interms of its public performance objectives.Others will conceptualize the project in termsof the I&R objectives. These differences cancreate a power struggle that is easy for ad-ministrators to overlook, since the partici-pants often disagree on technical factorswhich obscure their larger differences re-garding objectives, and they do so in a politeway, not wanting to sour the administration'sregard for the long-awaited project. It is im-portant to understand, however, that an en-tirely different set of premises encircles thepublic performance objective as contrastedwith the curricular support objective, and thekind of institutional performing arts facilitythat emerges will differ based on whether theI&R or the public performance objective isgiven primacy.

As a planner, you must understand thatan unresolved conflict between the primacyof I&R versus public performance objec-tives can destroy a project in the way thatsuch differences in outlook can underminea facility-planning process involving on-campus and off-campus performing artsparticipants. It is the chief executive's re-sponsibility to clarify the primary and sec-ondary objectives; such clarification ismost effective at the outset, before the con-flict emerges or positions become en-trenched.

Ample evidence suggests that the best

performing-arts facilities (m a higher educa-tion institutional setting) usually resultwhen the I&R functional objective is primeand the public performance benefit is con-sidered a fortunate byproduct of an effectivelaboratory facility. This characterizationmay seem conservative, but it is entirely de-fensible and, with few exceptions, correct.Now let us turn to specifics.

Commonplace Programming Problems

Expectations Too Vague. The architecturalprogram must specify what kinds of perfor-mance formats, repertoires, and audiencesizes are expected. Leaving this to the imagi-nation of the executive architect invites mis-understanding. (Moreover, leaving this tothe discovery of the executive architectwastes the design budget.) Vague expecta-tions usually lead to broad performance pa-rameters, which in turn lead to expensivedesign solutions or compromises.

Lack of Architectural Program Detail.Without a detailed architectural program,no one involved in the design process canbe held accountable for the results. Thisproblem is exacerbated in a performing-arts project in which the multiple talents ofacoustician, theater consultant, and otherspecialists can work either together or atcross purposes. The detailed architecturalprogram provides the backbone aroundwhich design accountability is created.Conversely, in the absence of a statementof detailed program expectations and tech-nical requirements, an otherwise adequatebudget may be misdirected into a costlyexternal design solution at the expense offunctional value.

Unwillingness to Understand Compro-mises. No performance facility can serveequally well all repertoires, all performanceforms, all presentation formats, and all audi-ence sizes. The "all-purpose facility" is inevi-tably expensive and full of compromises.High-quality performance facilities resultfrom a disciplined, focused appraisal of whatreally matters most. For example, a musicperformance facility can be designed to sup-port both opera and nineteenth-century or-chestral repertoire, but it will be more

successful if its acoustics are optimized forone form or the other, rather than aimed ata mythical midway point that compromisesboth opera and orchestral performance.Such a trade-off should be firmly in the di-rection of the primary use (with consider-ation given to methods for acousticadjustment that are simple and cost effec-tive).

Misunderstanding the Economics of Au-dience Size. To design a performance spaceto accommodate the maximum expected au-dience makes no sense, unless money is un-limited. For example, if the extra 500 seats ina 2,000 versus 1,500 seat hall are actuallysold out fifteen times a year, the incrementalrevenue per seat will be average ticket pricetimes fifteen less several categories of ex-pense. Analyzing this further, it is first usefulto note that the 500 seats will be sold at thelow end of the ticket price structure (typi-cally discounted) let's say $10 per seat inthis example, so 15 X $10 equals $150 (grossrevenue per incremental seat per year). Therelated expenses will include incrementalstaffing and, more important, the advertisingexpense that will be incurred all season in acontinuing attempt to sell out the last 500seats. The latter could easily amount to $75-100 /incremental seat/year. Each seat en-tails about 20 square feet of space at themargin that must be heated, cooled,"janitorized," and maintained, requiring$180 per year including equipment deprecia-tion. If we assume that the capital cost ofthis hypothetical performance facility is fullyfunded, our 500 extra seats are each gener-ating about $150 in marginal revenue but in-curring nearly $300 per year in marginalexpense. The exact numbers in this examplemay vary among facilities and locales, butthe basic relationship between incrementalincome and marginal expense is, regretta-bly, more commonplace than hypothetical.

Note that this analysis has nothingwhatever to do with the cost of productionor talent. The often-heard argument that abig house is necessary in order to supportexpensive talent is specious unless the mar-ginal ticket revenues, based on the pricestructure and the frequency of selling the

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entire house, exceed the associated mar-ginal expenses for the added seats. The ar-gument that a larger house will require"less subsidy" is also nonsense. The issueis whether the subsidy is required in theproduction budget or in the building-opera-tions and advertising budgets.

Intuitively, as a rule-of-thumb, the sen-sible audience size ought to be that which canbe filled to capacity for at least half of theevents without requiring extraordinary adver-tising expenditures. A more precise answer ispossible for each distinct facility based on acareful analysis which includes marginalcosts as well as revenue projections based onrealistic sales/attendance estimates.

This example is covered in detail be-cause misunderstanding in this area leadsmany projects fundamentally off-track andfar over budget This is how problems typi-cally occur: As pressure to increase audi-ence capacity mounts, concerns aboutmaintaining an intimate performance envi-ronment surface and escalate. "Intimacy" ina performance space is general gauged onthe basis of the viewing distance from thestage to the most-distant seats. The designsolution is predictable: balconies and a fan-shaped seating plans both of which reduceaverage distances to the stage. Introducingbalconies and wider spans quickly esca-lates the budget, not only in terms of struc-tural costs and the foundations required tosupport long-span structural elements, butalso because balconies introduce specialacoustical problems and the need for circu-lation, handicap access, restroom facilities,lobbies, and various patron amenities onevery seating level. Moreover, the expenseof providing comfortable air delivery is sig-nificant as the seating plan gets wider andas balconies are introduced.

The converse is clearly less expensive: aperformance space that is more rectangular,allowing utilization of a regularized struc-tural system spanning a limited enclosurewidth with no balconies, or at most a shallowbalcony.

The problems of providing good acous-tics in a performance space that is large andwide extend beyond the issue of construc-

lion cost Attaining good speech conditionsbecomes markedly difficult as the theatergrows beyond about 800 seats, just as attain-ing good music acoustics gets sharply moreproblematic as an opera facility exceeds1,500 seats or a concert hall exceeds about2,000 seats. For the sake of your budget andfor good acoustics, smaller numbers thanthese are advisable. (In the case of a facilityused for an opera and music theater a spacelarger that 1,500 seats is also undesirable forthe training of young voices.)

Underestimating the Impact of Site on theBudget. As planners, we are usually sensitiveto the impact of slope and soil conditionsand utility costs on a capital budget In thecase of a performance facility, another sitecondition has equal impact: the quietness ofthe site. Other site conditions and factorsbeing equal, sitting a performance facility atleast 150 feet from major vehicular circula-tion2 can favorably impact a budget as muchas 10 percent. Many performance facilitiesare structurally massive because they at-tempt to attain large capacity and perfor-mance intimacy, as already discussed, andthey are built on noisy sites. Of course,many campuses cannot provide a site whichmeets the setback criterion of 150 feet Insuch cases, the building configuration canaffect significantly the expense of creatinginterior spaces that are sufficiently isolatedfrom vehicular noise.

Making the Smaller Facility Less Versa-tile. Many performing-arts facilities containtwo or more performance spaces of differ-ent sizes. The programming tendency is tobuild as much technical ad production flex-ibility as possible into the larger/largest fa-cility. This decision is not necessarily amistake, but it does not make the trade-offin the direction of maximum expense."Flexibility" refers to the technical ability ofthe stage and the lighting system to supporta wide range of repertoire and performanceforms. Such a stage is typically fully convert-ible; for example, in a music facility thestage would have a fly gallery, an orchestrapit, extensive wings, a forestage elevator,massive access doors and corridors, traps,an extensive theatrical lighting system, pos-

136

sibly an adjustable proscenium, and cer-tainly a demountable "orchestra shell" toenable conversion of the stage to a fully en-closed acoustical enclosure for orchestral,choral, and chamber music performances.

The hall associated with such a stagewould have extensive acoustical adjustability,multiple balconies, a wide span for purposesof performance intimacy (as had been dis-cussed), and multiple-lighting positions. Sup-pose an institution builds two music perfor-mance spaces, of 500 seats and 1,500 seats,and that one facility incorporates all of thefeatures just outlined, while the other facilityis at the other end of the versatility scaleanoncovertible stage, a nontheatrical lightingsystem, a simpler structural system withshorter spans, less acoustical adjustabilityin other words, a good, basic, "concert hall"suitable for orchestral, choral, recital, andchamber music performances. Making thesmaller hall the versatile hall and the largerhall the more basic performing space willsaveall other factors being equal and keep-ing the total number of seats constant at2,000in excess of 25 percent. Of course, ifthe larger hall were 1,650 seats and thesmaller facility were 350 seats, the cost differ-ential would be even greater (closer to 35percent). Incidentally, a good example ofmaking that larger music performance facil-ity less complex and the smaller one morecomplex can be seen at the University of Illi-nois' Krannert Center, where the concert hasbeen executed successfully in a way that hasstood the test of time.

The Expense of 'Statement" Lobbies. Nor-mally, given the choice between, say, a bet-ter stage (more technical, more functional)and a grand lobby, faculty and administra-tors would favor the former. The problem isthat when the architectural program doesnot clarify this expectation, its significanceon the budget is not understood until an ex-ecutive architect has structured an entiredesign concept around a lobby which is toogrand. Of course, the lobby is undeniablypart of the audience experience, but hereagain the curricular function of the theateror concert hall as a laboratory must be givenpriority in the institutional setting. It is a mis-

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take to assume that this point is too obviousto address in the architectural program. In agift-funded project, however, a lobby mayhave strong donor appeal, although sophisti-cated donors will readily understand the pos-sible trade-offs.

Value-Engineering Process Begins TooLate. Value engineering is essential for aperforming arts facility for several reasons:

Such facilities embody design and programcomplexity.Peer review generates alternatives and pro-vides ballast when forceful participants in theplanning process overwhelm other partici-pants with their specialized technical knowl-edge or assertions of artistic prerogative.

In performance facilities, value engineeringcan flush out in a structured way more al-ternatives that are immediately apparentValue engineering forces the involvementof required consultant-specialists in thetrade-off decisions that matter most in theearly stages.

The message so far in this discussionhas been that fundamental trade-off deci-sions and program assumptions have mas-sive and irreversible impacts on the budgetand on the success of a project. Therefore, inorder to be effective, the first value-engineer-ing session should be scheduled uponcompletion of the architectural program butbefore schematic concepts are developed.

Common Design Problems

Internal Zoning. All performance facilitieswhether for theater arts, dance, or musicrequire a critical level of sound control. Inmany cases, this can be alternatively accom-plished through internal zoning or throughthe way a building is technically designedand constructed. "Zoning" simply meansseparating problematic, noisy, and vibration-generating functions and machinery fromspaces that have a critical need for quiet. Itmeans inserting storage spaces and quietcirculation elements strategically, as bufferzones; locating mechanical rooms carefully;isolating receiving docks; keeping air-han-dling equipment off roofs; avoiding walkingsurfaces over any space that must be quiet;and routing exterior circulation away from

1r

penetrations in the building envelope, suchas openable windows and air intakes. Some-times acoustical consultants inadvertentlyperform a disservice by inspiring too muchfaith in technical solutions to noise problemsthat could be more surely and less expen-sively remedied in the first instance throughmore thoughtful interior zoning.

HVAC Problems. Three HVAC prob-lems are commonplace, all deriving from thestringent, ambient noise-design criteria re-quired for a successful performance space.The first problem is the mechanical engi-neer who is inexperienced with such sys-tems. The second problem arises when themechanical engineer does not get involvedearly enough in the building's volume alloca-tion to reserve adequate space for risers, ple-nums, and mechanical rooms. The thirdproblem is that an unrealistic budget for theHVAC system takes root early in the project,often derived from an inadequate statementof pertinent program requirements.

Poor Analysis of Sightlines. The prob-lem of poor analysis of sightlines is so basicthat it should never occur. Never accept thearchitect's assertion that "we have checkedthe sightlines" or, worse yet, that "the seat-ing vendor checked the sightlines with acomputer program." Make the designershow you both vertical and horizontalsightline clearances on paper from themost problematic seats, such as rear cor-ners, front corners, rear balcony corners,all side balcony positions, and any seatingposition where the floor slope makes a tran-sition. In reviewing plans, be skepticalabout a floor slope that does not vary mark-edly from front to rear seating and frommain floor to balcony, and put no faith intooffset-seat placement (since the viewingangle subtended from an offset seat will re-veal only a fraction of the stage) . Extra at-tention to this problem-prone area of designon the part of the client will help to ensuredesigner accountability.

Inspection Problems. Performance spacescontain many details of such technicalsubtlety that the chief inspector must be in-volved from an early stage in value-engineer-ing and design-development discussions and

in plan review. In addition, critical itemsshould be highlighted by the acoustician atthe preconstruction conference. Only whenacoustical functions and technical objectivesof certain design features and constructiondetails are understood in depth can inspec-tion be fully effective.

Client Noninvlovement in Trade-0A. Thedesign process must be managed in a waythat brings trade-off decisions into focus forusers. In particular, trade-offs involving aes-thetics versus functionality should be madeby the client. There are two ways to structurethe design process so that trade-off decisionsdo not get buried: (1) retain acoustical andtheater consultants directly rather that assubcontractors to the executive architect; (2)use the value-engineering process to illumi-nate trade-offs, to explore alternatives, and toprovide a context of professional peer reviewand expertise for clients to tap when makingtrade-off decisions. These recommendedpractices are not intended to suggest that aes-thetic attributes of the design should be sys-tematically specified for the sake of function-ality, or that all trade-offs can be categorizedso neatly. The point is that every stake-holderclient, architect, donor, trustee, andend-userbenefits when trade-offs are pin-pointed, explained, and evaluated in a processwhich involves informed clients.

ConclusionThe programming and design problems thathave been discussed do not comprise an ex-hausted list of potential pitfalls. Instead, thefocus has been on fundamental issues thatoften prove pivotal in determining whether aproject emerges as a functional successwithin its budget. Many of the planing anddesign problems that have been discussedare practically irreversible and impossible toremedy beyond a certain stage. Yet in theinstitutional environment, with its tendencyto use committees in ways that often seekconsensus through compromise, unsatisfac-tory and expensive outcomes emerge fromlack of understanding of the full cost impactof certain program factors, from the desireto meet everyone's needs in a democraticfashion, from the lack of clarity about the

primacy of public performance versus circu-lar support objectives, and from the signifi-cant decisions that get locked in while theplanning process consumes time trying toreach consensus. A sophisticated awarenessof these problems on the part of the plannercan enable him or her to structure the plan-ing and project management process inways that will result in a satisfying, effectiveand affordable project.

9

FOOTNOTES

1. Based on author's involvement in planning, pro-gramming, or overseeing construction of aboutthirty performing-arts facilities. Since this paperwas presented at SCUP-24, many readers haveprovided anecdotal concurrence with theserough proportions.

2. "Major" vehicular circulation refers to roads thatcarry traffic at highway speeds and/or frequenttruck, bus, or emergency-vehicle traffic.

An expert describes the vital role ofacousticalplanning for the sound of music.

Frontier Acou'ics forMusic BuildingsRussell Cooper

usic buildings are differ-ent. They require sophis-ticated advance planningto control and directsound and noise. Theyare more expensive. The

architecture and construction engineeringneed to be shaped to accommodate acousti-cal needs. And the interior design requiresspecial handling to enhance or to mufflesound. Any college or university that isbuilding a new music hall or renovating anexisting one must recognize that there areexceptionally difficult design problems thatnecessitate early and expert acousticalplanning.

Music buildings must provide appropri-ate music environments for teaching, prac-tice, performance, rehearsal, and recording,and they must satisfy the tastes of numerousprofessors, some of whom are outstanding

Russell Cooper is senior consultant at JaffeHolden Scarborough Acoustics in Norwalk,Connecticut, and an expert on architecturalacoustics and noise control. He is a graduate ofthe University of Hartford where he received aB.S. in acoustical engineering and minored inmusic. He has worked as a manufacturer ofacoustical equipment and a consultant to an ar-chitectural firm that builds music and theaterfacilities and studios. He continues to play tim-pani in two regional symphony orchestras, andhas helped design a dozen music and perform-ing arts centers.

instrumentalists or composers themselves.These music environments raise design is-sues such as the acoustics of individualrooms, sound and vibration isolation fromexternal and internal noises, and mechanicalsystem noise control. Acoustical require-ments raise the cost of these buildings waybeyond the cost of classroom buildings.

Most campus music schools are alsoused for performances for and by commu-nity groups, and for touring dance, music,and theater groups, as well as individualartists. Of course, each locality has differentrequirements. For example, a music schoolin a major city like New York or San Fran-cisco which has several concert and recitalspaces does not need to build a hall for pro-fessional concerts. However, when Cleve-land State University planned its newbuilding it had to include a 1000-seat recitalhall because Cleveland did not have a satis-factory mid-size concert hall. (See Figure1.) Likewise, when the University of India-napolis planned a fine arts extension, thepresident asked for a 500-seat recital hall sothat the college could attract touring per-formers and groups to raise revenue.

At Interlochen Music Academy in Tra-verse City, Michigan, the curriculum in-cluded musical theater, dance, and dramaas well as music; and the city lacked a mainperformance venue. So the stage at CorsonHall was designed in a proscenium format,

17 10

Fare L Cleveland State University had to build a mid-size recital hall.

incorporating a limited capacity for flyingscenery, so that dance and drama could bepresented as well as acoustically sharp mu-sic performances. (See Figure 2.)

Thus, the first planning considerationfor college leaders is how the music buildingwill be used, and by whom. Then you will beready for specific acoustical planning.

7110A handsome rec fro Ns

The crown jewel of every music educationfacility is its recital hall. This is what cam-pus visitors come to admire and musicianswant to be perfect.

Recital halls are very difficult to design,and college recital halls are especiallytough. University and conservatory hallsneed to accommodate everyone from asingle piano, violin, or harp soloist to a fullsymphony orchestra with a chorus of 200or 250 voices. So the design of a conserva-tory recital hall should have a larger vol-ume-to-seat ratio then would the 2,500 seatsymphony hall downtown. Whereas thesymphony hall might have 350 cubic feet

per seat, the college hall should have 450 to600 cubic feet per seat. This translates intospaces that can be 45 feet high.

Also, university music hall platformsshould be large enough to handle an or-chestra and a large choir, so approximately2000-2500 square feet is the minimum re-quired. Yet, when smaller groups performon stage, they must not feel alone and tinyon a sea of stage. So portable sound-reflec-tive and diffusive shell panels should beused to surround the smaller groups. Thedifference in sound power between largesymphony orchestras and small chambergroups requires architectural elementssuch as variable draperies and panels, por-table absorptive units, tunable reflectors,and demountable shell panels to enable thehall to function properly. Because of allthese acoustical requirements, it is com-mon for the cost of a college recital hall tobe a high $150-$175 per square foot.

The most sought-after acoustics for arecital hall is a noise-free environmentwhere listeners feel enveloped in a sonicenvironment that is considered "warm."

13

Figure 2. Corson Hall at Interlochen Music Academy in Michigan had to include a prosceniumstage to allow dance and dramas as well as music.

Noise-free simply means being very, veryquiet. Being enveloped means having thesound be heard by the listener from allaround, particularly from the sides.Warmth is associated with an abundance oflow-frequency sound. How does a collegeachieve these qualifies?

The crown jewel is therecital hall.

Even the lowest energy instruments,such as a solo violin, deserve a chance to beheard distinctly. Hence it's imperative thatthe hall be exceedingly quiet, as noise-freeas possible. Air conditioning or heating fansshould not be heard. Nor should environ-mental noise from overhead airplanes,nearby subways and trains, or automobileroars, screeches, and horns.

This means that air conditioning equip-ment for recital halls should be located in abasement far away from the hall or in a sepa-

1 9 12

rate building, never on the roof. The airducts should be larger than usual for low-speed, quiet air delivery. Air is usually"dumped" or allowed to trickle down fromholes in the ceiling, and is returned via nu-merous openings near the hall's floor. In ur-ban sites where environmental noise is aproblem, it is necessary to have four to six-inch-thick concrete roofs, 12 to 24-inch-thickexterior concrete walls, acoustical doors andwindows, and "floating" structural systems.

As I said earlier, the proper volume forthe hall will insure that the sound energy iscontained and reinforced to provide loud-ness. But architectural details can influencethe quality of sound. These details includewall and ceiling geometry, the selection ofproper materials for surfaces, and specialtyacoustical elements. This leads us to thesecond requisite: envelopment.

Envelopment, or being immersed inthe sound, can be achieved by reflecting ordiffusing the sound from the musicians offthe side walls and ceiling to arrive at the lis-teners from all angles. Actually this re-flected sound should reach the listeners

slightly later than the direct sound from thestage. This time delay creates a perceptionnot unlike that of hearing in stereo. Whenwe listen to music outdoors it can sound flatand one-dimensional because there are noreflections. So it is important that the sidewalls and ceiling be carefully angled andshaped to reflect and diffuse sounds. Insome instances suspended ceiling reflec-tors need to be installed.

The third sought-after quality iswarmth. Warmth is associated with low-fre-quency sound, so music hall architectsmust make sure that materials selected forthe hall do not absorb low-frequency en-ergy. This requires that most boundary sur-faces be solid and rigid since vibratingpanels absorb low-frequency energy. Thismeans concrete, plaster, and gypsum boardsurfaces. Contrary to common belief, woodoften hampers good acoustics, althoughwood applied directly to a massive back-upmaterial such as concrete so it won't vibratecan avoid low-frequency absorption.

The greatest absorber ofsound is the audience andits clothing.

The greatest absorber of sound in a re-cital hall is the audience and their woolen,cotton, or synthetic clothing. But some-times there are empty seats, so the seatsmust simulate acoustically the effect of be-ing occupied. This can be accomplished byinstalling chairs with upholstered seats andbacks with a tightly wrapped fabric over a11/2-inch cushion. Since the seats covermuch of the floor area, recital halls do notneed carpeting except in the aisles.

Just as the audience needs good acous-tics, so too do the musicians. Therefore, theperformance platform must incorporatewall and ceiling shapes that reflect and dif-fuse sound not only out to the audience butto the other musicians on stage. In this waythe orchestra members can hear them-selves and adjust the balance and tone of

their sound. Lower, suspended reflectorsover the performance platform are oftennecessary to help reflect sound within the

Architecture details caninfluence the quality ofsound.

orchestra. These panels should be inte-grated into the architecture of the hall, andshould be more "open" spaced than "closed"to allow for low-frequency sound energy tocommunicate with the volume above the re-flectors to preserve the "warmth."

A reminder. A recital hall is essentiallya single-purpose music space. College lead-ers should not try to make it function as atheater also. I have seen terrible acousticaldisappointments where a music hall is ex-pected to satisfy several different uses.

Rehearsal, teaching, and practice rooms

These rooms are more dedicated spaces.They vary in size and cubic volume, de-pending on the sound power levels of theinstrumentalists or ensembles using thespace. Rehearsal rooms for an orchestra orchorus should not be less than 25 feet inheight. Choral rooms require 20 squarefeet per person, instrumental rooms 30square feet per person. Rooms smaller thanthis tend to be loud and oppressive. Sometry to put absorptive panels in the room toreduce the loudness, but this results in a"boomy" or "muddy" sounding room.

These practice and rehearsal roomsshould not be as reverberant as the recitalhall, but neither should they be "dead." Thegoal is to provide a pleasing musical envi-ronment in which the professor and en-semble can hear themselves and identifyarticulation and pitch problems. I recom-mend movable acoustical elements forthese rooms so that the acoustical environ-ment can be tailored to the different usergroup preferences. Among the simplestdevices are velour draperies that track

13 2 0

BALCONY LEVEL 5 I

(3 1 ao FT.

Bennett Hall

1. Performance Platform3. Sound Lock7. Balcony Seating8. Practice Rooms9. Control Room10. Acoustic Drapes

Figure 3. Bennett Hall in Highland Park, Illinois, has moveable acoustical elements for different

user groups.

along the walls and can be hidden in pock-ets when not in use. (See Figures 3.)

Sound and vibrations

One of the most important tasks in a cam-pus music building is the isolation of soundfrom space to space, especially since therooms are usually in close proximity.Spaces used for high-sound power instru-ments such as percussion, organ, brass,and large chorus should be larger and ofdouble height, and should be located ongrade. Wherever possible, corridors andstorage rooms should be used as acousticbuffers between these noise-sensitiverooms. These two steps can reduce costsby eliminating costly floating floors anddouble masonry wall constructions.

Studio and practice rooms are usuallylocated next to each other, so sound isolationbetween adjacent rooms is imperative. Thiscan be done by the following construction:

Combination masonry and gypsum boardwallsFloating wood floors over concrete slabsResiliently mounted gypsum boardceilings. (Figure 4.)For practice rooms, universities should

consider modular, pre-fabricated construc-

21 14

tion, which offers a low-cost, guaranteedacoustical alternative to general construction.

Doors to music practice rooms shouldalways be acoustical steel doors with a rat-ing of Sound Transmission Class (STC)-47.(Regular doors have a STC rating of 20 orso.) A door of this type costs about $1,500but is worth it because the cost of all theother isolated construction will be wasted ifthe doors are acoustically ineffective.Archi-tects also need to avoid sound-flankingpaths from one room to another. Conduits,piping, and ducts that penetrate the wallsand ceilings should be isolated from theportions by the use of resilient gaskets andcaulking materials.

To control noise

Heating, ventilating, and air conditioning(HVAC) systems create noise, and noise inmusic buildings must be reduced as much aspossible. Colleges can employ several strate-gies. They can place mechanical equipmentin a remote location. They can use low airvelocities, and reduce fan noise with in-linesilencers and sound-absorbing duct lining.And they can provide silent supply and re-turn grilles.

In studios and practice rooms, how-ever, a low level of noise is actually desir-able to mask the outside sound thatinevitably seeps through wall, floor, andceiling constructions. This low-level "acous-tical perfume" can be done by installing a

Practice rooms need"acoustical perfume."

quiet air conditioning outlet or vent thatgenerates and diffuses a moderate amountof continuous noise. This must be donevery carefully so that the level of introducednoise is not objectionable.

The design of the air conditioning sys-tem is crucial. A common misconception isthat putting a silencer in the duct, or by lin-ing the duct, noise problems caused by airconditioning will be solved. A silencer, byrestricting air flow, regenerates noise itself.When a portion of duct length traverses a

critical acoustical space, architects mustencase the duct in serveral layers of gyp-sum board to prevent noise from breakingout of the thin sheetmetal duct enclosure.

To control noise there are several im-portant design practices. One, never locateair conditioning equipment on the musicbuilding's roof. Instead, use a basement ora remote location. Two, support all me-chanical equipmentchillers, pumps, fans,etc.on vibration isolation devices; and forducts, pipes, and conduits that serve themechanical equipment attach them withflexible connections and suspend them onvibration isolators for a distance of at least20 feet from each machine.

Three, place the supply and returnducts for teaching suites and practicerooms in the corridors outside the rooms.Branch ducts containing sound traps canthen be tapped from the main duct intoeach practice room. This requires eitherwider corridors or taller plenum spacesover the corridors in which to stack theduct work. (See Figure 5.)

Acoustical IntersectionDetail

AcousticalPenetrationDetail Sound Control Ceiling

Floating Floor

min,1m-nrFigure 4. Studio and practice rooms require unusual sound insulation construction.

Poor Duct Layout

0:?....*:::::::-M:.W::*

Diffuser (air outlet)

Supply air duct

Return air duct(or plenum return)

Return air grille(air inlet)

r Supply air duct\ Return air duct

Improved Duct Layout

Branch air duct(internally lined)

90° Elbow

Figure 5. Air ducts for music practice rooms should be placed outside the rooms.

The matter of costs

What every college or university should re-member is that music building costs aregreater then most other buildings. Con-struction costs for music buildings in 1992range from $125 to $135 per gross squarefoot, twice the construction costs of stan-dard classroom buildings. Any architectsand builders who come in with lower bud-gets should be questioned meticulously be-cause they are probably making acousticalcompromises and reducing the quality ofsound and noise control.

Special attention should be given to theratio of net to gross square foot. Musicschools, with their complex and thick floor/wall/ceilings and large ducts and remotemechanical spaces, have larger grossing fac-tors than standard construction. Whereasthe standard construction grossing factor is

23

1.2, the figure for music buildings is 1.4 or1.5. Colleges that accept low-bid estimatesfrom builders who do not understand thespecial and expensive acoustical needs ofmusic buildings will either receive poor-quality buildings acoustically or be forced toadd money to the estimate to make late addi-tions and changes.

Acoustical requirementsraise costs way beyond thoseof other buildings.

I suggest that campus facilities plan-ners submit a detailed, written descriptionof the music building's sound isolation con-cept to the cost estimators at the beginning

16

of the project. It should include detailsabout construction materials (double-layergypsum stud wall, fiberglass batt, etc.) yetbe generic enough to permit tuning of thepartitions as the design develops. Suchguidelines make it easier for estimators tojudge costs correctly, and avoid surprisesdown the road. I believe it is wise to employan acoustical expert for this early planning

17

stage to help develop the sound isolationconcept.

As I said at the beginning, music build-ings are different. Universities must realizethat structures in which to practice and per-form the musical art require a high degreeof advanced acoustical planning, special-ized building design and construction, andabove-average expenditures.

What you think about art can be very influential.

Art Buildings andIdeologyGraham Gund and Jonilla Dorsten

At various periods in their his-tory, U.S. colleges and univer-sities have selected some one-building to make a statementIn earliest times it was thechapel. In the early 20th cen-

tury it was often the library. After WorldWar II it was frequently the science build-ing or a student center. More recently it hastended to be sports arenas or arts centers.

That so many American colleges anduniversities have suddenly been improvingtheir facilities for music, theater, and otherarts, or building grand new arts centers, sig-nifies that in our time art has achieved parityin higher education with history, science,law, economics, and religion. Indeed, somepersons, like Tom Wolfe, have claimed thatthe arts constitute a "religion" of the late20th century. Students travel to rock con-certs, museums, and dramatic performancesas pilgrims once traveled to Santiago deCompostella and still travel to Mecca.

It was not always that way. The artswere seldom taught at most colleges anduniversities until 70 or 80 years ago. Indeed,

Graham Gund, FAIA, is president of GrahamGund Architects, an award-winning architecturalfirm in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A graduateof Kenyon College, he earned a master's degreein architecture and urban design at Harvard. Hehas designed facilities for numerous schools,colleges, and universities, including several fineand performing arts centers.

25 18

schools of architecture were the most recentof the professional schools on campus. Inthe 19th century it was often the student so-cial clubs, such as Harvard's Hasty PuddingClub, which sponsored artistic activity. Tothis day the arts usually are most lively asextracurricular activities: the college orches-tra, theatrical group, or chorus and thedance groups, film society, the artists club.

But recently the arts seem to have be-come a more important part of being aneducated person, and institutions from 900 -student Centre College in Kentucky to thehuge state universities have built splendidnew arts centers. Art seems to reflect theexpressive individualism that scholars suchas Robert Bellah and Charles Taylor havesaid is the dominant ethic of our time.

Two weighty questionsThe movement of the arts to center stage inhigher education, and the construction ofnew arts facilities, presents some importantquestions to campus planners and policy-makers. We think two questions are espe-cially crucial.

Janina Dorsten is an associate with GrahamGund Associates. She is a graduate of the Uni-versity of Virginia, where she also earned herM.Arch. degree.

One is the kind of building that is ap-propriate on campus for the arts. TheAmerican college has long been distin-guished from its European ancestors by acampus planning tradition which more orless espouses the Jeffersonian notion of an"academical village," or a small town in mi-crocosm (Turner 1984). And the physical

The ideology of a college isusually embedded in itsarchitecture.

form of the campus has often expressed theeducational ideas of the president, leadingprofessors, and trustees. So the ideologicalhistory of a college is usually embedded inits arrangements of architecture, grounds,and playing fields. For architects, therefore,issues of symbolism as well as functionalissues of programming, space planning,and technology derive from a solid under-standing of each institution's ideology andeducational mission.

But what if an institution's ideologyshifts? How should the buildings that re-flect the new ideology relate to the olderbuildings that expressed the previous ideol-

ogy? To put it differently, should art centerslook like the rest of the buildings on cam-pus, or should they signify a bold departureinto a broader educational philosophy?Should the art building itself be a work ofart, an architectural sculpture (Rybcynski1993), or should it take its place quietlyalongside the other disciplines of higherlearning? The ideology of the campus planis an important starting point for approach-ing the design of the college arts facility.

There is a second significant planningquestion. How does the university thinkabout art? Is art just one of the liberal arts?Should students understand the history of artas a form of human expression, like literatureor philosophy; or should they be taught to doart, to be provided the techniques that enablethem to create art for themselves?

And what about the public? Art is a pri-vate act that has a public life. Often publicdiscourse is an important part of the evolu-tion of an artist. Galleries and theaters existto expose art to the university community,or to the community surrounding the cam-pus. What is the college's ideology aboutwidespread public involvement in campusartistic activity?

So each college or university plannerand his or her administrative colleaguesand the trusteesneed to make some cliff-

Jewett Art Center at Wellesley College, by Paul Rudolph, is centrally located and echoes the Gothicarchitecture of the campus in a contemporary way.

19

cult choices based both on the ideology ofthe traditional campus physical plan and onthe beliefs they hold about the role of art inhigher education.

To help with these choices, we offer sixdifferent solutions that may serve as the basisfor exploring your college's own issues of sit-ing, architectural expression, and function.Each case study reveals attitudes about therelation of the new arts building to the otherbuildings on campus and about the nature ofarts education on campus. We hope the sixcase studies will provoke thought amongplanners so they can play a vital role in thedesign of the arts facility on their campus.

Jewett Arts Center, Wellesley College

Art at Wellesley is seen not only as a meansof personal exploration and expression butalso as one of the major academic journeysthat give meaning to our world. So Wellesleyneeded an arts center that combined stu-dios, practice rooms, and performing spacewith offices, a library, and lecture hall.

When architect Paul Rudolph was se-lected to design the Jewett Arts Center in1958, he took note of Wellesley's viewsabout the place of art in the college. But healso asked questions and made observationsabout Wellesley's campus planning tradi-tions. He observed that the college's majorbuildings were sited on the hills of the gen-tly rolling country of this Boston suburb,leaving the valleys in a natural state. He sawthat the campus buildings were grouped inclose clusters, forming courtyards and land-scaped outer spaces. He found that mostbuildings had elaborate silhouettes, with thevertical lines of the college's collegiategothic architecture emphasized.

Paul Rudolph and Wellesley's officialsdecided to locate the building on the southand west slopes of Norumbega Hill, the aca-demic center of the campus. Thus, theJewett Arts Center both completes the cam-pus' main academic quadrangle and consti-tutes an edge element, serving as a gatewayto the cluster of buildings on the crest ofthe hill. By building in accord withWellesley's campus planning tradition, thecollege and the architect made a statement

2 7 20

about the place of the arts at Wellesley:close to its academic core.

As the college wanted, Jewett housesthe visual and performing arts and art li-brary, and includes the departments of arthistory and music. This reflects the ideol-ogy at Wellesley that the arts are intercon-nected and interdependent, not neatlyseparated semi-disciplines. But while archi-

Carpenter Center is aworkshop for making art.

tect Paul Rudolph designed a single build-ing, he organized it into three discreteforms, each of which houses different func-tions. A low music and drama unit consistsof two stories of listening, practice, and of-fice spaces wrapped around a central the-ater/auditorium. A higher visual arts unitcontains workrooms, laboratory space, a li-brary, and offices. The third unit is a gallerythat bridges the performing arts and the vi-sual arts. By separating the building intodiscrete forms, Rudolph not only organizedit in a clear way, but isolated the uniquestructural, mechanical, and acoustical re-quirements of each function.

Architecturally and ideologically, theJewett Arts Center speaks to the college'scampus planning tradition and to its view ofthe role of art in the education of talentedwomen. As Paul Goldberger wrote in theJuly 31, 1994 New York Times:

Jewett [is] the design in which Paul Rudolphmanaged to achieve what Eero Saarinenspent most of his career trying to do, which isto create a version of modernism that wouldbe rich, textured, almost picturesque, andcomfortable in its relationship to older build-ings around it. Mr. Rudolph's art center sitsbeside the historic Gothic structures ofWellesley with comfort and ease.

Carpenter Center for theVisual Arts, Harvard

In contrast to the Jewett Arts Center,Harvard University's Carpenter Center forthe Visual Arts (1963) , designed by Le

Corbusier, places art slightly outside theeducational mainstream. It tells us that therole of art on campus is to stand slightly out-side and comment on society. Art shouldchallenge our perceptions, shake us up. AsD.H. Lawrence used to say, the role of theartist is to stand outside society and criticizeit. Well, the Carpenter Center stands some-what separate from Harvard's historic archi-tectural community and announces tostudents and visitors that the place of the vi-sual arts at Harvard is one of avant-gardeexploration and visual comment. TheFrench architect Le Corbusier probably alsointended to have the visual arts comment onthe over-verbalized and over-intellectualizedsociety of leading American universities.

Rather than echo the tight orthogonalarrangement Of formal Georgian buildingswhich line Harvard Yard, Le Corbusierbuilt upon the diagonal walkways whichslice through the campus quadrangles.(See Figure 1) A strong diagonal entryramp cuts through the site and brings pe-destrians up and into the heart of the build-ing. (The ramp was originally conceived as

a passageway through the building con-necting Quincy Street to Prescott Street.)Thus, the outside becomes the inside andvice versa, in marked contrast to the adja-cent Georgian boxes which clearly distin-guish outside from inside, demonstratinghow art can help us reconceptualize reality.

Le Corbusier, with Harvard's concur-rence, designed Carpenter Center as aworkshop for making art. The building'slargely transparent shell and pedestrian-friendly entrances even expose the processto view. The building is a single volume offlexible space which accommodates a widearray of functions for the visual arts. Ithouses two and three-dimensional design,photography, and exhibition space with itsfree plan. A basement level houses themore static functions of lecture hall, lightand communications workshop, and stu-dios. The top floor is the visiting artist's stu-dio. Le Corbusier exposed the building'smechanical system components to enhancethe atmosphere of a factory-workshop.

Harvard's Carpenter Center embracesthe act of making art. With its architecture it

Figure 1. Harvard University's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, by Le Corbusier, is diagonal anddifferent from its surroundings as if art itself is slightly outside the regular academic life.

21

separates itself from both the allied but moresedate worlds of art history and art criticismand from the intensely verbal and quantita-tive intellectual life of the rest of the campus.In fact, when Le Corbusier's building was fin-ished, architectural critics compared the de-sign of the center to such contemporaryartistic movements as the "theatre of the ab-surd," abstract painting, earth sculptures,and avant-garde film making.

As a factory for making novel art, Car-penter Center presents an unpolishedphysical face to the public and the rest ofacademe, and seems intended to challengeand inspire, to engage and enrageasmodern art often does. The architect's ne-glect of Harvard's traditional campus plan-ning and red-brick architecture is strikingand probably intentional.

Can's Hill Precinct Study,University of Virginia

In the late 1980s the University of Virginiadecided to reinforce the position of the artswithin their academic community. Theycommissioned Michael Dennis and Associ-ates to conduct what was known as theCarr's Hill Precinct Study for the creation ofa new "Acropolis for the Arts." The univer-sity hoped to expand the architecture anddrama facilities already on campus, and addnew facilities for music, dance, TV/film,and studio arts.

The Precinct is an area at the edge ofthe campus, giving the university an oppor-tunity to establish a more public face for thearts, not only for the campus communitybut also for the people of Charlottesville. Ineffect, the University of Virginia desiredthree things: expanded facilities for thearts, closer collaboration among the variousarts, and greater public presence.

Any architect who works at the Univer-sity of Virginia can't help but be impressedimmediately by Thomas Jefferson's orderlycampus planning ideas. Michael Denniswas no exception. So his study suggestedthat new construction should create out-door spaces and building arrangements toenhance Jefferson's idea of "an academicalvillage." It integrates buildings and gar-

22

dens, new and old. And by doing so, Den-nis' studycompleted in 1990signifiedthat the arts were now one of the fully validacademic pursuits at the University.

Dennis collected the variety of creativefunctions around a series of outdoor roomswith carpets of grass, much as Jefferson col-lected his pavilions around the long centrallawn, each pavilion housing a different pro-fessor teaching a different subject. The artis-tic precinct thus underscores the idea thateach of the arts are distinct but interrelated.

So far the Carr's Hill Precinct Studyhas not become a reality because of insuffi-cient funds. But the project is similar toWellesley's Jewett Art Center in the way itassembles the several arts in one place andin the way the architecture and planning re-spects and builds on the existing physicaltraditions of the campus. However, it differsin that it sits not in the interior of the cam-pus but at its edge, offering to make theuniversity's arts activities more open to thegeneral public as well as to the university'sfaculty, students, and staff. But then, Wel-lesley College is a private college, while theUniversity of Virginia is a taxpayer-sup-ported, public state university.

Wexner Center, Ohio State University

Ohio State University is a public universitytoo; it is also Ohio's land-grant university,which means it is obligated to help thepeople of the state grow intellectually andeconomically in useful ways. So when anaffluent alumnus provided the funds, theuniversity leaders chose to build a majorarts center at the campus edge. Through adesign competition, the university leadersselected a scheme which joined the cam-pus grid with the grid of the city of Colum-bus, physically and symbolically linking theuniversity campus with the wider context ofthe city beyond, and linking the university'sarts with the people of Ohio and beyond.

And, just as its agricultural college andengineering school try to push forward thepractical aspects of farming and technol-ogy, Ohio State's Wexner Center tries topush forward both artistic thought and thepublic's appreciation for art. So the building

is primarily for contemporary and experi-mental art. It contains permanent, tempo-rary, and experimental exhibition galleries,performance space, a black-box theater, afine arts and graphics library, a film center,studio spaces, administrative offices, musicpractice rooms, a choral hall, and storageand prep areas. It also contains a publicmuseum, a cafe, and an arts bookstore.

Clearly, by collecting all these arts inone place, Ohio State signals its belief thattoday's art is interdependent and symbiotic,and that citizens and students will find in theWexner Center a complete picture of theevolving forms of the arts. The universityselected as architects Peter Eisenman ofNew York and Trott & Bean of Columbus,Ohio as if to say we want an avant-gardebuilding yet one that is appropriate for thecitizens of Columbus and the rest of Ohio.

Somewhat like Harvard's CarpenterCenter, the Wexner Center stands out andapart. It is strikingly contemporary, match-ing nothing else on campus. It also chal-lenges classic building ideas in that it

questions whether architecture should beshaped to human needs and respect localarchitectural traditions. With its surprisesand inconveniences, it challenges function-alism and history. As Peter Eisenman hassaid, "Instead of symbolizing its function asshelter or as shelter for art, [the WexnerCenter] acts as a symbol of art as processand idea and of the ever-changing nature ofart and society" (Eisenman 1988).

Like art itself, the Wexner Centershakes us from the complacency of ourconvictions about campus master planning,traditional architecture, and notions of whatart should be. The building is meant tofunction as a teaching tool about the role ofart in societyas a creator and destroyermore than a preserver of knowledge anddisseminator of research-grounded truths.

The Wexner Center seems to signify thatthe arts are a different kind of educator, tiedto but not fully a part of the rest of the aca-demic enterprise. The ideology of Ohio StateUniversitythat the arts are a bit differentand should be more public than the search for

e,

Ohio State University's Wexner Center, by Peter Eisenman, is strikingly contemporary like its art,and apart from the campus' main buildings.

23

better chemistry, soybeans, or politicalformsis visible in this jaunty structure.

Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center,Vassar College

Vassar College has historically separated itsstudio art spaces from its art history class-rooms and offices and the art gallery. Andwhen the opportunity arose to build theLoeb Art Center, the college leaders madethe decision to continue this tradition. Thenew Loeb Art Center (1993) therefore hasonly two functions: to provide the academicrequirements of teaching art history and toallow for exhibits and a regional art museumfor the upper Hudson River Valley.

The college commissioned architectCesar Pelli to create a building which wouldhave its own modern identity while being apart of the larger academic community andlooking to be in scale and general appear-ance with the rest of the campus architec-ture. The Loeb Art Center was sitedimmediately to the right of the main en-trance, as a gateway building along themost public edge of the Vassar campus. Ar-chitect Pe lli kept the scale to that of an al-ready existing building at the entrance tocampus, a maintenance facility. Then thecollege gutted and renovated the old main-tenance building, with its voluminous inte-rior spaces, into studios for the making ofart. So the Loeb Art Center, with its art gal-lery, library, art history classrooms, slide/photography study area, offices, and conser-vation and storage space, is now adjacent toa renovated studio facility, separate butproximate. The separation allows for struc-tural, mechanical, and acoustical individual-ity while the proximity allows for a new artscomplex at the gateway to the college.

Vassar's ideology appears to be that thestudy of art is now one of the major academicdisciplines and deserves to be treated assuch, and studio art is a relevant and increas-ingly important activity. Art is a creative activ-ity; but so is poetry, scientific research, andhistorical interpretation. Art is part of, notoutside and critical of, the rest of intellectualand creative life. Cesar Pelli's Frances LoebArt Center expresses that attitude beautifully.

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Visual Arts Center, Davidson College

Like Vassar's Loeb Art Center, DavidsonCollege's new Visual Arts Center is situatedat the primary entrance to the campus as asymbolic gateway, has a small regional gal-lery and museum for the public, and re-fleas the college leaders' goal to establishthe visual arts as a major presence on cam-pus but one that should take its place in themainstream of academic life.

As architect of the Davidson Center, Iexamined 12 sites on campus before recom-mending the one that was chosen. With its

Like art itself, the WexnerCenter shakes us.

simple temple form, red-brick skin, and ex-pansive roof, the new building is firmlyrooted in Davidson's tradition of strong,strictly ordered, neo-classical architecture;yet its imagery, scale, and proportions strikea balance between classical and contempo-rary-industrial languages.

Inside, the building creates a distinc-tion between facilities for making art andthose for presenting art. The public spaces,including a lecture hall and art gallery, arelocated near the main entrance, easy forvisitors to find. Beyond the public spaces,the building becomes a factory for the mak-ing of art. Large, open studios line the pe-rimeter walls of the first floor with facilitiesfor etching, lithography, and sculpture, andfor faculty offices while studios for paintingline the second-story arcade. All thesespaces surround a central atrium, whichprovides a lovely space where students, fac-ulty, and visiting citizens can meet and con-verse. Somewhat similar to the courtyard atWellesley's Jewett Center, the atrium pro-vides a communal center for students of thevarious visual arts to converge, and thelarge interior space contrasts with the morerooted and disciplined exterior.

The building expresses DavidsonCollege's view that art has become a moresignificant activity in academe. To remind the

college that it should be a place of imagina-tion as well as reason, the college needs en-chanters. Artists, to Davidson's leaders, arethe enchanters on campus, the faculty andstudents who teach the meaning of color,metaphor, sound, and forms, who raise thepossibility of other kinds of reasoning, whocan create something not yet thought of.

About ant 1111111E111ms

Architecture can express ideas throughbuilt form and spatial relationships. It canreinforce existing ideologies or promotenew ones. Therefore college and universityplanners and policymakers need to clarifyfor their architect what role the arts willplay in their academic offerings during thecoming decades. Should the academicstudy of art history and criticism be unitedwith the creation of new art, or separate?Should all the arts be connected?

Other questions need pondering too.Should campus art activities be for the uni-

versity or for the outside public too? Shouldart buildings themselves be iconoclasticworks of art or should they fit in with theother buildings and maintain an affinity? In

A college needs enchanters.

sum, how should an art center express thecampus ideology about the arts in academeand the ideas of the campus plan throughthe new building?

In our view, colleges and universitiesare built for the centuries. So college plan-ners need to have a far-reaching vision, andeschew fads and exhibitionistic architec-ture. Yet art buildings require differentforms. They demand lots of natural lightand large spaces, a high level of taste, and akeen knowledge of the role of architecturewithin the realm of art. We also believe thatsingle buildings on a campus should always

The Visual Arts Center, by Graham Gund, at Davidson College is neo-classical to fit in with the otherarchitecture and with the other liberal arts.

253 9

Davidson's Visual Arts Center has a centralatrium where students from the various arts canconverge for discussion and social life.

3326

strive to improve the spaces around them,so master plan concerns are vital. No build-ing should be an isolated event.

The arts have arrived as a fervent newactivity in American higher education. Ar-chitects can help with solid expressions ofcampus ideas and goals, and offer imagina-tive possibilities of what might be to collegeleaders. But only those in charge of the in-stitutionplanners, administrators, artsfaculty, and knowledgeable alumni andtrusteescan provide a vision of the placeof the arts at their institution, which will ul-timately shape the art buildings and spaceson their campus.

REFERENCESEisenman, P. 1988. Wexner Center for the Visual

Arts, Ohio. Architectural Record No. 3/4.

Rybczynski, W. 1993. Should Campus Architecturebe Art? Planning for Higher Education 21(3): 50-58.

Turner, P.V. 1984. Campus: An American PlanningTradition. MIT Press.

They are increasingly popular and they are costly,but good planning can help.

Planning for Museumson CampusGail Dexter Lord and Margaret May

here are approximately 600museums governed by publicand private education institu-tions in the United States, themajority of which are operatedby colleges and universities.

Throughout the world, the institutions ofhigher education hold priceless art andspecimen collections that are an irreplace-able record of human and natural history.Museums created for the purpose of pres-ervation, education, or research have a longtradition as a part of academic life.

However, university museums haveoften suffered considerable neglect over

Gail Dexter Lord is Co-founder and President ofLORD Cultural Resources Planning & Manage-ment Inc., the leading museum and heritageplanning firm, internationally. A graduate of theUniversity of Toronto, Gail has had a distin-guished career in the arts and cultural sectorspanning 30 years. She addresses professionalconferences and publishes extensively on thesubject of planning for museum and the arts.Most recently, The Stationary Office, London,published The Manual of Museum Management(1996), co-authored by Gail Dexter Lord, andBarry Lord.

the years. They are usually understaffed,underfunded, and underused. Sometimesthey are housed in inadequate facilitieswhere the collections are at risk. At thesame time, we see new museums emergingon campuses and in society.

Half of all museums in the United Stateswere founded after 1950. In Canada, thenumber of museums increased 280 percentbetween 1968 and 1990. Powerful trends arefueling the growth in museum attendance,which has increased enormously.

The general population in NorthAmerica has a higher level of educationthan ever before, and education is thesingle most important factor determin-ing museum attendance.

The baby boom generation is aging, andcultural participation increases throughmiddle age. For the next 20 years muse-ums will have the biggest, wealthiest,and best educated market ever.

At a time when people have less leisuretime and frequently diminished expand-able income, museums offer choice, con-venience, value for money, fascination,instruction, and a quality time experience.

Families and women are an increasinglyimportant segment of museum visitors.

2734

What should be the attitude of universi-ties toward museums on campus? Do mu-seums remain relevant in the computerizedinformation age? Can universities affordthem? Do they contribute to higher educa-tion, to institutional public relations?

Our answer is a conditional yes, if theyare strategically planned. A successful cam-pus museum should be well integrated in

A museum is aboveall a center of informaleducation.

the university's academic program and ad-ministrative structure, have a strong and ac-cessible collection, offer programs to a wideaudience, and be independently endowed orhave a partner that contributes to themuseum's operations. These strategies arebeing adopted by those planning the newMuseum of Ceramic Art at Alfred Universityin New York and the University of KentuckyBasketball Museum, and by those position-

ing existing museums such as the Univer-sity of Utah's Natural History Museum,within the university's new master plan.

Why a museum?

A museum is above all a center of informaleducation. It provides an opportunity forpersons of all ages to engage in self-direc-ted, inquiry-based learning. The real thing,object or specimen, remains at the core ofthat learning experience. Seeing trilobitefossils, a 12th-century Native Americannecklace, a Winslow Homer painting, orthe domestic tools actually used by womensettlers in 1850 is what fascinates. For uni-versity students, who are usually inundatedby text and images, museums provide aunique opportunity to see the real objectmost people only read about, and to study itquietly up close.

On another level, the rapidity ofchange of the modern world and the grow-ing complexity of life seem to lead manypeople to seek respite and stability in thepast and to inquire about how we got towhere we are. Understanding history is one

Visitors at the Museum of Ceramic Art at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred Universityin Alfred, New York. Powerful trends are fueling the growth in museum attendance.

35 28

of the central liberal arts; and museumshelp make human and natural history tan-gible, vivid, and memorable. Even photo-graphs from 1910 of gray coated engi-neering students at their wood laboratorytables, female college students in looseblouses at their desks in a Latin class, orthe school's bicycle team with their mus-taches and knickers can arouse students toreflect on how college life and opportunitieshave changed. Museums help people to un-derstand the world around them and helpthem to change.

In addition, museums draw visitors tocampus. Tourism is one of the world's larg-est industries, and cultural tourismpeople visiting a locality to attend eventsand places of artistic, historical, or educa-tional interestis growing especially fast.Campus museums can attract visitors, po-tential students, and community residents.

However, the operating cost of a mu-seum almost always exceeds the revenue

VisitorAnalysis

stream. This is true even when the mu-seum uses student volunteers and sharedacademic staff. A primary considerationtherefore is adequate funding for the cam-pus museum. The most successful univer-sity museums are those which areindependently endowed or those which areoperated in partnership with an outsideagency, such as in the case of state muse-ums on university grounds. Also, themuseum's director needs to have an ag-gressive and persistent fundraising strat-egy to provide resources for the museum'sexhibits, programs, and collections.

But good planning is crucial, whether acollege or university is considering startinga museum, expanding a museum, or improv-ing an existing museum. We believe thereare six factors which should be consideredin museum planning, and we have indicatedthese in Figure 1. The six may be under-stood as three pairs: museological factors,market factors, and institutional factors.

FIGURE 1

Factors in Museum Planning

MarketAnalysis

CollectionsAnalysis

ProgramsEvaluation

InstitutionalContext

InstitutionalPlan

NEEDS-Staff-Space-Facilities

IMPLEMENTATION

Three for the showMuseological factors are primary. A goodcollection and attractive programs are vitalin planning. The collection and how it isusedfor display, study, or the educationof viewersis the heart of a museum.Many university collections were devel-oped for purposes of study and may not beof display quality. Numerous items may becommemorative in their links to theuniversity's history, and there will be deco-rative objects not considered works of artbut worthy of display nonetheless. In addi-tion, many colleges and universities haveacquired papers, works of art, or specialcollections through donations. The collec-tion must be evaluated to see if it is worthyof museum status.

Objects once used for didactic pur-poses now should be appraised for theirhistorical or scientific value. For instance,the impetus for establishing the Museum ofCeramic Art at New York State's College ofCeramics at Alfred University was the rec-ognition that the "study collection" com-posed of donations from the nationallyrenowned professors, graduate students,alumni, and ceramic artists that was as-sembled for teaching purposes needed tobe properly cared for and made accessibleto a wider audience. This is an example ofthe reevaluation of a collection, once seenas purely didactic but now considered ofmuseum quality for its record of the devel-opment of American studio ceramics.

Universities should reexamine theirhistorical and cultural assets. They mayfind significant works of art hanging in suchplaces as the president's office, the facultyclub, or the trustees meeting room. Theymay find historical apparatus stored in labo-ratory storerooms, field study collectionsboxed in the basement, or collegiate andsports team archives, trophies, photo-graphs, and memorabilia stored in numer-ous places.

At the University of Toronto, a campus-wide art inventory revealed a sizable andsignificant collection of works of art. As aresult, the curator of art suggested theneed for a university art museum to provide

for a center to care for and manage the col-lection. In addition, the museum canpresent outstanding works of art that re-quire museum security. The University ofToronto's art museum plans to open in thespring of 1996.

The second museological factor is howthe collection is to be used. Should objectsmerely be displayed? Or should there beinstructive programs to explain the objects?It is through a museum's programs that thecollection becomes a living and interactiveeducational force for the university's stu-dents and a powerful, informal cultural ex-perience for the broader community.

A variety of program options may beconsidered, including visible or open stor-age, supervised study centers, portions of acollection which can be handled, as well asmultimedia, on-line databases. The facilitiesdesigned for the museum should be appro-priate to the museum programs, andshould be flexible enough to accommodatenew programming in the future.

A challenge for many campus muse-urns is to strengthen the relationship withdepartmental faculty and the university'steaching program. This often requires that

The campus museummust establish a relation-ship with undergraduateand graduate programs.

the museum invest in defining new usesand values for its collections. The issuesand research methods of the traditional dis-ciplines most closely associated with muse-umszoology, paleontology, anthropology,art historyhave evolved with less focuson field and specimen/objects studies.Moreover, there is an increase in enroll-ment in professional and interdisciplinaryprograms and a decline in classical studies.Faculty are themselves less likely to be fa-miliar with using objects/specimens astools of inquiry. The campus museum mustestablish a relationship with undergraduate

and graduate programs and create new,cooperative, multidisciplinary opportunitiesfor students to interact with the collections.

The museum itself can become a labo-ratory, a place of inquiry for students ineducation, community services, or otherprofessional learning programs. Ideally themuseum's professional staff should havecross-appointments to teaching positionsand the supervision of graduate students.To fully achieve this potential, the museumrequires facilities for staff offices, for gradu-ate student and staff research and for lec-tures and meeting rooms.

For the outside public, great temporaryexhibitions, informative lectures, and spe-cial events are fundamental to building awider audience and repeat visits. Thus tem-porary exhibition space and areas for spe-cial events such as small concerts andlectures are vital.

The second set of factors concerns themarket for campus and other visitors. Withmuseums, especially university museums,the philosophy of "build it and they willcome" does not sustain an audience.Though there were 566 million museum vis-its in the United States in 1988 (the last yearfor which numbers are available), the aver-age annual attendance level at museumsgoverned by public education institutionswas only 28,431. When planning a new mu-seum or expanding a small museum, a fullmarket analysis should be conducted whichconsiders the demographics and psycho-graphics of the campus community, theregion, and possible tourist markets.

At the core of market analysis lies thequestion, "Who is the museum to serve?"Some campus museums may seem to servea special audience of, say, persons inter-ested in biblical archaeology, the history ofmusical instruments, African culture, birds,or contemporary art. But even museumswith specialized collections can be devel-oped to appeal to all segments of the cam-pus as well as to the broader public.

For example, the Utah Museum ofNatural History has a statewide role so theUniversity of Utah, in expanding its existingmuseum, has planned for a site, a commu-

3 1

nity educational role, and family accommo-dations to serve its statewide clientele. InLexington, Kentucky, where we haveworked with the University of Kentucky onits Basketball Museum, it became apparentthat UK basketball was such a part of thecity's and region's culture that a downtownsite (where the team plays) rather than an

They provide tangibleproof of the multiculturallife of this earth and theforms of nature.VaTelfrW4Try

on-campus site for the museum was best. Sothe UK Basketball Museum is currently be-ing developed as an interactive museum bya non-profit organization in partnership withthe university. A campus museum can be avaluable bridge between town and gown.

Three factors seem to be especially in-fluential in drawing people into a campusmuseum. One is location. The museum'ssiting, accessibility, proximity to parkingand transportation, and perceived safety arecritical to attracting visitors. A second isexhibitry. It is not the size or architecture ofthe museum that attracts people and buildsrepeat visits, but rather the quality of thevisitor experience inside the building. Thiscan be a problem for colleges and universi-ties because more highly educated citizensare expecting very high quality, interactiveexhibits, scholarly educational experiences,and high-tech ingredients, but universitiestypically have lower-than-average budgetsfor museum programs and exhibits. Plan-ning for adequate resources for high-qual-ity exhibits and accompanying programs isessential.

Third is customer service attitude. Plan-ning should arrange for operating hoursthat respond to visitor's needs and not forhours that the college finds convenient.And the campus museum must be welcom-ing with friendly and helpful personnel,amenities, and thoughtful arrangements forfamilies, senior citizens, and bus tours.

Those institutional factors

The third set of planning factorshow thecampus museum fits into the college's lifeand its master planare those most oftentaken for granted. Yet the museum's mis-sion, status, and organizational structure,and relations with the university, outsideagencies, and possible donors directly af-fect the scale and nature of the museum'soperations.

A very important planning issue forcampus museums is ensuring a solid gover-nance and administrative structure thatserves both the university and the museum.Few campus museums are separately incor-porated but most have advisory boards,which we think provide guidance and impor-tant links. Another important issue is themuseum's relation to other institutions,organizations, or off-campus funders. Theseconnections can often spark excellent exhi-bitions; for example, an Asian anthropologymuseum may team up with a foreign em-bassy to assemble an exhibit of thatcountry's oldest textiles. Such connectionsnot only strengthen the campus museumbut also broaden the museum's outsideaudience.

Campus museums require adequatefacilities, staff, space, and financial support.Often they require a subsidy, and universityfunds seem especially limited these days.But museums allow students, faculty, andvisitors a unique opportunity to see andstudy rare and historically or artisticallyvaluable objects made by people through-out the ages up close and in their materialreality. They can provide tangible proof ofthe multicultural life of this earth and the

39

infinite variety and forms of nature. Cam-pus museums can inspire, educate, andcause persons to marvel and understand.

But like a great science building,library, or sports facility on campus, the col-lege or university's museum requires excel-lent planning and a clear vision of themuseum's role on campus.

REFERENCES

Barlow, J. and N. J. Flood. 1983. Research Collec-tions in Ornithology: A Reaffirmation. In Perspec-tives in Ornithology, A. H. Bush and G. A. Clark,Jr. (eds.), 37-54. Cambridge University Press.

Danilov, V. 1990. Museums Systems and HowThey Work. Curator 33(4): 289-311.

Davis, A. 1995. Deconstructing and ReconstructingUniversity Art Galleries. Muse Vol. XIII (1): 32-35.

Gund, G. and J. Dorsten. 1994. Art Buildings andIdeology. Planning for Higher Education 23(Fall): 15-23.

Hamilton, J. 1995. The Role of the University Cura-tor in the 1990s. Museum Management & Cura-torship 14(1): 73-79.

Heffernan, I. 1987. The Campus Art Museum To-day. Museum News June: 26-35.

Holo, S. 1993. The University Museum: Creating aBetter Fit. The Association of College and Univer-sity Museums and Galleries 1(1): 1-3.

Huntley, D., L King, and T. Toperzer. 1986. Cur-rent Issues in University Museums, 1986. Univer-sity Art Museums of Southern Illinois Universityat Edwardsville, University of Minnesota, andUniversity of Oklahoma at Norman.

Lord, G. D. and B. Lord (eds.), 1991. The Manual ofMuseum Planning. HMSO.

Lord, B., G. D. Lord, and J. Nicks. 1989. The Cost ofCollecting. HMSO.

Tirrell, P. 1994. Remote Control: Strategic Planningfor Museums. The Association of College andUniversity Museums and Galleries. 1(4): 2-12.

32

BOOK REVIEW

Planning forPerforming Arts CentersBuilding for the Performing Arts: A Design and Development Guide, by Ian Appleton. ButterworthPress, 1996. 225 pages. ISBN 0-7506-1276-2.

Reviewed by Richard Pilbrow

he cover picture of this newbook by English theatre archi-tect Ian Appleton is a strikingexample of performing arts ar-chitecture: the interior of Roy

INE Thompson Hall in Toronto,Canada. Sadly, it is also a photograph of apoorly designed concert hall. Indifferentacoustics have brought on recent moves toremodel the interior; and the celebrated"architectural purity" of the hall has causedcomplaints of sterility from audiences andperformers. A curious symbol for the coverof this book!

Building for the Performing Arts is amodern version of Roderick Ham's The-atres: Planning Guidance for Design andAdaptation (1987). That book pulled to-

Richard Pilbrow is chairman of Theatre Projects,a leading consulting firm for theatre design,based in Ridgefield, Connecticut. He is also atheatre, film, and television producer, and anoted stage lighting designer who has done thelighting for numerous Broadway shows. Bornand educated in London, England, he has beentheatre consultant for such projects as the Na-tional Theatre of Great Britain, the Royal OperaHouse, Chicago's Goodman Theatre, and thePortland (Oregon) Center for the PerformingArts, as well as for several colleges and universi-ties. His new book, Stage Lighting Design, will bepublished in early 1997.

gether several papers from the Associationof British Theatre Technicians on many as-pects of theatre design, alerting theatrepeople to the dangers of unfettered archi-tecture and laying down some ground rulesfor the future. Appleton's new book restatessome of these now-established rules, andwidens the field to include some newer cat-egories of performances such as jazz androck and roll concerts.

The book contains many sensible sug-gestions for anyone contemplating the con-struction or renovation of a performing artsbuilding. It writes of how to structure com-mittees, to arrange the design process, andto design the project. There are lots ofblack-and-white illustrations, although thecaptions are sometimes too long and hardto read. It is unfortunate that at least someof the photographs could not have been incolor to show us the real character of therooms portrayed.

Ian Appleton correctly begins by re-minding readers of the complexity of de-signing performing arts buildings. Thesehalls must often host such diverse activitiesas music, drama, dance, puppetry, and lec-tures. Each activity has its own traditionsand each is in a state of continual evolution.Each makes very differing demands uponthe building, with the stage and auditoriumas its instrument for performance. Therein

33 40

likes the complexity. The design of spacefor live performances demands an extraor-dinary sensibility from the design team.

There are far too many poor moderntheatres and concert halls. Ask any per-former or knowledgeable members of theaudience to name their favorite theatres,and few will name any modern space. It isthe historic theatres and concert halls thatexert the strongest emotional hold. Mod-ern arts centers may be more spacious,with better facilities and state-of-the-artacoustics and equipment, but they often failto satisfy. Why?

Live performance, particularly in an in-creasingly electronic world, requires anenvironment that emphasizes the uniqueliveliness of the occasion. Live performanceis not just looking and listening to the per-former; it is joining in, participating in theevent. A good theatre enhances an almostmystical communion between the per-former and every individual in the audi-ence. This communion requires a special

environment characterized by human scaleand intimacy, and by the clustering of theaudience in a tight, three-dimensional rela-tionship around the performance.

At the heart of Building for the Performing Arts are the "Specific Studies" which ex-amine the many details of a performing artsbuilding. These set out the rules that canguide site planning, stage and auditoriumdesign, and the planning of public and back-stage areas. It is written by an architect, andmainly intended for other architects. Nowrules are rules, but some can be bent. Thisbook offers useful check lists, but they needinterpretation by those who know the arts ofperformance and their practice intimately.An architect armed only with these guide-lines might be in the position of having onlya little knowledge and being dangerous.

For example, Appleton describes theproscenium theatre as one in which "theperformance is seen through a 'window' orhole in the wall and there is a clear divisionbetween audience and performer." Only in

The main theatre of the Nathan Wilson Center for the Arts, Florida Community College atJacksonville.The 530-seat theatre has no seat farther than 70 feet from the stage. The consultant was TheatreProjects Consultants of Connecticut.

4 1 34

the late 19th and early 20th centuries wasthis true. It is now clear that the cinema andtelevision close-up have eroded the notion

The performers need tohave a close relationshipwith every spectator

of the proscenium as a barrier. The stagemust now assume again its original rolethat of being a bridge between the perform-ers and the audience.

The plans of theatres and performingarts halls alone give little idea of their qual-ity. It is the three-dimensional shaping of thelarge room around the live three-dimen-sional performer that is what theatre andconcert hall design is all about. Appleton re-

fers to the "benefits" of a single tier in audito-rium design. Today many believe there arealmost none. The performers need to have aclose relationship with every spectator.

Drama, music, dance, and storytelling in-volve the creation of magic. Ian Appleton'sbook ably discusses the skeletal issues of the-atre design, but for the creation of lively space,which alone can restore the impact of live per-formance in modern society, we must go be-yond the architectural essentials in quest ofthe indescribable magic of live performance.

This is especially important for collegeand university performing arts centers be-cause young persons who are not experi-enced professionals have an even greaterneed for intimate, embracing halls to sup-port their creative efforts. Campus plannersand architects will find this book useful butinsufficient for making great campus roomsfor theatre, music, or dance.

ed Fuonor ,

Why colleges must renovate their classrooms,and how it should be done.

Classrooms for the21st CenturyMichael Owu

uring the past 20 years or so themix of large lecture rooms,small seminar rooms, and me-dium-sized classrooms haschanged. Professors and stu-dents now want to be closer to

each other during instruction. Dependenceon a chalkboard is being replaced by newaudio-visual techniques using film, computerprojection, and slide projectors. We now know

ore about acoustics and lighting. New fur-lure designs have changed the way we sit.et many classrooms in America's collegestd universities were built 35 or 70 years ago

and have changed relatively little. CollegesSeldom budget for classroom renovations ona regular basis.

The typical undergraduate spends asInany as 400 hours a year in classrooms. Ofourse learning also occurs in faculty offices,ut the rooms where students meet with

their teachers are central to effective instruc-tion and higher learning. College classroomsdeserve more than a half-century-old chalk-board and two dozen old wooden chairs on a

Michael Owu is a senior planning officer at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology. A gradu-ate of MIT, he has been responsible for adminis-tering MIT's classroom renovation program.The author thanks his colleague, Julia Vindasius,who assisted in developing MIT's assessmentand procedure.

bare floor. The time has come to convertantiquated classrooms into warm, attractivearenas that maximize student growth. Mod-ernizing America's college classrooms maybe one of the top priorities of the next decade.

Classrooms should be carefully designedto support the teaching style of the betterinstructors and to reduce distractions to aminimum. Good chalkboards are important,but so are the size and shape of the room, thelighting, the color of the finishes, the sightlines to the board and projection screen, thefloor covering, and several other elements.The state of knowledge about classroom de-sign has recently reached a point where cam-pus planners can now assist professors sub-stantially in their teaching efforts.

How can educational planners help insti-tutions modernize their classrooms? Afterpreparing for such renovations at my institu-tion (MIT) and researching the subject foryears, I believe there is a seven-step strategythat planners should follow..

1. Conduct a survey and inventory of allteaching spaces.

2. Carry out a utilization study to evaluatehow classrooms are currently used, andhow they match current teaching require-ments.

3. Assess faculty and student requirementsand their preferences through interviewsand questionnaires.

4. Develop the design criteria for seminars,classrooms, and lecture halls.

5. Calculate estimates for the costs of reno-vating each of the rooms.

6. Devise a program of renovation, with afinancially realistic sequence of improve-ments.

7. Review regularly the teaching styles, spe-cific program and course enrollments, andcollege teaching policies to monitorchanges in classroom needs on campus.

The classroom inventory

The first step is to conduct a physical surveywhich counts, measures, and evaluates thephysical elements of each teaching space.The survey should include room dimensions,finishes, furniture, room arrangements, con-ventional equipment, utilities, lighting, win-dow treatment, ventilation, noise level, safetyfeatures, and audio-visual equipment.

In addition to these objective measure-ments, it is useful to assign a rating to eachspace as a guide to measuring the overallquality of the classroom. In a survey con-ducted at MIT (Vindasius 1987), a rating

scale of 1 to 5 was used, with the worst roomsfor teaching rate 1, the best 5. MIT's surveyrevealed that 66 percent of the 154 general-purpose teaching spaces were rated 3 or

The typical undergraduatespends as many as 400hours a year in classrooms.

below (Figure 1). Most of the worst class-rooms were located in buildings built be-tween 1913 and 1937. Most commonly, theseclassrooms were characterized by a stark,half-century-old environment, with poor light-ing, old chalkboards, unsightly finishes, andHVAC systems thatwere worn, broken, and/or shabby in appearance. But even class-rooms built more recently lacked the atten-tion to detail required for effective teaching.

How are the rooms used?

The next step is to conduct a utilization study.Such a study measures the degree to whichclassrooms are actually used compared to

50%74

40`)/04=4

X30% 30`)/0ea

'44

2 0 °/0

10%

1 2 3Survey Rating

Figure 1. In MIT's classroom survey, 66 percent of the rooms rated 3 or below in quality.

4 5

4540

their total possible use. (WICHE has issueda useful manual for calculating classroomutilization rates.) Three indicators should bemeasured:

Scheduling, which describes the hours inuse as a percentage of a 40-hour week;Net utilization, which describes the initially-assigned occupancy as a percentage of thetotal capacity of each room;Fullness, which portrays how "full" a room iswhen is it occupied by students.You need to be careful in interpreting the

results of the utilization study. You will prob-ably find utilization to be surprisingly low, aswe did at MIT. This has several causes. Oneis the presence of limited-use classroomssuch as science laboratories, engineeringclassrooms, architecture studios, and ma-chine-filled rooms for technology courses.

Classroom design hasreached a point whereplanners can now assistprofessors.

Another cause is that most faculty preferteaching in the middle of the day, between 10a.m. and 3 p.m. and universities often cater tofaculty preferences. Also, colleges with anabundance of elective courses are likely tohave a low rate of room utilization. And,classrooms located in remote areas and thosein very poor condition are likely to beunderutilized. Faculty will be reluctant toteach there, and students will not want toattend classes there.

What we found at MIT was that we hadtoo many 1 arge classrooms and too few smallerseminar rooms for the mix of courses taughtat MIT today. Specifically, half the course-hours taught were in seminar-sized classeswith enrollments of fewer than 20 people. Yetonly 16 percent of the Institute's classroomswere seminar rooms for 20 or so students. Atthe other end, nearly one-third of theInstitute's classrooms seated 40 to 60 stu-dents whereas only 7 percent of our coursehours had enrollments of 40 to 60 students.

Generally, there has been a trend tosmaller classes in U.S. higher education inthe past few decades. However, this trendcould be reversed in the 1990s and beyond asvery tight finances force colleges to reversethe tendency toward course proliferation andhighly specialized, boutique courses withtiny enrollments.

We found we had too manylarge classrooms and toofew smaller seminar rooms.

Interviewing for preferences

The third step is to interview faculty mem-bers and students as well as asking them torespond to questions about classroom pref-erences through conventional survey instru-ments. Interviews at MIT revealed that bothfaculty and students had a strong interest increating warmer, more intimate, and moreattractive classroom spaces that promote fac-ulty-student exchanges.

Interviews at other colleges and univer-sities may reveal a desire for terraced lecturehalls, better audio-visual equipment, elimina-tion of the pale green walls that seem to beprevalent at some campuses, better chairs,more evening classes, improved displayboards, and carpeted, attractive seminarrooms that encourage lively discussions.

Designing tomorrow's classrooms

Fourth, your college will need to developcriteria for the design and renovation of class-rooms and lecture halls. This is a very impor-tant step that will most likely determine thelearning environment for your institution forthe next half century.

You will need to display a balance in thedesign criteria On the one hand a number ofstandards can be used as a starting point,such as those employed at the University ofCalifornia, Santa Cruz (Brase 1988) , or Penn-sylvania State University (Allen 1991). Andarchitectural experts on office, restaurant,

41 fa

and school design might be consulted. Onthe other hand, each college or universityneeds to create its own standards that reflectthe needs and preferences of its own faculty,students, and administrators and theinstitution's traditions and financial ability tomake changes.

I believe that classroom design shouldbe grouped into four categories: physicalconsiderations, environmental factors, furni-ture, and audio-visual equipment.

Each of the four categories of designcriteria should satisfy the following four de-sign requirements.

Function. The classroom must be able tofunction effectively for the type of instructionto be carried out within its walls. A classroomused to teach physics needs to accommodatelive demonstrations whereas a classroomused for music performance must have acompletely different set of criteria. A generalpurpose classroom has to be able to satisfy arange of teaching styles.

Focus. The room should focus thestudent's attention on the instructor, screen,and presentation area Afocused room makesit easier for teachers to convey information,communicate energy and enthusiasm, andelicit questions and challenges. Focus isachieved through an arrangement of archi-tectural elements, proper acoustics and light-ing, and the absence of visual distractions.

Flexibility. Because many classroomshave multiple uses, they must be flexibleenough to seat 50 students while making a20-student class seem comfortable in thesame room. And most classrooms need topermit lectures as well as slide presentationswith note taking. Flexibility is also necessaryto accommodate changes in the technologyof teaching over the next 20-30 years.

Aesthetics. Attention to aesthetics allowsstudents to enjoy their classroom encoun-ters, and feel like learning. Attractive class-rooms lend dignity to the learning process,and announce silently that the cultivation ofthe mind is a beautiful and dramatic activity.Mean and dingy classroomsespecially ifthe athletic facilities and art center are hand-somesuggest that classroom teaching is alesser enterprise. Attention to form, line, color,

47 42

texture, and variety can be achieved at rela-tively little additional cost and a tremendousreturn on the investment.

With these design requirements in mind,planners can work on the four categories ofclassroom design.

First, physical considerations. Faculty mem-bers need to engage students; so raised plat-forms for the teachers should be avoided, evenin the largest lecture halls. Instructional spaceshould be level, or below that of the students.

To improve sight lines and sound trans-mission, floors should be tiered in all thelargerlecture halls. Light-frame constructioncan be used to build over existing flat floorsusually. Ceilings should be not less than tenfeet high, and should be angled at the front ofthe room to better project sound to the rear(Figure 2).

Mean and dingy classroomsuggest that teachingis a lesser enterprise.

Entrance doors should always be locatedat the rear of the room, not at the front wherelatecomers can disturb the class in progress.Vision or see-through panels should be in-stalled in all doors to allow students to checkwhether they have the right class or whetherthe classroom is in use. The vision panelsshould be narrow to reduce the spillage oflight from the hallway lights during videoshows in class. If the doorway cannot berelocated, it may be necessary to reorient theroom 90 or 180 degrees during renovations.

Second, environmentalfactors. Acousticsand lighting have an enormous influence onthe classroom experience, but are often ne-glected in the design of classrooms. Goodacoustic design must control the sounds andvoices in the room so that they are heardeasily and accurately, and it must preventunwanted background or outside noise fromintruding.

In small classrooms modest acoustictreatment may be required. But in medium-sized and larger classrooms good acoustics

probably require the introduction of taperedside walls and an angled front wall (Figure 3).There should be acoustically reflective sur-faces at the front of the room and acousticallyabsorbent surfaces at the rear.

The importance of lightingin classrooms cannot beoveremphasized.

In rooms of any size, I strongly recom-mend carpeting to absorb unwanted soundssuch as the sound of chairs being moved orfeet being shuffled. Anti-static carpetingshould be used in rooms that use equipmentwith magnetic tape and memory. Othersources of unwanted noisesqueaky chairarms, rattling windowsshould be identi-fied and fixed or replaced.

As for lighting, its importance for class-rooms cannotbe overemphasized. Most class-rooms at U.S. colleges and universities arelighted horribly, with a few blue-white fluo-

Angled front walls

rescent panels stuck up on the ceiling. Withthe desire byfaculty and studentsfor a warmeratmosphere and the increased use of over-head, slide, video, and computer projectionduring classes, classroom lighting designneeds far greater attention.

Most important, each student's ability totake notes needs to be maintained at all times.(A light-level of two foot-candles is sufficientfor college students.) The best way to achievethis is by using incandescent downlightswhich can be dimmed over the entire seatingarea, and a series of additional fixtures forgeneral purpose lighting, chalkboard lightingup front, podium lighting, and special instruc-tional space lighting as needed. A set of in-candescent lights over the instructor's areashould illumine the chalkboard or sciencepresentation tables. If fluorescent fixtures areused, soft-white bulbs should be used. Re-cessed fixtures are preferable, and fixturesshould be placed at the periphery of rooms aswell as at the ceiling center.

Almost as important as the lighting arethe lighting controls.

Controls should be simple to use, veryclearly labeled, and conveniently located. Usu-

10'

Iscidomal Slope

Figure 2. Research is revealing the ideal classroom design.

ally, controls should be located at room en-trance (at the rear), in the projection booth ifthere is one, and at the instructional space inthe front of the room so that the teacher canadjust the lighting. Also, lightfrom outside theroom needs to be controlled. Sunlight spillinginto the room can wash out projected images,so blackout shades or blinds are imperative.

Then there is the need to control heatingand cooling to make students comfortable.Thermostats in the classrooms should keeptemperatures at 65-68°F in winter and at72-74° F in summer. Humidity levelsshould, if possible, be maintained at close to50 percent. If there are windows, they shouldbe capable of being opened in spring and fall.

Third, the furniture. I think a college iswise to invest in durable, high-quality fur-nishings rather than cheaper, plastic chairsand metal tables. Initial costs will be higher,but the payoff in wear, comfort, and aesthet-ics makes better furniture a smarter choicefor the long run.

For largerlecture halls (and even smallerones) and for seminar rooms, continuouswriting surfaces for the students should be

Angledside walls

used. Tables provide students with moreroom to spread out their materials and are

Chairs should beupholstered and writingarms should be at least130-square-inches.

more suitable for open-book examinations.In seminar rooms, oval tables are the mosteffective. In lecture halls, the tables should bearranged in long concentric arcs facing theinstructor, and fixed, upholstered tilt-swivelchairs should be used behind the curvedtables. In smaller classrooms or seminarrooms, however, fixed seating is a deterrentto group activity and flexible use. In mediumclassrooms tablet-arm chairs are almostobligatory, but the chairs should be uphol-stered and tablets should be large (at least130-square-inches in size). A minimum seatof 21 inches should be specified. And several

Entrance doors at rear

Angledchalkboard

Figure 3. Entry, acoustics, and lighting are very important

49 44

Arc-shapedseating

tablet-arm chairs for left-handed studentsshould be in each classroom with movablechairs. The wheeled chairs should have bookstorage under the seats.

Chalkboards should be black for con-trast brown and green chalkboards shouldbe shunned. Preferably the board should beample, covering most of the forward wall withpanels four feet high. In large lecture hallsmotorized chalkboards, with manual over-rides, should be installed. Where audio-vi-sual equipment or computers are used exten-sively it is better to install white markerboards with water-based markers.

Classrooms also should have a bulletinboard near the entrances-exits, and have coatracks where students can hang their coatsduring class. Unobtrusive, lockable, built-instorage units, with cabinets and drawers,should be present in most classrooms so thatoverhead projectors, television sets withVCRs, or science equipment can be securedafter class.

Fourth, there is the matter of audio-visualequipment, which is increasing rapidly inclassrooms presentations. Designers mightbegin by reading a good book to become

familiar with the latest technology, such asthat by Jerome Menell (1982) or RobertSimpson (1987). For large lecture halls it isprudent to consult an audio-visual specialistearly in your renovations.

There are four types of projectors thatare being used currently in classrooms: over-head projectors, slide projectors (35 mm andlantern), movie projectors (16 mm, 35 mm,and 70 mm), and large-screen display sys-tems capable of receiving signals from televi-sion, videotapes, laserdiscs, and computers.There are also two projection methods: front-screen, where audience and projector are onthe same side of an opaque screen; and rear-screen, where audience and projector are onopposite sides of a rigid, translucent screen.With this complexity, you can understandwhy an audio-visual specialist is required.

The relationships between screen height,distance to the first row and last row of seats,and optimal viewing angles are all well estab-lished for traditional projection methods. Butthese are based on assumptions about theminimum size of the pictorial image and text.For text displayed from a computer source,however, those same assumptions cannot be

MIT's Boynton Hall, 1968.

45 SO

accepted because computer text is small anddifficult to read.

Computer technology is changing sofast the equipment installed today may wellbe obsolete in 3-5 years. Planning for thatday is challenging; no one can be certain inwhat direction the industry is moving. But itis wise to accommodate the technologicalinnovations and maintain flexibility by build-ing wiring conduits that can handle futureconnectivity to cable, computer networks, oran ISDN telephone system.

How much will e changes

The fifth step of the classroom moderniza-tion strategy is to develop cost estimates.These estimates are extremely difficult with-out specific architectural plans and actualrough estimates before they approve sub-stantial classroom renovations. So you needto generate some general costs per squarefoot for categories of space rather than forindividual classroom space. For example,you can use one cost per square foot for allclassrooms from 200 to 400 square feet inarea, and another for rooms in the 400 to 600

square feet range, rounding the costs out tothe nearest $10,000.

Classroom renovation, especially of olderclassrooms, is seldom inexpensive. For ex-ample, at MIT we renovated a 150-seat, 1500-square-foot lecture room that had not re-ceived attention since 1933, and that hadbeen described by one faculty member as a"travesty," into a beautiful, paneled, ultra-modern, 21st-century award-winning lecturehall at a cost of nearly $1,000,000. Once usedbegrudgingly, the room is now full nearly 60hours a week. But most classrooms can berenovated handsomely for one-tenth that sum.

Next, if the president and trustees agreethat the teaching spaces should be made intocontemporary and attractive rooms for thecrucial work of teaching, you need to beginthe renovations. The sequence of the renova-tions is important. In general, the rooms withthe poorest ratings should be modernizedfirst; and renovations should be distributedwith one eye on the various constituencies sothat no one sector of the university feelsneglected. Depending on the money and thespace available for moving classes, you willneed to schedule about two to five renova-

MIT's Boynton Hall after it was renovated, 1989.

5146

tions a year over 5-10 years. At MIT last yearwe had an ambitious, six-classroom, $1.9million renovation program in place.

Are more professorsdemanding large-screendisplays for computer andlaserdisc projections?

The last of the seven steps, once therenovation schedule is underway, is to moni-tor the direction of your college and seek topredict the coming alterations in classroomspace that may be required.

Are the institution's enrollments increas-ing or decreasing? Which departments arelosing students and which are gaining ma-jors? Is the financial situation mandating fewerclasses under ten students? Is the universityinviting more outside speakers and holdingmore conferences, which necessitate elegantlecture halls? Is there a new program offreshmen seminars being planned so thatmore college seminar rooms will be needed?Are more professors demanding large screendisplays for computer, VCR, and laserdiscprojections? You will need to stay on top ofthese changes and forecastthe different class-room implications of these shifts. Close rela-tions with department chairpersons and thebest teaching faculty are a great help in thismonitoring.

If teaching in the classrooms is the heartof higher education's enterprise, then invest-ment in these classrooms to make them

attractive, modern, and highly conducive tolearning should be central to any college oruniversity's physical planning.

REFERENCES

Allen, R 1991. Design of General Purpose ClassroomsandLecture Halls. Penn State University-wide Class-room Improvement Committee.

Brase, W. 1988-89. Design Criteria for EffectiveClassrooms. Planning for Higher Education17 (Fall): 81-91.

Menell, J. 1982. Audiovisual Communications. InHandbook of Specialty Elements in Architecture.McGraw-Hill.

Murgio, M. 1986. A Room with a View. ProgressiveArchitecture, Sept, 148-153.

Western Interstate Commission on Higher Educa-tion. Planning and Management Systems Division.In cooperation with the American Association ofCollegiate Registrar's and Admissions Officers.1971. Section 4. The Development and Educationof Institutional Utilization Criteria for Classroomsand Class Laboratories. In Higher Education Facili-ties Planning and Management Manuals, ManualTwo: Classroom and Class Laboratory Facilities.WICHE.

Reznikoff, S. 1986. Interior Graphic and Design Stan-dards. Whitney Library of Design. Watson-Gupta

Simpson, R 1987. Effective Audio-Visual: A User'sHandbook. Focal Press.

Sommer, R, and H. Olsen. 1980. The Soft Classroom.Environment and Behavior 12 (no. 1): 3-6.

Vaughan, T. 1991. Good Teaching Rooms: A CampusResource. Academe, July/Aug., 10-15.

Vmdasius, J. 1987. A Meeting ofMinds: An AssessmentofClassroom Facilities Needs atM17: MIT PlanningOffice.

47

Effective classroom design depends on attention to detailas well as a clear understanding of overall objectives.

Design C' 'a forEffective ClassroomsWendell Brase

Editor's Note: This article has been edited by the author especially for this volume.

he University of California,Santa Cruz is in the midst of a$1.5 million program to im-prove its classrooms. Many ofthe flaws being remedied aredesign flaws, although the cam-

pus is fewer than twenty-five years old. This isa troubling realization. Why does a new cam-pus suffer from problems of classroom qual-ity? (Why, especially, a campus that takesspecial pride in its teaching?) Were budgetsinadequate or the designers incompetent? Intrying to answer these questions, we havelooked back in some depth. There were per-haps a few architectural mistakes, but cer-

Wendell C. Brase is Vice Chancellor Administra-tive and Business Services at the University ofCalifornia, Irvine. With nineteen years of experi-ence in the UC system (thirteen years at UC SantaCruz, six years at UCI), Mr. Brase is responsiblefor UC Irvine's administrative, financial, and busi-ness services including a comprehensive pro-gram of process improvement and administrativestreamlining (recently awarded first-place inNACUBO's Higher Education Awards Program).Earlier in his career, Brase was Associate Direc-tor of the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at theUniversity of Rochester, a laser-fusion project, andAssistant Director of the Eastman School of Mu-sic. He has published several articles in Planningfor Higher Education, has been a Director of theSociety for College and University Planning, isactive in NACUBO, and holds two degrees fromthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

5348

tainly not "incompetence." And budgets weretight, but not "inadequate."

The answer we sought was revealed bythe widespread nature of the problem. Wehad built disappointing classrooms inprojects spanning many distinguished archi-tects and a variety of financial circumstances.The problem had to do with attitudes andprogramming: the attitude that the class-room element was the least demanding inthe architectural program for an instructionand research facility. Client and architect ap-parently regarded classrooms as noncritical,unchallenging parts of the program.

What we should have done, looking back, was:

1. told our executive architects that effectiveclassroom design is critically important

2. stated design objectives that were unam-biguous and understandable to everyoneinvolved in the design process;

3. specified criteria in enough detail to holdthe designers accountable for the results;

4. required follow-up by designers to ensurethat design criteria were met.

Clear functional objectives and attentionto detail in their execution are equally neces-sary in order to create effective classrooms.

Hearing and Seeing

Most classroom design failures derive frominattention to two basic user needs: the abilityto hear and the ability to see. This assertion

may seem naive in its simplicity, but it isnonetheless supported by ample experience.Almost every classroom design flaw we haveremedied in the past several years can betraced back to users' needs to see or to hear.

A useful concept to understand in de-signing for good hearing and good seeingconditions is that of signal-to-noise ratio:

strengthSignal-to-noise

ratio

signal

noise On' terference) strength

In general, as the ratio of signal-to-noise increases, the ability to hear (or tosee) improves for the listener (observer).This basic concept will become clearer inthe following discussion.

Hearing Conditions

What constitutes "signal" and what consti-tutes "noise" for a student who is attempt-ing to hear a lecture? A strong signal resultsfrom an unobstructed line-of-sight fromspeaker to listener, which is facilitated by araised platform for the lecturer at the "send-ing end" of a large classroom and bybanked or riser seating, especially beyondthe third row. Signal strength is enhancedby early sound reflections those arrivingwithin 30 milliseconds of the initial, directsound. Thirty milliseconds corresponds to34 feet of sound travel; thus, a reflectionwhich arrives via a path 34 feet longer thanthe direct path will arrive 30 millisecondslater than the initial sound's arrival.

For the classroom listener, most noisetakes the form of high background noise(or "ambient" noise). The most commonsources of ambient noise are:

noisy HVAC systems

lighting ballastsprojector fansexternal noise via open windows orthrough walls.

In addition, reflections arriving at alistener's ears later than 50 milliseconds af-ter the initial, direct sound are heard asnoise, and thus are problematic reflectionsas far as speech intelligibility is concerned.The worst forms of unwanted reflections arerear-wall echoes, which not only arrive latebut also come from a confusing direction. A

related problem is the "boominess" that per-sists in certain rooms, constituting noise asfar as the signal/noise ratio is concerned.

In order to design for a high signal-to-noise ratio, the direct signal path must beline-of-sight, and certain room surfacesmust be hard and properly angled to pro-vide early reflections, as previously defined.Other room finishes must be "soft" (acous-tically absorbent) in order to preventboominess or a lengthy decay period forlate reflections ("reverberation") or delayedrear wall reflections (echoes) all forms of"noise" in the signal/noise ratio. Equallyimportant, ambient (background) noisesources must be reduced to very low levels.

If the concept of signal-to-noise ratio isunderstood, its practical application is likelyto be successful and not especially difficultSpecifics will be discussed later.

Seeing Conditions

For the ability to see in a classroom, the con-cept of signal-to-noise ratio is again germane.Signal is enhanced by a clear line-of-sight, bygood illumination, and by contrast A directline-of-sight is, in turn, fostered by a raisedlecturer's platform and banked seating in alarge classroom the same features thatbenefit good sound projection, already men-tioned. Contrast is a function of the viewingsurface used in a classroom and of its illumi-nation and cleanliness, or of the resolution ofoptically projected images.

Noise, as it pertains to classroom seeingconditions, may take the form of a dirty black-board, reflective glare of blackboard ilkunina-lion, light spillage onto a projection screen, alow-resolution projector, or an excessivelyacute viewing angle for off-axis seats.

Specific Requirements

Following is a discussion of the requiredsurfaces and finishes in a classroom, orga-nized by location in the room:

sending end (front wall and adjacent sidewalls and ceiling)

side walls and rear wall (wall oppositesending end)ceilingfloor /seating

5.449

Sending End

In a classroom of seventy-five or fewer sta-tions, the front wall the wall at the black-board/sending end of the classroom - maybe hard surfaced (sheetrock, blackboards)with no special acoustical shaping required.

For classrooms larger than seventy-five seats, the following design featuresshould be employed, as feasible (the largerthe classroom, the more of these featuresare necessary):

The front wall, including blackboards, shouldbe divided into two or three sections withouter segments angled inward to help reflectsound to the rear of the classroom and to re-duce the acuteness of viewing angle for view-ers on the opposite end of the front row ofseats. (Generally, the flanking blackboardsare toed-in to form a normal ray to the mostdistant, opposite-rear corner seating.)

For fixed-seat classrooms, ceiling surfacesshould additionally be shaped/angled pre-cisely so as to project sound to the rear of theclassroom; closer listeners will generally re-ceive sufficient direct sound. In plan-view,wall surfaces at the "sending end" should beangled to reflect a lecturer's voice to themost distant, opposite-corner, rear seating.These angles must be determined using to-scale, longitudinal cross-section and floor-plan drawings, creating ray diagrams usingordinary geometric techniques. This is bothnecessary and easy to do. Utilize several,typical lecturer source-positions, includingdirectly in front of the blackboard.

Angle wall and ceiling surfaces to projectsound to rear of classroom; sawtooth designmay be used to achieve required reflectionangle rather than flat, planar surfaces.

(1) wall above blackboard angled down-ward sufficient to reflect lecturer'svoice to rear seats

FIGURE 1

Applied Sciences Classroom, UC Santa Cruz. Note "sending end" shapingcreated by splayed blackboards and angled walls adjacent to blackboards.

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12 11 PI IV 011M !II 011 IV IV IV kiEm is IS is Is IS III

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5550

FIGURE 2

Stevenson College, UC Santa Cruz (150 seats). Note toe-in of outerblackboards, tilted wall surface above middle blackboard, and sloped

ceiling surface above "stage" platform.

(2) sidewalls immediately adjacent toblackboard angled

(3) sloped ceiling in front half of class-room

It is important that the blackboard,side-wall, front-ceiling, and above-black-board wall surfaces be angled with respectto rear seats using ray drawings, not intu-ition. Require the designer to prove thatthese angles are correct. Do not assumethat this has been done when you see someevidence of shaping on the drawings.

Side and Rear Walls

Generally, a classroom's "rear" wall (oppositethe "sending end" wall where blackboardsand projection screen are installed) shouldbe finished with a sound-absorptive material.In classrooms of greater than seventy-fivestations, side walls should additionally bedesigned so as to project desired sound(early reflections) and to absorb undesiredsound (late reflections), as follows:

Angle side walls at "sending end" of class-room (Figures 1 and 2).

Select finishes for their acoustical behavior:

(1) Front three-quarters of each side wall:a. Acoustically nonabsorbent

sheetrock, plaster, masonry, woodpaneling, etc.

b. Painted, vinyl surfaced, or other hardfinishnot an acoustically absorbentfinish

(2) Rear one-quarter of each side wall andentire rear wall:a. Acoustically absorbent (absorbs

useless reflections, dampensstanding waves, and reducesboominess)

b. Insist on durable materials foracoustically-absorbent finishes in-stalled less than six feet abovefloor-level

c. Projection booth glazing angle se-lected to avoid echo reflection backto stage.

Ceiling

Ceiling height should provide early reflec-tions to mid- and rear-audience not toolow and not too high.

51 56

FIGURE 3

Kresge College Town Hall, UC Santa Cruz. Note angles of above-stage ceilingsurfaces and blackboard lighting behind the plane of projection screen.

Ceiling should be hard, acoustically nonab-sorbent such as painted sheetrock. (Forrooms with fewer than fifty stations ceilingsmay be acoustically absorbent)Ceiling should have minimum openingsand penetrations, especially if noisy condi-tions exist above.For fixed-seat classrooms/lecture halls,shape ceiling using precise angles to assistin projecting early sound reflections to rearseats. See Figure 4.Rear one-fourth of the ceiling should beacoustically absorbent, similar to side walls(and for similar reasons).Lighting fixtures should be designed for mini-mum trapping of sound. For example, facepanels on fluorescent fixtures should be acous-tically reflective rather than open diffusers.

Floor/SeatingFor flat-floor classrooms of fewer than sev-enty-five stations the following require-ments apply:

Floor carpeting is required unless 1. therear wall is surfaced with acoustically ab-sorbent material, 2. upholstered seating is

installed, or 3. the ceiling is acoustically ab-sorptive. A minimum threshold of acousti-cal absorption is required in any classroomfor good speech intelligibility. Best hearingconditions generally require that the ceilingbe hard; thus, the most cost-effective loca-tion for the required acoustical absorptionis on the floor, i.e., carpet.

For classrooms in excess of seventy-five stations the following requirementsparticularly apply:

A lecturer's platform of 7 to 22 inches (to-ward the higher end of this range as class-room size increases) is desirable, for bothseeing and hearing conditions. (However,check first-row sightlines to blackboard if ademonstration bench is installed.)Fixed seating is desirable, for it enables theuse of risers (as well as more seating perassignable square foot).Install fixed seating in radial plan based onorigin approximately 30 feet behind centerblackboard.In a flat-floor classroom, the projectionscreen's lower stop limit should be posi-tioned high (>60 inches).

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In classrooms larger than 125 stations, con-touring of the floor is preferable to linearfloor slopes or equal-height risers. Adher-ence to iscidomal floor contouring (see Ar-chitectural Graphic Standards) is requiredfor good sightlines. Iscidomal conditionscan be approximated where codes permitthe following seating geometry: raised"stage" platform, 1:12 sloped slab for first 2-3 rows of seating, then single-step riser(s)transitioning to double-step risers, utilizingprogressively increased riser height (withmin/max riser heights and height incre-ment as permitted by code and safe prac-tice). See Figure 5.Note that steeply banked risers may notprovide good sightlines from rear seating.Iscidomal sightlines require a gradual el-evation change for rows near the "stage"and progressively higher risers from frontto rear seating.In specifying a sightline clearance objec-tive, consider the height-diversity of yourstudent population. (UC Irvine now re-quires a sightline-to-sightline clearance of7.5 inches, utilizing a visual objective sixinches above the blackboard's lower edge.)Fixed seating should be upholstered becauseof the requirement for acoustical absorption.

If seating is not fixed the floor must be car-peted, as acoustical absorption is requiredfor speech intelligibility.

Side aisles, radial aisles, and cross-aislesrequire carpeting (for standing-wave damp-ing as well as reverberation control).

A useful design concept is to make the firstrow of seating a continuous, fixed-in-placetable (see Figure 1), with the following ad-vantages:(1) it can provide nonhandicapped seating

when used with movable chairs;(2) it can provide handicapped seating

when used with a wheelchair, by re-moving a chair and setting it aside;

(3) it can support an overhead projector oran occasional display or demonstration;

(4) it can make many handicapped stationsavailable when needed, while minimiz-ing the loss of seating at other times.

Classroom windows should be on the left sideof the seated students. North light is preferred.

Blackboard lighting angle needs carefulselection in order to avoid reflective glare tofront audience seating. Installing black-

board lighting behind the plane of the pro-jection screen enables simultaneous use.For minimum spillage to screen, specifyparabolic reflectors or a luminaire designwhich deeply recesses the light source anduses an efficient focusing reflector.

Low-level illumination for note taking whileslides or video images are being projectedshould be minimized in order to avoid degra-dation of the projected image. As little as onefootcandle has proven sufficient for a student-age population, and the improvement in pro-jected images is significantly improved at 1 FCvs. 5 FC, which is a typically cited standard.

Reducing Ambient Noise

The purpose of reducing a classroom's ambi-ent noise level is to improve the ability to hearin the space by improving the denominator inthe signal/noise ratio. The importance of lowambient noise cannot be overstated, for anoisy background level will negate all of theother measures that have been discussed.The following steps are required:

If operable windows are necessary, the de-sign should consider external exposure totraffic, cooling towers, exhaust fans, etc.Special attention will be required to identifyand to isolate projector noise.Lighting ballasts, if used, should be "noise-less" high frequency/solid state.Seats having a quiet pivot mechanism and arattle-free tablet arm mechanism should bespecified. (Test a sample.)If noisy over-ceiling conditions exist (e.g.,building mechanical system noise, high-ve-locity HVAC ducts, fume hood exhaustducts, etc.), seal ceiling airtight and installsurface-mounted fixtures.Ventilation should be carefully designed toattain the following peak noise criteria:Fewer than 75 stations NC-3075 to 150 stations NC-25Over 150 stations NC-20

Install carpet in spaces above lecture hallsand classrooms especially corridorswhere overhead footfall could be a problem.Ensure that walls, floor, and ceiling providesufficient sound-isolation from adjacentspaces especially mechanical spaces and(other) lecture halls where amplified soundmay be used.

Quiet ventilation systems require 1.design attention from an experiencedacoustical consultant, 2. careful specifica-tion and design from the HVAC designer, 3.competent installation and balancing, and4. post-installation measurement/inspec-tion. Generally, quiet HVAC design in-volves 1. distant fan sources, 2. low ductvelocities (especially at and near the pointof delivery), 3. acoustically-lined ducts, 4.suitable diffuser design, 5. lined duct seg-ments downstream of turning vanes, junc-tions, dampers, or other noisy airstreamdevices, and 6. recognition that the "roomcorrection" for diffuser noise specificationsis typically zero for a large classroom or lec-ture hall (due to the number of diffusers).

Effective design of vestibules and corri-dors plays a key role in reducing the ambi-ent noise in a classroom/lecture hall.Adjacent and contiguous corridors shouldbe carpeted and their ceilings or wallsshould be finished with sound-absorptivematerials to keep them quiet. Vestibulesshould be included in lecture halls where acombination of room size and/or noisy ex-terior conditions dictates the need. That is,lecture halls larger than about 200 seats willgenerally warrant entry vestibules, butsmaller classrooms may also require vesti-bules if noisy conditions exist

Lobbies and vestibules require:Sound-absorptive finishes on more than 60percent of surface areaSmall vision panels in, or adjacent to, thehall's entry doors to enable latecomers toobserve if a class is in sessionPanic hardware on the outer doors only(push-panels/no latching or panic hard-ware on the inner doors)Low illumination, to minimize light spillagewhen the doors are openedPreferably a large single door (e.g., 42-48inches) rather than double-doors, whichleak more sound.

Sound Reinforcement

A modern classroom sound reinforcementsystem is frequency-equalized, peak-lim-ited, and overload-protected; moreover, itemploys wireless microphones, sets it own

656

level automatically, and cuts its own gain ifacoustic feedback problems emerge. Sucha system requires design by a qualifiedelectroacoustician.

Audio components require secure rackmounting. Classroom audio componentsshould be standardized to the extent practi-cal in order to facilitate ease of maintenanceand interchangeability.

If a lecture hall is designed to always beused with sound reinforcement the roomshaping features described above are unnec-essary, and the room can be designed"deader," with more sound-absorptive fin-ishes. However, experience has shown thatgood hearing conditions (without sound rein-forcement) can be attained in lecture halls upto three hundred seats through incorporationof the design features discussed above.

Designing for Durabilityand FunctionalityThe design guidelines outlined below pro-vide for durability and functionality underinstitutional use conditions:

A seat width of 21 inches is consideredmost suitable in terms of the comfort/ca-pacity tradeoff.Install "left-handed" tablet arms for all seatson the left ends of rows.Light switches require proximity to lecturerposition (s), straightforward layout, clearlabeling, and illumination of key switches.Each lighting zone should be controlled bya separate switch:

blackboardsspeaker's podium (focused illumina-tion for simultaneous projector use)demonstration areageneral audience lighting (low level/normal level)

Special care in fixture placement, luminairedesign, and aim is required to keep lightspillage off the projection screen.The projection screen should be motorizedrather than manual even in small class-rooms; the savings from avoidance ofjammed and overextended mechanismsjustify the expense.Equipment, including fixed seating, shouldbe standardized to enable stocking ofspares and efficient repair and replacement.

Fixtures, cabinets, tables and countertops,and furniture should be surfaced with high-pressure plastic laminate.Seats require an integral-color plastic seatbackwhich wraps the upper rear edge, where stu-dents' propped feet typically cause acceleratedwear, especially in an institutional setting.

Conclusion

This discussion pertains to most general useclassrooms and lecture halls. Additionaltechnical analysis would be required for spe-cialized spaces such as art history class-

rooms, science demonstration classrooms,teaching laboratories, music classrooms,computer labs, and projection booths.

Effective classroom design depends onattention to detail as well as a clear under-standing of overall objectives. Do not bemisled by the fact that many of these detailssound common sense. A design checklistin the architectural program for any newclassroom should include these details. Anunderstanding of the design factors that af-fect auditory and visual performance canresult in effective classrooms.

576 4

Today's laboratories require facilities planners whounderstand the new environment for scientific work.

What land ofWoe ' tions forthe Laborat ?Nolan Watson

II)uring the past two decadesmany of the 2100 U.S. four-yearcolleges and universities and agood number of the 1400 two-year institutions have eitherbuilt new science facilities or

renovated their old laboratories. And othersare planning to do so when funds becomeavailable. The techniques and equipment ofscientific and engineering investigation, in-struction, and invention have become moresophisticated; and science and technologyhave become more important in contempo-rary scholarship and research.

A vital part in the design of new labora-tories on campus is the workbenches, orwhat architects call the laboratory case-work systems. These worktops, cabinets,

Nolan Watson is a principal and senior labora-tory planner at McLellan & Copenhagen, a Se-attle-based architectural and planning firmspecializing in science and technical facilities.He did research in cardiovascular physiology atthe University of Washington and Germany'sMax Planck Institute, and has directed scienceteaching services and science facilities at theUniversity of Washington. Since 1989, when hejoined McLellan & Copenhagen, he has plannedand programmed more than six million squarefeet of research and science teaching facilities.

pipes, and storage areas are to science stu-dents and faculty researchers what gooddesks and file cabinets are to college ad-ministrators or writers. They are the indis-pensable counters at which students learntheir science and where researchers dis-cover new facts about geology or chemis-try, biology or mechanical engineering.

But different sciences require differentcounter tops. For example, geology laborato-ries do well with hardwood counters whilechemistry laboratories with acids cannot en-dure wood or metal counters and usually re-quire chemically-resistant laminate or epoxyresin counters. Also, research or specializedlaboratories need a far more flexible case-work system than instructional labs in thebasic sciences. Storage capacity is more im-portant for some sciences than others; andlabs that operate vibration sensitive equip-ment such as high-power microscopes andbalances require special balance tables thatreduce building vibrations or a casework sus-pension system that minimizes the tremors.

So choosing the right casework systemfor a laboratory is a major decision for facili-ties planners and campus architects. Hav-ing worked as a research scientist, sciencefacilities manager, and laboratory planner, Iwant to offer some general advice and de-

6358

scribe the four kinds of "industry standard"casework systems which campus facilitiesleaders should evaluate during the designphase of a laboratory modernization or theconstruction of new labs.

Generally speaking

Here are several considerations that I be-lieve are crucial for deciding about thechoice of laboratory furniture.

Cost. The first cost of laboratory case-work represents only 10 to 15 percent of theconstruction budget But the contribution tothe laboratory's success is far greater. Socolleges should not skimp on the lab's work-ing tables and equipment. If you cut costshere, you'll pay later. Do all you can to avoidlow-bid equipment. Write the specificationstightly to make sure you get good casework.Pomona College in California has laboratorytables that were built in the 1930s. Theywere built so outstandingly well that theyare still good worktops in 1995, makingPomona's casework very cost-effective be-cause other colleges have had to replacetheir casework every 20 years or so.

Flexibility. Basic science classes caninstall a fixed casework system because thework is relatively unvarying. But researchlaboratories demand highly flexible lab fur-

RtOmMiraTMIEr

Colleges should notskimp on the lab'sworking tables.IRVISMR: V.Mr

niture that can be rearranged for novel ex-periments or for the use of extraordinaryequipment Flexible casework is more ex-pensive but necessary for research at medi-cal schools, graduate school science labs oradvanced engineering centers. Sinks, in-cluding cup sinks, however, are fixed ele-ments regardless of the casework system.

Utility serviceability. I recommendstrongly that nearly all the utility distribu-tion be visible and accessible. Plumbingand other utility fixtures should be outside,not inside, the partitions. This facilitatesservicing, repairs, and changes to accom-

FIGURE 1

Standard Floor-Mounted System

Overhead Cabinet

Counter Top

Base Cabinet

Piped Services

59

modate new utility requirements. Aestheti-cally, this arrangement also lends a work-shop appearance to the lab, enhancing thesense that science and technology requirehard work and precision.

Storage capacity. Be sure to consult thescience or engineering professors and labassistants about the storage needs. Differ-ent sciences have different storage require-ments; and basic science classes will needvery different storage capacities from, say,nuclear engineering labs or live animal re-search labs.

Availability of compatible components inthe future. One of the frustrations for labora-tory scientists is to find out that the com-pany that built their casework has gone outof business, or that replacement parts areno longer available. So it is wise to avoidshaky manufacturers and exotic fixtures.

Special considerations. Keep in mindthat ADA Title III compliance requires thata small number of laboratory benches andworkstations be accessible to the disabled.Controlled-environment "cold rooms" withhigh relative humidity should have corro-

sion-resistant shelving and casework. High-tech "clean rooms" that permit no particu-late matter require special casework tominimize off-gassing (the emission of va-pors from building materials and carpets)and to withstand rigorous cleaning proce-dures. Your university may have other spe-cial laboratory needs.

Be certain to consult extensively withthe scientists, researchers, graduate stu-dents, and laboratory technicians beforeyou renovate or construct new laboratoriesto learn how the labs really work and whatthe necessities are for productive teachingand experimentation.

Four ways to goThere are four classes of casework systems,each with its own advantages and disadvan-tages. Facilities planners and architectsshould know of these four, and understandwhich is best for each laboratory.

1. The Standard Floor-Mounted System.This is the system of laboratory worktops,cabinets, and piping found in basic sciencelabs in colleges, universities, and secondary

FIGURE 2

C-Frame System

-411-- Overhead Cabinet

Counter Top

Base Cabinet

Piped Services

'C° Frame

165 60

schools. (See Figure 1.) It comes in apremanufactured modular design or can bebuilt in place. The counter top is continuousand mounted on top of the base cabinets.The overhead cabinets are typically placedonly against a solid wall, and backing is re-quired in the walls for the installation ofoverhead cabinets or open shelving.

Your institution can be-come dependent for theavailability of componentsin the future.

The support and suspension system isbasically the floor and fixed partitions. As aresult, all elements are fixed. The countertops over the floor-mounted cabinets have nomajor load limitations. However, they havefixed heights and are not easily changed toaccommodate changing lab needs. The cabi-nets are available in wood, steel, or plasticlaminate finishes. An example of this kind ofcasework is the Standard Lab Furniture Sys-

1111111111/

tem made by Hamilton, Kewaunee, andother manufacturers.

The advantage of this system is itscomparatively low cost and fairly easy in-stallation. It is ideal for introductory scienceclasses and small colleges. The system isinflexible though, and requires skilledtradespeople to relocate the base cabinetsand knee spaces if the work flow changes.

2. The C-Frame System. This caseworksystem has a C-shaped tubular steel frame,with the counter tops and cabinets mountedfrom this steel frame. (See Figure 2.) Oneleg of the C rests on the floor while the othersupports the lower cabinets and counter top.The counter tops may be specified in modu-lar lengths between the leg frames, allowingfor the removal of entire units to make roomfor floor-standing equipment. The verticalleg extends above the counter and supportsthe upper cabinets or open shelving.

The C-Frame System has horizontalflexibility since the lower cabinets can beremoved and replaced, thus creating kneespace in different locations. This featurealso makes the utilities more accessible forrepairs or changes. There is also easy clean

FIGURE 3

End Rigger System

Overhead Cabinet

Counter Top

Base Cabinet

-411-- End Rigger ----OPP"

61

.61.141.6

up beneath the lower cabinets. But usuallythere is 25 percent less storage space thanin the Floor-Mounted System.

The cabinets can be constructed ofwood, steel, or plastic laminate. And thissystem can be fabricated locally or speci-fied from some proprietary source likeHamilton. The system is moderate in cost,but your institution can become dependenton local artisans or the manufacturer forthe availability of components in the future.

3. The End Rigger-Leg Frame Sus-pended System. This type of system has afew different designs, but all have an en-closed tubular steel service chase behindthe lower casework, which is stabilized lat-erally either by end-rigger panels at theends of the casework or by legs, as illus-trated in Figure 3. A tubular steel frame issupported off the service chase. In one de-sign the counter top rests on top of a steel

frame and the lower cabinets are sus-pended from below the frame by clips. Inanother design the counter rests on legframes, again as illustrated in Figure 3; andthe base cabinets may be supported on thefloor or suspended by clips from the top.

The overhead cabinets or shelves aresupported by vertical framing members inthe service chase. The major advantage ofthis system is its flexibility. The lower cabi-nets can be easily removed and replaced,and the counter top framing can be raisedor lowered. Nearly every element can bechanged as needs dictate. The counter topscome in sections, creating joints at thespine and at adjacent tops. The cost, how-ever, of this system is higher than theFloor-Mounted System, but generally lessthan that of the C-Frame System. Again,cabinets are available in wood, steel, orplastic laminate finishes.

FIGURE 4

Unistrut System

CEILING LINEVertical Unistrut

--Overhead Cabinet --10-

1

0

..*Counter Top

Counter TopBracket

Base Cabinetoo0

0D ..

6 762

This system must be specified from aproprietary source. This makes the availabil-ity of components dependent on the stabilityof the original manufacturer. Examples ofthis system are the Hamilton Multiflex andthe Kewaunee Versa lab.

4. The Unistrut System. This system isnot an integrated system like the first threebecause it is usually customized from vari-ous suppliers. The system's heart or back-bone is an industrial open channel thatextends from the floor to the ceiling. Thewall elements are hung from brackets on thisvertical channel. The base cabinets are usu-ally specified with adjustable nylon and/orstainless glides, and they are free standing.

As illustrated in Figure 4, the countertops and back splash are supported bylarge brackets attached to the vertical chan-nel, and they are easily adjustable. Addi-tional loads may be placed on the countersthat are over the base cabinets by adjusting

Laboratory furnitureshould be for the nextdecades.rgraM3344.0-,'1'1; Tit

the glides of the base cabinets to pick upsome of the load and transmit it to the floor.

This is the most flexible and adjustableof the four systems. The only fixed elementsare the vertical channels. But the UnistrutSystem requires great attention to detail dur-ing design and because of customization canbe quite expensive. The channels and brack-ets are available from Unistrut and othersuppliers. The other components such asshelves, cabinets, and counter tops can bepurchased from casework suppliers or builtby local cabinetmakers.

The Unistrut System is especially ap-propriate for labs with major analytical

FIGURE 5

Overhead Raceway for Utilities

NNNNNNNN\NN\\\\\\\\\\\N\\\NN\\NNNN\NNNN\\\\1

CEILING LINE

Vertical Unistrut

Counter Topequipmentat operatorheight

0000

mei

00 00 00

Approx.2'-0°ServiceAccess 0

0

0

MIMI= IMIM1

Cable and pipingraceway

Floor-mountedequipment

63 68

equipmentmass spectrometers and thelikewhere counter tops may need to beremoved or set at specific heights, and spe-cial wiring and piping may be needed be-hind the advanced equipment. As Figure 5shows, a two-foot space can be created foreasy servicing and an overhead raceway forthe utilities.

Which to choose?

Facilities planners should consider the pat-tern of laboratory use, and the work flow ofthe professors, research assistants, and stu-dents. Clearly, no one casework system will

FIGURE 6

Advantages of eachof the four systems

Floor Mounted

C-Frame

End Rigger

Unistrut

satisfy the requirements of all the labs. Andthe costs of the systems and their flexibilitymust be weighed. Each system has advan-tages and disadvantages, which I've tried topresent schematically in Figure 6. (The rat-ings are only a rough guide, using theFloor-Mounted System as the norm.)

One last piece of advice: try to get facultyand other users of the laboratories to think ofthe next generation of lab users, and to visitthe most advanced laboratories at peer insti-tutions. Laboratory furniture should be forthe next decades and the new direction of sci-entific work, not just for today.

1 1 1

1++ 1+ 1+ 1- 1

1++ 1++ 1+ 1 1

1+ 1++ 1++ 1 1++

6 964

How can colleges house the explosion of books andjournals? Can technology really help?

What Size Li Ir-riesfor 2010?Michael Matier and C. Clinton Sidle

Civen the explosion of knowl-edge, every college and uni-versity library needs to growconstantly. The growth inprinted materials is escalatingat ever-increasing rates. For

example, between 1960 and 1987 the num-ber of volumes published in the UnitedStates alone increased 373 percent, from15,012 to 56,027; the world book title outputincreased 213 percent over the same period(Bowker Annual1964 and 1992). The num-ber of scholarly journals has grown evenfaster in the past 30 years.

Therefore, a major problem for facilitiesplanners at every campus is how much li-brary space to plan for in the future. What is acollege or university to do when it is facingacute financial difficulties yet its library spaceneeds are doubling roughly every 15 years?Must the foot-print (square footage) of the li-brary necessarily grow into perpetuity?

At Cornell University we decided tocreate a strategic plan for library space

Michael Matier is associate director of Institu-tional Planning and Research at Cornell Univer-sity. A graduate of Pennsylvania's ShippensburgState College and Westminister TheologicalSeminary, he holds a Ph.D. in higher educationfrom the University of Oregon. He previouslyserved in the planning and budget office at theUniversity of Illinois.

65

needs through the year 2010 to obtain an-swers to some of these questions. With thethought that our process and thinking maybe useful to planners at other campuses, weoffer this article.

First, some sentences about Cornell. Itis a 126-year-old private research universitywhich also serves as the land-grant univer-sity for the State of New York, housing itsagriculture, industrial and labor relations,home economics (human ecology now),and veterinary medicine schoolsa uniquearrangement It is located in rural upstateIthaca, although the medical school is inNew York City. There are approximately12,500 undergraduates and 5,500 graduateand professional students. For these stu-dents, there are 16 separate libraries on theIthaca campus. The total library collectionis 6.4 million volumes, and has been grow-ing at a net rate of 2.2 percent a year.

The NASF, or Net Assignable SquareFeet, of the Cornell Library has expandedenormously since 1951 (see Figure 1). Still,

C. Clinton Sidle is director of Cornell's Office ofInstitutional Planning and Research. He re-ceived his BA and M.BA. degrees fromCornell and has held several positions in finan-cial accounting and planning at Cornell beforeassuming his present position in 1988.

70

9 of the 16 libraries on the campus havespace deficits, and most lack adequate fireand security systems, limited access for thedisabled, and deficient climatic controls.Also, electrical loads and outlets in severalof the libraries have been stretched to thelimits by new electronic equipment andpose a constraint to the installation of newlibrary technologies. This has become amajor problem since, as Patricia Battin haswritten (1990, p. 3):

Approximately 90 percent of the informationneeds of the academic and research programsdepends on an essentially 19th-century infor-mation system. It coexists with an emerging21st-century information system that servesonly 10 percent of the those needs. The coex-istence contributes to a frenetic schizophreniaamong students and faculty, who expectthe efficiency and convenience of electronicfacilities from traditional libraries servicesand the comprehensive literature coverage oftraditional library collections from electronicsystems.

Another issue at Cornellone sharedwith many other colleges and universi-tiesis the desire by trustees and campusleaders to limit new construction on the

central campus to preserve attractive greenspace. And university leaders and trusteesare becoming convinced that higher educa-tion is at the edge of the "virtual library, i.e.,a library that provides access to electronicand print materials from many - sources,both local and remote" (Dougherty andHughes 1991, p. 4).

So, with pressures to provide more li-brary space, more modern library facilities,

A major problem at everycampus is how muchlibrary space to plan for

akitarinW

and more technology and to limit new con-struction and burgeoning library costs, theprovost in February 1990 initiated a processto examine Comell's future library needsthrough 2010, with special attention tothose 9 of the 16 campus libraries that hadsevere space problems. It was to be a col-laborative effort of the librarians, infor-mation technology specialists, and theplanners in our office.

700,000

600,000

500,000

400,000

(-Qz 300,000

200,000

100,000

0

FIGURE 1

The increase of library space at Cornell University, 1870-1992

UMath

Uris/ Music \Fine Arts

Law

Law & Hotel Additions

Physical Sciences

Management

Olin

Mann

I&LR

Engineering\Vet

Annex

Kroch

1870 1890 1910 1930 1950 1970 1990

The approach to library planning

We quickly decided that we would use twoseparate approaches to analyzing Cornell'slibrary space needs. One was the conven-tional approach where collections and userspace needs are projected into the futurebased on estimated growth rates and modi-fied national library standards for space uti-lization. The conventional analysis wasconducted for each of the Ithaca campus li-braries and focused on these variables: pri-mary user population, collection growthrates, user/reader space, use of the LibraryAnnex and compact shelving.

The other approach was more strate-gic. We looked at the potential impact ofdigital space-saving technology on the con-ventional projections. In effect, we tried toestimate how new and forthcoming tech-nology might alter the old-style calculationsfor future library space needs. With thissecond approach, which we describe in thenext section, a surprisingly different planfor library space emerged.

For the conventional analysis we em-ployed traditional library standards: StateUniversity of New York standards for theland-grant colleges and the generic nationalstandards of Leighton and Weber (1986) forthe endowed libraries. We frequently cus-tomized the Leighton and Weber standardsto fit our local situation, especially when theyseemed much too liberal for one of Comell'slibraries. For example, the industry stan-dards for shelving density is 10 volumes persquare foot but most Cornell libraries haddensities of 12 to 20 volumes per square foot.

We based the growth of collections es-timate on the rate of increase for the mostrecent five-year period, using an annual in-cremental volume increase, not a com-pounded growth rate. We believeacquisition budgets will grow in a moremodest linear fashion in the future eventhough library material costs are expectedto rise in a non-linear fashion. When youaccount for inflation, libraries have "lostground steadily and consistently since1972" (White 1991), particularly because ofthe rising costs of U.S. serial publications

67

where the average price "has increased al-most 400 percent since 1977, and 72 per-cent since 1986" (Tomer 1992). We thusbelieve the Library's average annualgrowth will drop from the present 2.2 per-cent to 1.6 percent by 2010, with the totalcollection growing from 6.7 million volumeequivalents in 1992 to 10.5 million in 2010.

We assumed that the user populationof undergraduates, graduate students, andfaculty would remain constant. Nationalstandards call for reader spaces for 25 per-cent of the user population. But the propor-tion of reader spaces required variesconsiderably from library to library. For in-stance, law libraries require reader spacefor 75 percent of user population while en-

Standards call forreader spaces for25 percent of the users.Acicl,..%1VfArZA17fiM4e,S .-.?.i:AlE;113i2r;:r

gineering libraries can meet normal de-mands with 20 percent.

Most of the Cornell libraries madespace projections using both remote stor-age and more compact shelving to housecollections. (Cornell has a Library Annexseveral miles from the central campus, ad-jacent to the university's apple orchards, formaterials not frequently in circulation.)Compact shelving allows more books tostay on the central campus, though accessto the books is more time consuming sincethe shelving is mechanized, and the floorsholding this shelving must be capable ofbearing twice the load of conventionalshelving. The degree to which the constitu-ent libraries anticipated using remote stor-age and compact shelving varied. Oldermaterials are not as vital to research inmost of the sciences, for instance, as theyare in the arts, humanities, or social sci-ences. So the Physical Sciences and theEngineering libraries anticipate a heavieruse of remote and compact storage.

Overall, our analysis found that about12 to 18 percent of all library holdings will

7 2

be stored in remote facilities or compactshelving by 2010, which will require im-proved delivery services. Thus, Cornell'sLibrary Annex, built to hold 500,000 vol-umes, will need to be augmented to hold atleast 1 million volumes by 2010.

In summary, our conventional analysisfound a need for 163,400 additional NASFright now, an additional 82,545 NASF in theyear 2000, and yet another 88,366 NASFby 2010.

A strategy to reduce space needs?

In our second, more strategic approach, wetried to figure how emerging technologiescould reduce the conventional projectionfor more space and larger budgets. For thepast 20 years, libraries have used new tech-nology primarily for back-office functionssuch as acquisitions and cataloguing(Baffin 1990). In the future, technology willhave its greatest impact on user services,and on the way libraries conduct their busi-ness. Holdings themselves will undergosignificant change as an increasing propor-tion of reading material becomes availablein digitally encoded forms. In turn, this willchange how materials are stored, and theway in which library services are delivered.

That much is clear. What is less clear ishow soon the new technology will be avail-able, and how much it will cost. At present,the most promising technologies are notmature and costs are uncertain. Therefore,our second approach focused on identify-ing the technologies that will make the

most difference, when they might becomeavailable, and how much they might costs.How could we make the most sophisticatedestimates?

We decided not to employ outside ex-perts. Instead we held five months of meet-

The most promising tech-nologies are not mature.

ings with librarians, planners, and Cornell'sbest information science and technologystaff, working both as a committee of thewhole and as subgroups. Gradually weidentified the emerging technologies thatmight most directly impact our spaceneeds, after doing empirical research onthe relative strengths and weaknesses ofembryonic technologies with special atten-tion to their probable acceptability toCornell's library users. We then modeledtheir possible effects on space needs andtheir cost effectiveness.

Libraries already use several technolo-gies: online catalog, microforms, facsimiletransmission, interlibrary loan, and remotestorage. Some are candidates for expan-sion. Some, such as microforms, havenever lived up to expectations and havebeen a failure in user acceptability. Others,such as interlibrary loans, have nearlymaximized their value but could be ex-panded with advances in networking anddigital storage. Then there are several new

Uris library (left) and Olin Library (right) are two of Cornell University's 16 libraries. How manymore libraries should universities construct in future years?

68

technologies such as optical scanning (tak-ing a "picture" of a page and storing theimage in electronic format), full-text imag-ing (electronic storage of the individualcharacters that comprise a book page), andthe mass storage of digitized information ineither optical (CD ROM, for example) ormagnetic media. In estimating the potentialrepercussions of these nascent technolo-gies, several factors come into play.

Appraising the new technologies

For one, the pace of technological advancesfor materials produced in digital formatswill be driven by commercial viability. Li-brarians with collections in law, medicine,engineering, science, and management,where the private consumers are in a betterposition to pay for this form of information,will experience the fruits of new technolo-gies before the libraries with collections inthe arts, social studies, and humanities.This does not mean that libraries should bepassive and wait for technologies to be de-veloped elsewhere. Cornell, in cooperationwith Xerox Corporation and the Commis-sion for Preservation and Access, is opti-cally scanning and digitally storing acollection of old, fragile, out-of-copyrightmonographs to test the feasibility of digitiz-ing endangered materials, storing the im-ages on compact discs, and creating acost-effective means of providing paper cop-ies on demand to users (De Loughry 1992).

Another factor is copyright law. Con-cerns about copyright protection have al-ready constrained publishers from movingswiftly into the digitization of materials.However, publishers can be expected to sethigher prices on users' fees for electronicmaterials than on other media because ofthe greater potential for unauthorized du-plication and distribution. With the assis-tance of Cornell's legal counsel, weconcluded that the scope of copyright pro-tection is the same for digital information asfor information stored in other forms. Thus,if a library plans to reformat materials indigital form, it must either choose materialsnot protected by copyright or be preparedto enter into contractual arrangements with

publishers similar to those made with sitelicenses in the software industry. As yet,there is no precedent in the industry forthis activity.

Of all the issues surrounding thechoice of digital versus paper storage of in-formation, the effect on a library's servicesto users is the most speculative. Will read-ers and researchers use their workstationsto browse and read texts or will they insiston paper copies?

Putting information into electronicforms will not necessarily increase accessi-bility. Current library practices dependvery heavily on the self-help of readers inlocating books, browsing, walking to re-move them from the shelves, checkingthem out, etc. The electronic library couldshift much of the responsibilityandcostsof informational retrieval to the li-brary and the college or university. Thiscould lead to the controversial option ofcharging patrons for the use of certain col-lege library services.

Current library practicesdepend heavily on the self-help of readers.

Still another factor is cost. Converting toelectronic materials is now more expensivethan building paper document collections.But this will not always be the case. Ourplanning group believes the cost of the tech-nology itself will not be the major obstacle.The issues are rather the costs of imple-menting the use of the new technologies in away that satisfies busy students and faculty,and the multiplicity of costs associated withdeveloping, acquiring, maintaining, and us-ing digitized library materials.

In order to estimate when digital stor-age might become affordable, we developeda cost model, assuming the technologycould be applied to any volume. The costs ofthis process were generalized for converting100,000 volumes to digitized form comparedto the costs of housing a like number of

69 7

books in a newly constructed remote stor-age facility. (See Figure 2.)

The model is crude and parameter sen-sitive, but it suggests that the cost of con-verting to digital storage could approachthe cost of constructing new remote stor-age in 1996 or 1997. However, the modeldoes not include the costs of convertingvolumes protected by copyright, which are80 percent of the collection. If by the year2000 every volume in digital storage werecharged $20 a year in user fees, the twooptions would cost about the same.

Furthermore, materials selected fordigitization should be those used infre-quently. Anyone wanting to read more thana few paragraphs will most likely want apaper copy.

The establishment of a highly elec-tronic library that is also user-friendly will bean enormous, complicated undertaking. Itwill challenge the very foundations of howuniversity libraries are used and the verynature of intellectual property. Even if theresearch and development process leads to

what appears to be a real alternative to thepresent library, there are no guarantees thatthe capital investment in technology will beall it was intended. The example of micro-film is not one to be taken lightly. It was ex-pected to be a major space saver, but itsunacceptability to most users has limited itsefficaciousness.

We concluded that there is so muchuncertainty regarding the development oftechnology that it would be imprudent todevelop a planning strategy for the next twodecades with technology as the linchpin.Rather, we decided it would be the best topursue the technology option vigorously,but remain open about timing, user recep-tion, and costs. As one observer noted(Tomer 1992):

As many librarians have discovered in recentyears, waxing lyrical about the virtues of theonline public access catalog or the full-textdatabase is one matter, but finding the moneyto finance the services, terminals, printers,and licenses to support this mode of deliveryis another.

$8,000

7,000 -

6,000 -

5,000 -

4,000

3,000 -

2,000 -

1,000 -

0

FIGURE 2

Estimated costs of digital and remote storage of 100,000 volumes(Dollars in thousands)

1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005

Digital Storage Remote Storage

7W5

The bottom line

For the year 2010, our planning groupfound that space for library collectionsmust inevitably increase, as they must at allgood colleges and universities. But we alsofound that the emerging technologiescould begin to be sufficiently developedand cost-effective by the year 2000 so thatspace needs for the libraries, especially onthe central campus, should slow apprecia-bly after the turn of the century.

grelnual

Every college should dostrategic planning for itslibrary space.

jcti;R:TVT..zr,257 7111450

Thus, we recommended that additionalspace, as measured by conventional prac-tices, be added through the year 2000, butthat most collection growth after 2000 bemanaged through either technology or re-mote storage. To make more remote stor-age possible, we recommended that theuniversity build an additional or new Li-brary Annex, and that better user-friendlyaccess and delivery services be developedso that students and faculty could use theoff-campus volumes readily.

We also suggested that a few of the li-braries consider consolidation, such asMathematics and Engineering, even thoughsome faculty object. And we noted that theuniversity consider study lounges or reno-vated residence halls to reduce the demand

71

for more reader spaces in the libraries. Manystudents use the library as a quiet study hallwithout using any library services. Providingalternative study spaces would permit theuniversity to scale back its user space needs.

A final note. Given the rapid growth inthe number of books and periodicals, in thenumber of films, recordings, audio tapes andvideo tapes, and in the requests for instruc-tion, references, and assistance by library us-ers, every college and university should en-gage in strategic planning for its library spaceover the next 20 years. Proper library spaceand resources are, needless to say almost,essential for serious intellectual inquiry.

REFERENCES

Satin, P. 1990. Introduction. In Campus Strategies forLibraries and Electronic Information. C. Arms (ed.).Digital Press.

The Bowker Annual of Library and Book Trade Infirma-lion. 1964. P. Steckler and R R. Bowker (eds.).

The Bowker Annual. Library and Book Trade Almanac.1992. C. Ban- and R R Bowker (eds.).

De Loughrey, T. 1992. Project Aims to Save Visual Im-ages by Storing Them on Compact Disks. TheChronicle of HigherEducation. (28 October): A22.

Dougherty, R and C. Hughes. 1991. Preferred Futures.for Libraries. The Research libraries Group.

eighton, P. and D. Weber. 1986. Planning Academicand Research Library Buildings, 2d ed. American li-brary Association.

Tomer, C. 1992. Effects of the Recession on Academicand Public Libraries. In The BowkerAnnual: Libra*,and Book Trade Almanac. C. Ban- and R R. Bowker(eds.).

White, H. 1991. The Tragic Cost of Being Reasonable.Larary Journal 116 (15 February): 166.

BOOK REVIEW

Designing Better ClassroomsDesign of General-Purpose Classrooms and Lecture Halls, by Robert Allen. Pennsylvania State

University, 1991. 53 pages.

Reviewed by Hunt McKinnon

irhis publication is more like afat pamphlet than a book, butit makes up for its brevity withits completeness. It is an ex-traordinarily useful littlemanual on the interior design

of small general purpose classrooms andlarge lecture rooms, and is well-organizedand full of design ideas that will improvethe teaching environment on campuses.

As the preface discloses, the idea forthe booklet "grew out of a shared need forsuch a reference tool by a number of facili-ties and instructional people." Apparently agroup of facilities planners conceived theidea for such a manual in 1988, and the col-laboratorsfrom Penn State, Georgia, Indi-ana University, Maryland, Ohio State, andWest Virginia Universitypresented theirviews on classroom design at a conferenceat the University of Maryland in 1989, afterauthor Robert Allen had visited nine univer-sities to inspect classrooms. The committeeand author Allen met twice more and kept a"steady flow of paper" going until themanual was done. This appears to be acommittee that really worked. And it

Hunt McKinnon is an architect in private prac-tice and adjunct professor of architecture atNorth Carolina State's School of Design. Agraduate of North Carolina State University whoearned his M. Arch. at Princeton, he formerlyserved on the campus planning staff of NorthCarolina State for six years. He is also associateeditor of this journal.

worked well because their product is near-encyclopedic despite its brevity.

While every college and university hasclassrooms, and classrooms are the heartof the learning process, the design andmodernization of classrooms is astonish-ingly neglected on most campuses. As thebook notes, "On a typical campus, class-rooms belong to no one." That is, the re-sponsibility for their appearance andequipment usually falls in between the du-ties of the vice presidents of academic af-fairs, administration and facilities, andstudents, and those of the deans. Howstrange! Classrooms are the most impor-tant rooms for teaching and learning, andyet the least cared for.

This little book aims to put the bestideas about how to design attractive, func-tional, and effective classrooms into thehands of every department head, dean, vicepresident, and facilities manager, as well asthe hands of architects who are designingnew classroom buildings. The book is orga-nized by topics such as space relations, andentrances and exits, and is divided into twosections for small classrooms and largeclassrooms.

Most of us believe we know somethingabout how classrooms and lecture hallsshould be designed. Yet few of us reallyunderstand all the factors involved. As stu-dents we can recall classrooms that wereunsatisfactory; but we are not sure whythey were not conducive to learning. What

7772

this little book offers is a recipe for the de-sign of satisfying spaces for professors andstudents. You will find detailed descriptionsof all the main ingredients for good class-rooms: what color walls work best; wherevideo broadcasting equipment should beplaced; what proportion of the ceilingshould be "hard surfaced"; and even thepercentage of the desks necessary for left-handed persons and where these desksshould be placed. The details are fascinat-ing and instructive.

I know of no similar book on classroomdesign, so this manual breaks new ground.This journal has published two fine articleson the subject (Brase 1988; Owu 1992), butthe subject has been one of startling ne-glect despite the million or so classroomsin our schools, colleges, and universities.While one may quarrel with a few of thestandards and aesthetic concerns in the

73

book, Robert Allen and his colleagues haveidentified nearly all the ingredients for suc-cessful classroom design. After readingtheir remarkable little manual, you can cre-ate variations to fit your own campus.

Because this booklet was not commer-cially published, you should know that youcan obtain a copy by writing to the PennState Classroom Improvement Committee,206 Special Services Building, Pennsylva-nia State University, University Park, PA16802. No campus that cares about a betterenvironment for instruction should be with-out this pioneering manual.

REFERENCES

Brase, W. 1988. Design Criteria for Effective Class-rooms. Planning frff Higher Education 17(1): 81-91.

Owu, M. 1991. Classrooms for the 21st Century. Plan-ning frff Hther Education 20(3):1220.

7 8,

BOOK REVIEW

Everything You've Wanted toKnow About Laboratory DesignGuidelines for Laboratory Design: Health and Safety Considerations, second edition, by LouisDi Berardinis et al. John Wiley and Sons, 1993. 514 pages. ISBN 0-471-55463-4.

Reviewed by Michael Reagan, Janet Ross, and Ray Polfilio

any colleges and universi-ties have science laborato-ries that were built in the1970s, 1960s, or earlier,and the labs no longerconform to modern health

and safety regulations. What design guide-lines for health and safety should be consid-ered if the institutions renovate the labs, orbuild new laboratories? How should theprojects be organized?

Answers to these and other questionscan be found in this new book. Written bysix eminent health and safety experts, andedited by Louis Di Berardinis, director ofthe Industrial Hygiene Group at MIT, thisdense, well-organized tome is a necessary

Michael Reagan and Janet Ross are Principalswith Ellenzweig Associates in Cambridge, Mas-sachusetts. Reagan is a graduate of Miami ofOhio who received his M.Arch. from Michiganand did advanced studies at the ArchitecturalAssociation School of Architecture in London,England. Ross did her architectural studies atRensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NewYork. The Ellenzweig firm has designed manyscience, teaching, and research buildings forU.S. colleges and universities.

79

reference book for any campus facilitiesplanner or architect of academic scienceprojects. We have worked with three of thesix authors, and can attest to their expertiseand concern for health.

The first hundred pages contain aneasy-to-read, meaty discussion of the mainelements of laboratory design. These pageswill give lay readers and architects alike anappreciation for the complexity of laboratorydesign. For the later chapters, technical ex-pertise is a prerequisite for interpreting thedata and grasping the recommendations.The book is directed more toward scientificresearch facilities than undergraduateteaching laboratories, but it containsenough information about lab design andconstruction that it is valuable to a broadacademic audience.

The purpose of the book is compelling:to prevent injury and death "by fire, explo-sion, asphyxiation, poisoning, infection, andradiation." Colleges should emphasizesafety not only to educate students in goodlab procedures in their scientific careersbut also to protect institutions from enor-mous liability arising from laboratory acci-dents. The first, 1991 edition of this bookcontained a thorough discussion of lab de-signspace allocation, layout, and me-chanical systems, and the likeas well ashard-to-find specific data such as clean

74

room classification and recommended tem-perature and humidity for animal facilities.This second edition adds a section on re-search lab operations and discusses the lat-est trends in laboratory design such as"variable-air-volume" mechanical systems.

The authors point out that many scien-tists do not carefully observe the facilitiesthey work in and that few architects are ex-perienced in laboratory design. So they rec-ommend close collaboration, and they offerseveral clearly drawn laboratory plans,complete with dimensions and descriptivekeys. They do not, however, include sometrickier aspects of good lab design such ascontrolled daylighting and the relation oflaboratories to support space.

The scope of Guidelines for LaboratoryDesign is ambitious, covering labs for awide array of scientific disciplines fromphysics and chemistry to gross anatomyand microelectronics. This edition has anew chapter on teaching laboratories forcolleges; but unfortunately it is one of theshortest chapters in the book. For highereducation, this is a weakness because thereare many new factors that are transforming

75

the design of contemporary teaching labo-ratories in schools and colleges. Collegesand universities are now building multi-dis-ciplinary facilities, using simulated re-search environments, inventing prototypesfor combination laboratory/classrooms,employing more computers and audio-vi-sual equipment, and installing novel fumehoods. We grant that the topic of teachinglaboratories could fill another book, but the10 pages in this book are unduly skimpy.

Editor Louis Di Berardinis has orga-nized the 514 pages of this book exception-ally well, and provided ample plans,diagrams, tables, and photographs. Thesestrengths, along with a mostly jargon-freetext and succinct practical advice ("We donot recommend recirculating air"), makethe book readable, helpful, and practical.Yes, the sheer quantity of detailed informa-tion may be daunting to those uninitiated inthe fields of architecture, engineering, orlaboratory design. But for planners and fac-ulty scientists who are responsible for up-to-date and safe labs on their campus, thisbook is worth studying and keeping onyour shelf.

BOOK REVIEW

Designing Tomorrow'sLaboratoriesHandbook of Facilities Planning= Volume 1, Laboratory Facilities, edited by Theodorus Ruys.Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990. 676 pages.

Reviewed by Larry Anderson

illyith today's industrial, clini-cal, and academic laborato-ries growing in complexityas scientific knowledgeexpands, the time has cometo disregard old conven-

tions for thinking about laboratory planning.We need to embrace fresh perspectives andnew frames of reference. The Handbook ofFacilities Planning: Volume 1, LaboratoryFacilities does just this. Twenty four contrib-uting authors and a skillful editor make thishandbook a truly major contribution to labo-ratory facility planning and design. Its care-fully organized format and wealth of practicaltechnical tools, design ideas, and planningviewpoints provide a useful working refer-ence for campus administrators, managers,laboratory planners, architects, and engi-neers.

Editor Ruys, an architect-consultant andvice president of the McLellan and Copenha-gen planning firm, defines the point of viewfrom which the handbook took its form by

Larry Anderson is director of physical planningfor the University of Minnesota and a registeredarchitect with 20 years experience. He earnedhis master's degree in architecture and urbandesign at Washington University, St. Louis, Mis-souri. He is a member of the SCUP-27 ProgramCommittee.

8176

quoting the guru of management PeterDrucker: "Long-range planning does not dealwith future decisions, but with the future ofpresent decisions! The importance of this isunderscored in the handbook's early chap-ters which address such issues as communi-cation, perception, judgment and informationtransfer errors, responding to trends, anddetermining program requirements and theirreliability and validity. Anyone interested inlaboratory facilities planning would be wellserved by reading this book, especially thefirst three chapters. These chapters expandour insight on how to think about laborato-ries. They provide important and fundamen-tal heuristics that will guide future decisionsin laboratory planning and place in properperspective the complicated facets of labora-tory design.

In addition to technical sections whichaddress laboratory equipment, systems, en-ergy conservation, regulations and stan-dards, the handbook provides appendicesthat present current information on relativelynew and specialized types of laboratories:Radioactive Materials Research Labora-tories, Shielded Facilities, Clean Rooms,Biohazard Containment, and Nuclear Mag-netic Resonance Laboratories. The subjectsare treated comprehensively but succinctly,with just enough detail to acquaint the readerwith salient points to consider in design andin assessment of special issues.

endowment, new gifts for the endowment,and an institution's policy of spending fromendowment earnings must all assist in main-taining the endowment's purchasing power ina time of fairly steady three to seven percentinflation, while at the same time maintainingthe endowment's contribution to annual bud-get support. In what is sure to be a contro-versial stand, Massy argues that support ofthe annual budget should have a higher prior-ity than maintaining endowment purchasingpower. To him, the endowment is there tobe used, especially when colleges have fiscaltroubles. And finally, Massy offers guidelinesfor the scope of leverage the endowmentmight provide in support of long-range capi-tal projects.

Endowment is written mainly for collegeand university trustees who have the ulti-mate fiduciary responsibility for the prudentmanagement of endowments. But the bookwill be useful to presidents, financial vicepresidents, and budget officials as well sincethey also require a dear sense of how to usetheir institution's endowment wisely.

A major strength of Massy's little bookis the way he grounds his prescriptions anddecision rules in economics. The legacy ofHarry Markowitz, William Sharpe, Roger Ib-botson and Rex Sinquefield, John Meck, Pe-ter Williamson, and the Ford Foundation andTwentieth Century Fund studies is reflectedthroughout the book. Economic principlesare too seldom incorporated into the man-agement of colleges and universities, soMassy's book provides a corrective.

Despite its succinct prescriptions, how-ever, Massy's book summarizes more than itinnovates. Over the past years I have beenasked to assist several colleges as they mod-ernized the management of their endow-ments. Many, and sometimes all, of the con-cepts featured in this volume became part ofthese colleges' new approach. The double-digit inflation of the 1970s and the recentfierce demands to eat into the endowment

77

have prompted many institutions to move to-ward total return investment managementand total-return-based endowment payoutunder a variety of smoothing constraints. Aconsiderable number of colleges and univer-sities already abide by Massy's advice.

Also, numerous trustees will disagreewith Massy's priorities. Specifically, they willprobably argue that preserving the endow-ment's purchasing power is more importantthan maintaining the endowment's share ofbudgeted expenditures. Maybe the twoendowment growth to hold purchasingpower and funds to meet the escalating an-nual budget are of equal importance. Bal-ance is all.

Today, colleges and universities are lessinclined toward balance. They operate underfierce pressures to maximize spending fromtheir endowments. Faculty and deans pressfor additional monies. Some trustees insiston balanced budgets every year regardless.And when market values plummet, campusleaders need their payouts even though cur-rent returns are negative. As faculty leadersat one excellent college facing a sudden en-rollment decline said recently, "What are en-dowments for except to be used in times oftrouble or extraordinary liftoff?" So perhapsMassy's preference that annual budget sup-port should have the highest priority is intune with the campus demands of the1990s.

But if he tilts slightly toward budget sup-port, Massy also insists on endowment man-agement that provides for long-term stabil-ity. In these times of acute fiscal stress,however, there seems to be the threefoldquestion of when to begin a new, wiser pol-icy such as Massy recommends, how tophase it in, and over how many years? Thequestions must be answered because, unlessyou steer a steady course, your college oruniversity will never achieve the desiredobjectives.

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BOOK REVIEW

Controlling the Cost ofScience FacilitiesToward More Efficient Building Methods for Academic Science Facilities, by the Higher EducationColloquium on Science Facilities' Task Force on Academic Facilities Costs. Association ofAmerican Universities, 1993. 52 pages. LC 93-77023.

Reviewed by Fred Tepfer

Science buildings are expensiveand complicated. Once, whileworking on a large science facili-ties project, I realized that eachday of construction delay costsbetween $5,000 and $10,000. It

didn't take me long to get from there to therealization that if I could shave a week or twooff the schedule I could save an amountroughly equal to my annual pay. Of course,that also meant that if I delayed the project bya week, I had wasted a year's salary.

What drives the cost of science build-ings so high? They require exotic finishesand systems, high-quality materials, andintensive distribution of utilities. This com-plexity must be carefully designed, whichtakes extra time, and it must be carefullyconstructed, which adds another premium.Also, complexity can breed confusion andmistakes; so corrections during construc-tion add more cost.

Fred Tepfer, A.I.A., is planning associate at theUniversity of Oregon, where he is also an ad-junct assistant professor. He earned his B.Arch.from Oregon and practiced as a registered archi-tect before becoming the facilities planner at theUniversity in 1984. He has managed three sci-ence facilities projects, and recently did a Bi-cycle Master Plan. He is also a contributingeditor for SCUP' News.

Not only are science buildings expen-sive to build, they are very expensive to own.They burn energy like an old house, con-sume maintenance like an old car, and drinkwater like an old camel. Even minor remod-eling is very costly. And with science build-ings, if you blink your almost new facilitybecomes obsolete. If you then want to con-vert it to other uses you must spend millions.

The main premise of Toward More Effi-cient Building Methods forAcademic ScienceFacilities, an impressive report written by TheHigher Education Colloquium on Science Fa-cilities' Task Force on Academic FacilitiesCosts, is that "universities can definitely learnfrom their corporate counterparts" about sci-ence building procurement, streamlined deci-sion-making processes, and more efficientdesign and construction contracting. TheTask Force, a panel of administrative vicepresidents and planning directors of well-re-spected universities, directed their report to-ward senior administrators such as deans andvice presidents as well as facilities planners.

The book is certainly of great value tothe facilities planning field, but it is not with-out flaws. For example, it has a great deal ofuseful information and important advice fornearly all colleges and universities, but anumber of its main points would apply onlyto our largest state institutions. And itsprose is pedestrian.

The Task Force conducted a survey of 89research universities, 16 design firms, and 9research-intensive corporations. Althoughthe survey design and data analysis wouldmake any self-respecting social scientistblush (they appear to have written their con-clusions, then validated them with the sur-vey) they did turn up some interesting things.

One primary lesson of the report is thatacademia, as compared to corporations,takes too long to build science facilities,which results in unnecessary added costbecause of inflation. This finding is basedlargely on a study conducted by SARA Sys-tems (the Task Force's survey did not in-clude project duration data). It is easy todiscount the corporate model as being inap-propriate to academia; but it may be more

Academia takes too longto build science facilities.

relevant than we university planners think.When I plot comparable university projectsfrom my own experience onto the graphs inthe report, they fall well within the corpo-rate rather than the academic timelines.Perhaps here in Oregon we don't have thestaff or financial resources that would allowthe "normal" level of inefficiency that SARASystems seems to have found elsewhere.

From my own experience it is anotherconcernthat we don't allow enough timeto plan science facilitiesthat is as impor-tant as construction techniques. The TaskForce doesn't discuss the need to takeenough time to do the design job right,time to avoid poor-quality constructiondocuments, and time to design a buildingto serve the whole institution's long-termneeds as well as the immediate desires ofthe initial occupants.

Despite a focus on the cost of delays,there are many gems (and a few clinkers) inthis slender volume, which has the promiseof stimulating reforms on many campuses.Gems: learning from other institutions' suc-cesses and failures; delegating power to asingle institutional representative; hiring de-

79

signers with relevant laboratory experience;promoting interdisciplinary research andshared facilities; designing for an appropriatelevel of adaptability to future needs; allowinginnovative contracting methods to avoid thequality problems that result from awarding tothe lowest bid; designing for long-term value.

Clinkers: the book's three-page Execu-tive Summary, which may be all that someadministrators will read. It dwells on lesscritical areas such as the time-value ofmoney, thus diluting the book's fundamen-tal messages about the need for efficiencyand ways to achieve it. Also, the book faultsthe Americans with Disabilities Act for rais-ing costs by causing apprehension and po-tential for litigation. This is an uninformedview at best, as higher education has beencomplying for two decades with standardssimilar to those of the ADA. The authorscriticize asbestos abatement regulations toofor adding excessively to the cost of renova-tions, despite the fact that the cost of abate-ment has become much more affordable inrecent years. Moreover, the book ignoresthe challenge of designing buildings whosematerials and systems as yet don't pressnthealth risks according to current standards.What will be the asbestos scare of the nextdecade? Indoor air quality? Lead-basedpaint? Safety considerations in lab design?Magnetic fields? Seismic risk?

If your institution has an overly com-plex, bureaucratized facility design and con-struction system, if you are hamstrung byintrusive or obstructive state rules and regu-lations, if you have been burned by claimsand lawsuits from incompetent contractors,or if you have been frustrated by internecinebickering among academic departments,then this pamphlet is the perfect tool for ini-tiating reform. Buy a stack of these booksand give them to your vice presidents,deans, department heads, and any otherswho may have the clout to improve the sys-tem. Or if you are a facilities planner em-barking on a science building project butdon't have much recent experience withlaboratory work, by all means read thisbook. It will certainly save you many thou-sand times the six-dollar investment.

84:

Deep down in the Task Force's longlist of largely excellent recommendations isa very important section on life cycle costsand the need to consider the costs of own-ership as well as the costs of construction.The sad truth is that life cycle cost analysisgets more lip service than practice. Univer-sities will nearly always build to the limitimposed by the project budget. If they doso efficiently they will receive in returnlarger and better buildings. If they do soinefficiently smaller and poorer facilitieswill result. However, bad decisions aboutbuilding systems and materials will remaincostly for decades. Rigorous mathematicalapplication of life cycle cost analysis is not

85

80

always appropriate or necessary; but it is alltoo common to find institutions that are be-ing drained financially by the ownershipcosts of a new building because they ne-glected to consider future costs during de-sign. This can and should be prevented.

The consortium has done higher educa-tion a service in developing this publication. Itdoesn't offer startling new information for ex-perienced facilities planners working in thetrenches, but it does give them a tool for edu-cating the rest of the institution about how fa-cilities procurement can be improved. Nearlyall the recommendations apply equally well tonon-science buildings such as libraries, class-room buildings, and residence halls.

StudentSpaces

81

86 BEST COPY AVAILABLE

Suddenly the design of college residencehalls has become a new priority.

New-WaveStudent HousingEarl Flansburgh

Americans have become moredeeply concerned about higherquality in higher education. Andseveral studies have shown thatresidential living can increasethe quality of learning. But there

are other factors too that suggest that atten-tion to student housing may be one of themost significant matters of the 1990s. Col-leges and universities should be planningnow for the new demands for improved resi-dential living.

For one, off-campus housing in many ar-eas is getting scarcer and more expensive.On a national scale, U.S. housing starts andapartment construction did not keep pacewith family formation in the 1980s. In 1989,for example, there were 2.4 million mar-riages, according to the National Center forHealth Statistics, but only 1.38 mMion hous-ing starts. With more families competing forhousing units, the inevitable inflation has

Earl R. Flansburgh, FAIR, is president of a Bos-ton-based architectural, master planning, andinterior design firm. A graduate of Cornell andMIT, he has taught architectural history atWellesley and design at MIT. His firm has de-signed more than 300 educational facilities, in-cluding a new law library and master plan forBoston College Law School and a residence hall-dining hall at Worcester Polytechnic Institutethat recently won the Walter Taylor Award asthe best U.S. educational building of the year.

taken place. And families have been compet-ing with students for these units. Landlords,given a choice, will frequently take couples,who are perceived as more stable and quiet,over students, perceived as more disruptiveand noisy. The growing problem of off-campus housing is often particularly acute-and time-consuming for students wherethe college or university is located in a smalltown or residential suburb. In cities, theproblems of public transportation, safety,and parking, have made off-campus housingless attractive.

Another phenomenon begun in the 1980sis that an increasing number of studentswant to live on campus. Unlike the 1960s and1970s, when students often wanted to getaway from authority and community, today'sstudents seem to have rediscovered cama-raderie and the pleasure of getting to knownew and different colleagues.

An additional factor is the intensifyingcompetition for good students. As the appli-cant pool for traditional undergraduates andgraduate students has declined, and willcontinue to decline until the mid-1990s, col-leges doing market research have learnedthat the lack of attractive quarters in whichto live is often cited as an important elementin college choice. Institutions are beingforced to provide better residential spaces toattract and keep the students their facultieswant.

83 7

Attractive quartersquarters inwhich to live is often citedas an important elementin college choice.fismumpleimmommov

Also, as universities become more di-verse in their student population, with moreminority students, sons and daughters ofAsian and Hispanic immigrants, and foreignstudents, campuses are rethinking what thisrequires in student living arrangements, foodin the dining halls, and support facilities.Should there be Third World houses, foreignlanguage houses, an international house, andgender-specific housing?

But perhaps the biggest factor compel-ling a new look at student housing in the

a.,rerwttzss

1990s is the revolution in what students do in

a dormitory room today as opposed to a de-cade ago. More about this major change alittle later.

Renovate or build?

For all these reasons, and others, collegesand universities should be giving renewedattention to campus residences. But shouldcolleges renovate existing dormitories orbuild new ones?

The renovation of old residence halls

may be desirable if the buildings are well-built, reasonably spacious, and not too old.

Renovation may be almost obligatory if thebuildings form an integral part of the college'straditions. Sensitive and ingenious renova-tions can maintain the aesthetics and charm

while introducing 21st-century features.However, it is important to realize that

IFOgure 1. Founders Hall at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. This award-winning design comprises

several residences around a dining hall (at the left). The buildings are broken into separate structures to

fit in with the residential nature of the surrounding neighborhood.

8 8 84

260 S.F.95 S.F.

___.Mulof MEM11

1191111119 11111h11 *DA

= =

625 S.F.

Figure 2. A six-person-suite (left) and a four-person suite at WM.% Founders Hall. The larger suite hastwo doubles and two singles; the smaller suite has one double bedroom and two single bedrooms.

renovating an old residence hall can approachthe cost of new construction, or actually ex-ceed it. Many existing dormitories must beextensively remodeled to be brought up tothe same building code as new buildings. Ex-isting residences often do not have adequateaccess for the handicapped, or fire stair en-closures. Back-up emergency lighting andgenerators are often antiquated. Also, someolder dormitories are constructed of woodwhich is not adequately fireproofed. If thework also includes the removal of asbestos,renovation costs can be startling.

If a university decides to build, it maybelieve that hiring an experienced residentialbuilding developer will allow them to provideresidences for students more economically.Sometimes construction by private devel-opers has been fairly successful. But specu-lative developers will usually build to stan-dards of quality different from those aneducational institution deems appropriate.The college will usually have little controlover the design. And the institution's tax-exempt status may be called into question bya private development project. A for-profitdeveloper building on non-profit land mayfind the project taxed, particularly if the de-veloper owns the building for a period oftime. The legal aspects of private building forcollegiate use can become exceedingly com-plicated in some communities.

So it is usually advantageous for a col-lege or university to study seriously the cre-ation of its own new residence halls. Finan-cially it is appealing because such buildingsproduce revenue that will amortize the mort-gage. Residence halls are frequently an at-tractive gift for affluent and loyal old gradu-ates. Many states also have low-interestbonds that help colleges finance studenthousing.

It is important to bear in mind, however,that residential housing projects on campusseldom break even for the first three or fouryears. After the first three or four years,with modest inflation, revenue from studenthousing will slowly begin to exceed runningcosts slightly.

I think that a college or university plan-ning for increased excellence in the comingdecades should in nearly all cases where ren-ovation is not necessary for strong historicor aesthetic reasons build its own housing forstudents. Student residential space shouldreflect the special nature and culture of theinstitution, and should be used to enhancethe quality of total learning on campus.

What kind of residences?

In planning student residences, one of thefundamental questions is how large a groupof students should be combined in one facil-

858 9

ity. There are several opinions on this mat-ter, some based on sociological studies,some based on economics, and others basedon long experience. Sometimes the institu-tion's tradition in student housing will arguefor a certain size. For instance, Smith Col-lege, the noted women's college in westernMassachusetts, has a tradition of smallhouses, so the Friedman House residencesour firm built there are tiny townhouses forfour students each. Urban universities oftenhave high-rise dormitories.

How large a group ofstudents should becombined in one facility?

My view is that, if land permits, housingstudents in groups of approximately 200works bestin terms of student friendships,economics, and human scale If at all possibleresidence halls should be limited to fourfloors of rooms. Higher than that requireselevators, which should be avoided as theprimary means of circulation. Circulation ofstudents going to classes is a major problem,especially in the mornings, or at eveningmeal; elevators cause delays and vandalismbecause they cannot handle crowds at onetime. If you are building for many students, itis best to build multiple structures of180-200 each.

What about the number of students perroom? Most college administrators think thateither individual rooms or rooms with twostudents are preferable. I agree. Roomswith more than two students should beavoided because three or four students in aroom makes studying extremely difficult.

A second question for basic unit planningis whether the residence hall will have roomsalong a corridor (hotel-style) or suites (sev-eral single or double rooms built around acentral, shared living space).

Single or double rooms on either side ofa corridor is an economical form. But it doeslittle to enhance collegiality, and done prop-erly for students is not quite as frugal as

49086

many believe. What happens with under-graduates, especially males, is that the corri-dors get used as a common room, or even aplaying field, for "corridor hockey" and othergames that energetic young students devise.The hallways thus receive lots of abuie. Thecarpet on the corridor floors needs to bereplaced every three or four years; the cor-ridor walls should be brick to handle hardpounding; and light fixtures should be sturdy.I think corridors should have some windowsto the outside too.

A suite is really an apartment without akitchen, built to accommodate two, four, orsix students. They should not be designedfor three, five, or seven students becausemany years of experience and some re-search have shown that an odd number ofstudents usually isolates individual studentswhile pairs enhance friendship. The bath-room in a suite should be divided into two orthree spaces, with shower and wash basinsseparated, to handle peak-hour usage.

Some universities are building residencehalls with suites containing small kitchensand dining areas so that the residences canbe converted if need be to conventionalrental apartments, open to tenants who arenot part of the university, should student in-

terest in on-campus housing decline sharply.I think that in most cases this is not a goodidea. Kitchens are expensive. They attractinsects. Keeping them clean in a suite leadsto arguments. And kitchens in dorms pre-vents students from dining together withothers and learning from them.

The problem of room size

The size of the student room is always anissue. Students and residence halls adminis-trators want the largest rooms possible; thecollege's business manager wants the mostcompact and economical space. As a com-promise, most single study-bedrooms shouldhave a net (mside the walls) area of 105 to115 square feet, or roughly a 9 x 12 layout.Two-person rooms should have a net area of190 to 210 feet. These sizes are compact,but have space enough for some flexibility oflayout. Some colleges or very budget-con-

V

Hare 3. The Friedman House at Smith Collegetownhouses for four students eachwere tuckedinto spaces among existing buildings in the residential neighborhood.

serous state universities build smaller rooms,but this often results in inflexibility of layout,student complaints, and a damaging of thewalls; and it actually provides only limiteddollar savings.

If anything, student rooms for the futureshould be larger. Nothing has altered theway our society operates and the way stu-

dents workas much as the personal com-puter. Computers have transformed theuses of dormitory rooms. This requires col-leges to rethink the space and facilities stu-dents need.

Compact computers have had an impacton dormitory rooms in two major ways.They demand additional space for the corn-

,

87 9 1

T 40 a.AA:0

411

Figure 4. Floor plan of Smith College's Friedman House. Note the ample common room space.

puter and printer and they contribute to asignificant increase in the needs for electricalpower and outlets. The screen, computerterminal, and printer occupy an area of ap-proximately two feet by four feet, not includ-

ing space for the seated student. Studentrooms for the future need to be designedwith a computer and printer in mind.

The presence of the computer, and

other new electrical items, also mandate thatnew residence halls be designed for a signifi-cant increase in electrical power. Studentstoday arrive on campus with stereo systems,small television sets, VCR's, hair dryers,electric shavers, radio/alarm clocks, portable

irons, coffee makers, lamps, and eventoaster ovens or microwave units, as well ascomputers and printers. Yet the currentelectrical code requirements for a bedroomindicate only one duplex outlet for each wall.This is barely sufficient for single-occupantrooms. For two-student rooms, the codeminimum number of outlets should be dou-

02 88

bled so that there are four duplex outlets for

each student. In addition, telephones should

be installed in each room, and cable TV

hookups are now almost obligatory for newresidence halls.

The widespread use of computers bystudents also means that the residence halls

need to be designed to handle power inter-ruptions. It is not uncommon to have powerhalted by an event in one of the rooms. Tocontain the power disturbance so that it af-fects only one suite and not the entire dormi-

tory, a small circuit breaker box should beinstalled directly adjacent to the entrance of

each suite. This will ensure that a short cir-

cuit in one room or suite does not "dump" all

the computers on the floor.

Handling noise

The popularity of rock-and-roll music, oftenplayed at high volume, requires that colleges

pay greater attention in the new residence

halls to sound muffling. In planning dormito-ries and residence halls, it is important toprovide as much acoustical isolation as possi-ble. That is not easy.

The physics of acoustics is relentless. Awall between two spaces with a one-inch-square opening or the equivalent of a one-inch-square opening, where air can filterfrom one space to another, has 50% of theeffectiveness as a solid, airtight wall. There-fore, a good starting point in acoustic isola-tion is to make sure that there are no open-ings between one space and the adjacentspace. That means no openings under doors,no pipe openings in a wall, and no duct open-ings between two spaces.

When two spaces are adjacent and thereis no possibility of air transmission, there isstill a problem with the vibration of the com-mon partition or floor. In other words, a stu-dent who turns a high-fidelity system up to60 or 80 deabels will vibrate the walls, floor,and ceiling of the space, which in turn willvibrate the spaces next door, above, and be-low. This vibration of surfaces causes soundtransmission. One way to mitigate thatsound transmission is to increase the mass ofthe floor, walls, and ceiling. Higher mass al-lows less substantial vibration, and thereforeless transmission of sound.

In addition to mass isolations, vibrationof the walls of adjoining spaces can be dimin-ished by ensuring that there is limited or nostructural connection between the wall in thespace with the student and the hi-fi systemand the wall in the adjoining residence unit.This means that the studs that hold up thefinish side of the partition in the rooms withthe music do not touch the studs in the finishwall treatment of the wall in the adjoiningroom. This system, called "staggered studs,"reduces the problem of sound transmissionby isolating one space from another.

The third method of limiting soundtransmission is through planning. Thismeans that you do not place the room that islikely to have the greatest amount of noise,such as a living room, next to a room wherequiet is desired, i.e., a bedroom, but rathernext to another space that is hiely to benoisy, i.e., a living room. So in planning dor-

89

mitories and residence halls, living roomsare placed adjacent to each other. and bed-rooms are placed adjacent to each otherwherever possible. This type of preventivedesign reduces the amount of disturbancefrom one space to the next.

In fact, acoustic isolation is bestachieved by embracing all three of these pro-cesses of wall, floor and ceiling mass, of iso-lation, and of planning.

Non-living spaces

For any college desirous of encouraging ex-changes among its students, the design ofcommon spaces, or lounges, is a major mat-ter. Residence halls usually have two kinds

Computers havetransformed the useof dormitory rooms.

of lounges for informal social interaction.One is the "destination" lounge, the largespace adjacent to the front door of the build-ing or a dosed space on each floor of the hallwhere students may gather. The other is the"circulation" lounge, an attractive space tointercept students along the corridor or nextto the stairway or elevator. Circulationlounges on each floor are particularly impor-tant in buildings with rooms along a corridorinstead of suites with a common living roomattached to the room groupings.

Too often lounges are cold and utilitarianand the furniture tacky. To be sure, loungesneed to be durable because of hard use. Butthey should also be home -like. The large en-try lounge to a residence hall especiallyshould be handsome and inviting, withplants, rugs, and excellent furniture. Forstudents it is a major place to meet and talk.

Another common room in most contem-porary residence halls is the laundry room,which on some campuses has become a newsocial center. Students today prefer to dotheir own laundry. Given the semi-social na-ture of the use of this facility, colleges should

try to locate the laundry room adjacent to the"pub" or the vending machine area, and seat-ing should be provided. An important designelement of the laundry, pub, or vending ma-chine areas is the acoustic isolation of thenoisy activities from student work and sleep-ing rooms.

The design of dining hallsis of immense importance.

A third common room that is gainingpopularity fast, and will probably be a fixtureof the 1990s, is the weight room. Physicalfitness, weight control, and aerobic exerciseare no longer only for athletes. I think each200-student residence should provide for aweight room with appropriate exerciseequipment. Here again sound isolation is im-

portant in the construction of these spaces.A fourth kind of common room is the

television lounge. Television has become aubiquitous part of our daily life. But the tele-vision rooms of the 1970s residence hallsneed to be replaced with large TV screens in

the lounge spaces, without separate TV

rooms. Today most students have small TVsets for their rooms, and casual viewers stayin their own rooms. But large groups of stu-dents still gather for elections, extraordinarynews happenings, major athletic events, andother special moments, and this requires aTV screen in a lounge area for dozens of

students.

The storage issueSince dormitory rooms, for economic rea-sons, are relatively small, residence halls ofthe future need to provide more storagespace in the building than in the past. Notonly do students now need a place to storeout-of-season clothing, but they also needstorage space for bicycles, skis, rollerskates, knapsacks, climbing equipment, andsimilar items. Residence halls are home tostudents nine months of the year, and theirhomes contain more possessions than in thepast. Failure to provide adequate central

90

storage space means that students constructtheir own makeshift forms of storage in their

rooms or in the outside hallways.Bicycles have become especially popu-

lar. Residence halls of tomorrow will needbicycle racks near the entrance of each dor-

mitory so that students can have easy de-

posit and access. Providing shelter from rain

or snow for the bicycles next to residenthalls' entrance is a considerable design

problem.

Where to eat?

The dining hall, of course, is a very impor-tant space in student life. Many of us re-member impassioned discussions over ameal in college as we debated the way wewould settle world issues, interpret an au-thor's writings, or determine what is reality.Ideas get shaped and lifelong friendships aremade in college dining halls and pubs. Theirdesign is of immense importance as collegesseek to enhance out-of-class learning andunite resident and commuter studentpopulations.

Should a college have one huge dininghail? It depends on the size of the college.Small colleges under 1000 students probablyshould. Larger colleges and universities can-not. Huge, cavernous dining halls should beavoided; smaller ones that seat 200 or sostudents are preferable because they en-courage intimate exchanges. (Each 200-seatdining room serves roughly 400 students.)Smaller dining rooms are now possible be-cause of the increasing use of a central prep-aration kitchen on campus, with warmingkitchens in each dining hall.

Everything affordable should be done tomake the dining halls not only a warm, at-tractive place to eat but also a pleasant placeto have vigorous discussions, meet fellow

students, and contemplate significant issuesWindow treatment to provide lovely viewsneeds attention. The aesthetics of the inte-rior, the acoustics, and especially the lightingin the hall are design elements that requireartful and sensitive handling. The tablegroupings should have variety, from smalltables for two to one or two long tables for a

team, sorority, or chemistry class; but manytables should seat six to eight students toencourage new acquaintances and groupdiscussions.

Today's students frequently "graze," oreat small meals at odd hours from earlymorning to midnight. This has led some uni-versities to install fast-food franchises intheir campuses. While this may be financiallyhelpful, conviviality and good nutrition areoften sacrificed. The "pub," as it was calledbefore the national drinking age was raisedfrom 18 to 21, is preferable as a gatheringspot for after-hours eating, drinking, andtalk. Again, durable, comfortable furnitureand a lighting level that encourages intimacyand conversation should be provided for thisimportant, informal gathering .lace.

Those other spaces

What about apartments for resident advi-sors, or RA's? Or a large suite for a facultyfamily? Or classrooms or seminar rooms onthe ground floor of the residence hall?

I think that planning a residence hallmust include suites for the resident advisors.The sheer animal vitality and emotional tur-moil of young students need to be proctoredby older, stable students. Since the residentadvisors have an ombudsman's role, theirsuites require a small room for private andoften intense conversations.

Faculty suites in student residence hallshave not worked well. Faculty are reluctantto accept such living accommodations, andthe institution usually needs to provide addi-tional money for the faculty family's "real"home elsewhere. (Faculty apartments adja-cent to residence halls work better thanthose in the dormitory.) Classrooms in thedormitories have a imam- record. Residencehalls are usually located at the perimeter ofthe campus and professors and studentstend to prefer classes near the professors'offices, which are normally in the heart of thecampus.

One of the most perplexing problems ofmodern universities is providing parking forstudents. Students will often not use theircars for a week or two at a time, but they

want them nearby when they do need to usethem. There is no easy way to solve thisvexing problem. Solutions vary from campusto campus. At some institutions multi-storied parking garages have been built, butthese are not economically feasffile for low-cost student parking.

Planning for residence halls should takeinto account the need for outdoor recrea-tional spaces that allow students to spill outfrom the building onto a terrace, a pleasantbalcony, or a small grassy playing field.These too help build community and increaseretention.

The way students live andwork today is differentfrom that of the past.

Should tomorrow's residence halls beair-conditioned? Air-conditioning is almostmandatory for college dormitories in thesouthern half of the United States, but it isan arguable installation in the northern cli-mates. Each college needs to ask itself howit will use the residence halls in the summer.If they will be used heavily for the wholesummer, air-conditioning may be economi-cally feasible.

Seeing residential life whole

Too Often college and university residenceshave been treated as unfortunately neces-sary and utilitarian structures. Amenities,student needs, and the many opportunitiesfor creating a more studious, more friendlybody of students have been overlooked.

But campus residence halls are home forstudents for four years, or two or threeyears for graduate students. They are notnormal homes with families, but with a spe-cial peer group home of energetic, bright,adventurous, and sometimes frustrated stu-dents. So durability, control of acoustics, andarrangements for group encounters are es-sential. The rules of standard residential con-struction and design need to be altered so

91 9 5

that colleges can, in an economical way, pro-vide the optimum conditions for higher learn-ingand for bonding affectionate alumni whowill help support the college in futuredecades.

The way students live and the way theywork intellectually today is different fromthat of the past. Colleges need to build newkinds of dormitories for the electronic age,and for achieving the higher retention and

9 6

92

quality of learning the public now expects.Residential renewal and new constructionshould be a major part of planning capitalfacilities improvements in American higher

education.Winston Churchill once said (of his

House of Parliament): "We shape our build-

ings. Then our buildings shape us." For col-

lege residence halls this seems a basic

truth.

A change in undergraduate interests has created anew kind of campus building.

The Outbu----" of StudentRecreationDavid Body

wring the past 15 years a newkind of building has begun toappear on campuses. It is be-coming a feature at large andsmall universities and hasstarted to appear at some pri-

vate colleges and community colleges. Thebuildings are called student recreation cen-ters, wellness centers, or centers for stu-dent physical activities.

The student recreation center is neitherlike the gymnasiums that have been part ofcampus life for a century, nor like the stu-dent centers built in the post-war years to behubs of undergraduate social and extracur-ricular life. Yet they incorporate parts ofboth. These earlier buildings were designedto serve a different set of students. Athleticswas less prominent, and women's sportsprograms were minimal and frequently

David Body is the principal-in-charge at Cannon-Parkin for master planning, programming, anddesign of sports facilities, for which the firm isnoted. A graduate in architecture from England'sUniversity of Sheffield, he is a former CanadianTennis Open and California State Squash cham-pion and has played lacrosse and paleta argentinaat the international level. He has visited and con-sulted on sports facilities on four continents andworked for more than 40 colleges and universitiesnationwide, has lectured at Harvard and the Uni-versity of Arizona, and has been a leader in thedesign of the modern student recreation center.

housed separately. The lines between inter-collegiate competitive sports and recreationand intramurals were not as clearly drawn.Intercollegiate sports were not the subject ofpresent-day media scrutiny, and the expecta-tions of players, coaches, and spectatorswere lower with regard to the quality of play-ing surfaces, lighting, safety zones, seating,sight lines, and restrooms.

The student recreation building of today isafar cry from its predecessors. And it is increas-ingly regarded not as a non-academic luxury butas an essential structure for the education of ayoung person's body, mind, emotional qualities,and self- discipline. It is also seen as a preventa-live health resourcea wellness center.

A good number of the early gyms werearchitecturally delightful, as evidenced bythe conversion of some into art or com-puter centers or into libraries. But most ath-letic facilities have become dinosaurs, withunsafe pool depths, labyrinthine circulationpatterns that make them impossible to se-cure, with code and ADA deficiencies, andwith inadequate spectator space. Yet whatprincipally caused the explosion of the newrecreation centers were several major shiftsin students' values, mores, and interests.

Propellants for the emergence

In my judgment, four big changes gave im-petus to the development of student recre-ation centers as we know them today.

1. The increased quantity and quality ofintercollegiate sports competition. Moreof the sports now require year-roundpractice and training and place impos-sible demands on facilities shared withrecreational users.

2. The large increase in participation bywomen in athletics, exercise, aerobics,recreational games, and after the pas-sage of Title IX in 1972, in intercolle-giate competitive sports (Emmonsand Wendt 1996).

3. The extraordinary growth of studentinterest in fitness and regular exercise.Beginning in the 1960s with PresidentJohn F. Kennedy's advocacy of fitnessprograms, and medical research onthe causes of heart disease and obe-sity, undergraduates have now madebetter health, nutrition, and physicalfitness an integral part of their weeklylives. Many faculty and staff havedone so also.

4. An expansion of the number of studentswho demand facilities for individual orsmall pickup-team recreation at nearlyall hours. From early morning swimsor runs to lunchtime or midnight bas-ketball, volleyball, squash, or icehockey, today's undergraduates wantto engage in exercise or athletics be-tween long sessions at the computer,in the classrooms, and in the library.Significantly, they are even willing toput money up for the new facilities, of-ten in the form of a student fee to sup-port a bond issue.

These four changes and the resultingspace requirements at first led to designresponses to meet the new program re-quirements. Often the responses took theform of a multi-purpose facility where theemerging recreational component was lo-cated around and under the seats of a spec-tator facility. Examples of such designprojects include the 1973 Recreation Hall atthe University of California, Davis, and thefacility at the University of Southern Illi-nois. The University of Washington in Se-attle also built a single-purpose recreationand intramural structure during this period.

9 '5

Then in the late 1970s and early 1980ssome serendipitous liaisons occurred whichled to the birth of the contemporary recre-ation and health center. Students grew moreinsistent. Recruited athletes became moredemanding. Faculty and staff too began fit-ness regimens. Some campus administratorsgrasped the new national interest in exer-cise, fitness, wellness, and around-the-clockrecreation and impromptu games. And some

Stedr 7 11-4461244".4019NRIEF IP!

Undergraduates havemade better health andfitness a part of their lives.1191NAMM'

architects realized that something new notjust a larger gym or field house, or a studentcenter with fitness rooms addedwas re-quired. One early prototype was UCLA'sJohn Wooden Center, which opened in 1983.Here a visionary recreation director, thehealth-conscious California environment andtheir assertive student leaders, and a pro-health and recreation chancellor collabo-rated closely with the campus architect and aspecialized consulting architect to create anew kind of campus facility.

When the Wooden Center design beganin 1979, there was a good deal of searching forthe forms that would embody the new inten-sity of physical activity on campus. But gradu-ally the program for the building and thedesign came together. The exterior materialsmay reflect the university's budget con-straints, but the organization of the interiorspaces and general ambiance represent abreakthrough. The controlled single point ofentry to the building, the greater clarity of cir-culation, the visual links between activityspaces, the introduction of natural light intothe interior, carpeted floors and contempo-rary colors, glass-walled courts, ample loungespaces, and original artwork are now all ac-cepted as design standards for recreation cen-ters. Other early examples of the new genremay be found at Texas Tech University, theUniversity of California, Berkeley, and St.Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia

94

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The basic elements

Since the mid-1980s the design of student recre-ation centers has evolved. The type, quantity,and size of spaces vary widely. The programshave been influenced by factors such as aninstitution's enrollment, commuter or residen-tial campus, other existing athletic facilities oncampus, geographical location and climate, theregional recreational sports, the number andtype of intercollegiate sports, size of the sur-rounding community, and the funding available.But many elements have remained constant

A single, controlled access entrance/lobbyequipped with computer-monitors with thenumerous required exits alarmed andenunciated to the control desk.High-bay court space for basketball, volley-ball, badminton, indoor soccer, etc.Weight training and exercise rooms withfree weights and cardio-vascular equipmentRacquet courts for squash, racquetball, andvolleyball.

Multi-purpose rooms of varying sizes foraerobics, combatives, yoga, Tai-chi, etc.

Indoor elevated jogging track.Administration offices and conferencespaces for sports and recreation staff andfor student clubs.Locker/shower rooms, with separate facili-ties for men, women, faculty, and staff.Equipment checkout and storage, andsometimes laundry facilities.Lounge spaces, because the center has in-creasingly become the campus social center.

An aquatic facility. The large universitieswith an intercollegiate swimming pro-gram have a competitive facility, with a50-meter constant-depth pool, diving well,and practice tank, allowing the separaterecreation pool to be sized for instruc-tional swim classes and recreational usessuch as lap swimming, inner-tube polo,and water basketball. The recreation poolmay also have a zero-level (beach) entry,shallow water for instruction and wateraerobics, deeper water for scuba diving

vs,

uiExterior of the Drayson Center for student physical activities and recreation at Loma Linda University,

near San Bernadino, California.

10096

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and life saving classes, and more conve-nient access for disabled persons.At smaller universities and most colleges

both the pool and the gymnasium are oftenshared by intercollegiate competitive teamsand recreation-seeking students. The designchallenge of meeting the conflicting needs ofcompetitive sports and "fun" recreation is diffi-

The design challenge ofmeeting the conflictingneeds of competitive sportsand recreation is difficult.

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cult, but it is being resolved in creative waysnationwide. Not only must the design of thepool itself accommodate both swimming anddiving competition and student recreationaluses, but the issue of spectator facilities and ac-cess must be addressed. For gymnasiums too,most colleges must combine the uses of inter-collegiate competition, intramural, and recre-ational activityand, at other times, eventssuch as concerts, dances, and ceremonies.

Fortunately, the greatly improved tech-nology of retractable seating, and motor-

ized curtains and backdrops, have facili-tated such shared use. For example, theUniversity of California, San Diego, has re-cently completed a facility accommodating4,000 spectators for an athletic event, all onretractable seats. When the seats are fullyretracted, the floor area released holds fiverecreational basketball courts. At UCSD anauxiliary gym actually makes basketballhoops available to recreational users evenduring an intercollegiate game.

The financial impact of accommodatingspectators in a student recreational facilitythat is required to be open at all hoursshould never be underestimated. Provisionsmust be made for a lobby with ticket booths,multiple easy exits, concessions, numerousrestrooms, press and TV space, team rooms,coaching offices, significant storage space,and additional circulation without impactingthe facility's recreational use unduly.

As student interest in new forms ofhealth maintenance, recreation, and intramu-ral competition continues, campus and out-side architects must also consider secondaryspaces, the inclusion of which usually engen-ders debate during the programming phase.Such spaces include a wellness center, climb-ing walls, saunas, a cardio theater, rooms for

The fitness area at the Student Recreation Center at the University of California, Riverside.

97 0 I

3

gymnastics or dance, MAC's (multi-use ath-letic courts with dasher boards similar tothose in hockey rinks), a first aid room,andyescomputer study rooms.

Location, location

Where should the student recreation cen-ter be located? After all, the building has anarchitectural mass that is difficult to insertgraciously into the human-scaled heart ofthe campus. Parking needs, the spectatorflows, and other considerations wouldseem to suggest a peripheral location. Also,if the recreation center is open to the localcommunity in early mornings and otheroffpeak hours to generate some revenue,that too suggests a perimeter location.

However, this new genre of buildinghas become more and more the social cen-ter as well as activity center of the campus;and students, faculty, and staff like to enjoya more central facility that permits a fairlyquick return to academic work and chores.So institutions such as the University ofMiami, UCLA, and the University of South-ern California have located their recre-ational centers on the central campus. Butother universities from the University ofGeorgia to the University of Arizona havepreferred an outer site.

Another frequent planning debate iswhether to construct a single, large facilitywhich allows the entire campus communityto meet in one location or to build several sat-ellite buildings around the campus, related toplaying fields, parking fields, or student resi-dential houses. The University of Virginia, forexample, has chosen to develop satellite facili-ties. This scattered approach has significantmanagement implications, and at Virginia atleast it has resulted in a degree of "owner-ship" of the facilities by discreet communitysegments. Also, some colleges and universi-ties choose to have separate facilities for indi-vidual competitive and recreational sports: aTennis and Racquets Center, a fieldhouse, ora Natatorium for all water activities.

This leads to the question: What is theappropriate size for these new campus rec-reation centers? This is a difficult question toanswer. As I noted earlier, it depends on the

.102

size of the university, whether spectatorsand community persons are introduced,whether one or two swimming pools are in-cluded, and more. It may also depend on theformulas of the state officials or some gener-ous alumnus. Indeed, size is most frequentlydriven by the available funds.

Frequently a college or university willbase its decision in part on comparisonswith peer institutions, but unfortunately

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Where should the studentrecreation center be located?

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there is considerable misinformation aboutthe square-foot cost of student recreationcenters, even centers which have beenbuilt. The discrepancies stem not only fromthe bid date, zone of country, whether thesite is complex, self-contained, or served bya central plant, and exclusive or inclusive ofsite development costs, but also from theconfusion between construction cost and

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Entrance to the 384,000-square-foot physicalactivities center at the University of Georgia,which more than 5,000 students use each day.

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total project cost, and between assignablearea and gross area, which can result in bi-zarre square foot numbers. Campus archi-tects and administrators need to take greatcare to avoid inaccurate budgeting at thestart of the project.

How much should a college or univer-sity plan to budget for a new state-of-the-artrecreation center? In my experience, it is dif-ficult to construct a building that providesfor the full range of today's preferred activi-ties for less than $8 million. The majority ofprojects I know of have fallen within a costrange of $8 million to $30 million, withprojects for a large university that include aseparate competitive pool and considerablespectator facilities at the high end.

Are these new student recreation cen-ters worth the expense? One way to get ananswer is to visit these centers and observethe traffic. The University of Georgia'sRamsey Center has averaged 5,500 visits aday since it opened; that of smaller LomaLinda University's Drayson Center has av-eraged 1,500. The center at Arizona State

a

Recreational pool at the Student Activities Cen-ter at Central Michigan University, lookingthrough a hallway window.

University is usually filled until midnight.Obviously the recreation centers respondto a new desire by many young people andadults to keep themselves fit, agile, healthy,

"SeltsM,,, MEritt*Matft .204

Are these new studentrecreation centers worththe expense?

and strong. The recreation centers teachhealthy lifestyle habits, preventative medi-cine, safe and fair competition. The facilityis a valuable tool for recruitment and forretention. It is a place where students, fac-ulty, and staffand perhaps alumni andothers from the surrounding communitycan meet, workout, and play together. Also,for architects the centers are a new chal-lenge and great fun to design.

Looking ahead, campus leaders andplanners need to consider too: What of thefuture? Will financial difficulties force insti-tutions to lease parts of the buildings tofranchisers, or to various sports companysponsorships? Is intercollegiate athleticsabout to experience some cost-cutting re-structuring? Should colleges continue tomake wellness, the inculcation of healthylifestyle habits, and the development ofphysical energy to carry out important intel-lectual and artistic work an integral part oftheir educational program?

Whatever the future holds, the studentrecreation center has become a new kind ofbuilding for new kinds of activities on cam-pus in the past 15 years. Campus plannerswho have not already done so will need totake note of this latest addition to Americanuniversity architecture.

REFERENCE

Emmons, P. and Wendt, D. 1996. What is Equitablein Athletic Facilities? Planning for Higher Educa-tion 24(3): 27-31.

99 -403

A different kind of educational bookstore is beingcreated within colleges and universities.

The New CollegeBookstore

John Finefrock

Editor's Note: This article has been edited by the author especially for this volume andincludes a postscript.

Jvhat is difficult for mostpeople, not only book-sellers, is to acknowl-edge responsibility forcreating a better future.In the distraction of

daily details, caught in the web of existingpractices, and seduced by old habits andthe latest fads, we fail to undertake strate-gic changes that can remake our lives, ourprofessions, and our institutions so that

John Finefrock is manager of the bookstore atKenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where healso teaches Chinese. He earned a BA from theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara and aM.Div. from the Graduate Theological Union inBerkeley. Before coming to Kenyon in 1982, hemanaged the Chautauqua Bookstore in upstateNew York and was head of publications there.The Kenyon College Book Shop has been called"best U.S. college bookstore" in Lisa Birnbach'sCollege Book and in Rolling Stone magazine, andhas been cited by Publisher's Weekly as having"the highest sales per student in the USA."

Featured in The Wall Street Journal in 1992, Mr.Finefrock won the 1995 Kenyon Faculty Cup forDistinguished Teaching, was a John S. KnightFellow in 1995-96, and is also the author of TheFuture of the Campus Store, 1993. He has a na-tionwide book store consulting practice. "TheNew College Book Store" is often cited in re-quests for bids on new college and universitybook stores and student unions.

100

they contribute to a fresh and finer future,especially for the young.

But some bookstore managers atAmerican colleges and universities havebegun to transform the campus bookstoreinto a every different kind of place, a newkind of college center. They think this stra-tegic change will contribute significantly tothe intensity of intellectual life on campus.

The traditional college bookstoremostly provides items directly necessaryfor college work: notebooks, pens, text-books, basic art supplies, and collegememorabilia (pennants, mugs, T-shirts,and the like). It is usually cramped, strictlyfunctional, uninviting, and open only duringnormal business hours. Some of thesestore managers don't even like books butsee them as "merchandise." And most col-leges treat their bookstore managers asclerks; campus bookstore managers areamong the lowest paid professionals at aca-demic institutions.

The managers of the "new" collegebookstore, however, (and I include myselfamong them) are trying to create a radi-cally new kind of gathering place on cam-pus. Frankly, we are dreamers who areusing our practical skills to build a dream inthe heart of academe. This may soundgrand, but some of us believe that thesearch for and accumulation of good books

by students can be like the quest for one'ssoul or the meaning of life. We are trying tobuild a physical facility appropriate foryoung people's hungry search for culture,self-identity, and intellectual acumen.

< ;.74.33,

Most colleges treattheir bookstore managerslike clerks.Dttr"7<en5raM

The college store bawl ess..&,3,&,2A

According to the National Association ofCollege Stores, there are 4,500 memberstores in the U.S. and Canada. They grossedabout $8 billion in 1992. Books and texts ac-count for 60 percent of sales, but in the pastdecade non-book items have been increas-ingfood, clothing, candy, backpacks, post-ers, hair dryers, computersbecause theprofits are higher in such merchandise. As aresult, many college stores now resemblecrowded convenience stores, and in some of

- \`

The trade book section of the University of Toronto Book Store in the great readingroom ofthe former Metro Toronto Central Library. The Bookstore is the third largest bookseller inCanada with more than 50,000 book titles in stock and more than 300 magazine titles.

ba-,--ramtes.

The search for good booksby students can be like thequest for one's soul.

7.7.4

them books have become a minor part oftheir activity, relegated to a back section be-cause the number of items in the store hasincreased but the space of the store has not.

Not so at the Seminary Students Coopin Hyde Park, Illinois, which has a splen-did stock of books. Or at the HungryMind, the attractive bookstore forMacalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota,with its great spaces and lofty ceiling. Orat the bookstores of Dartmouth College,Kentucky's Centre College, the Universityof Toronto, or the University of Washing-ton in Seattle. Or at the magnificent Uni-versity of Iceland bookstore in Reykjavik.These, and others like them, are collegestores where books are central, the spaceshandsome, and where students and fac-

101

ulty hang out as if the bookstore were anintellectual community center.

These new bookstores are placeswhere university presidents and plannershave insisted on a facility that looks andfeels good, that invites with visible cues allthe campus constituencies to the greatparty of life in which learning together isthe most fun of all. A visit to buy the Wash-ington Post, the American Scholar, or a newbook on 20th-century music leads a studentpast a display of the best new academicbooks, into a meeting with his or her phi-losophy professor, near an admissions of-ficer with parents and prospective studentin tow, and past members of the soccerteam reading magazines while they wait toget picked up by a bus for their next game.These new bookstores have poetry read-ings, autograph signings, jazz concerts, andcomfortable chairs in which to read. Theyare gossip-central, the major meeting placefor students and faculty to meet informally.Alumni, local citizens, tourists, and stu-dents from other colleges come long dis-tances to spend a day at these stores.

The new college bookstore is usuallythe result of a daring president, a demand-ing faculty, and a creative, bookish storemanager coming together. That is how our

The Kenyon Book Shop isopen 365 days a year

Mia !INV!bookstore at Kenyon College began. TheKenyon professors were unhappy abouttheir college store, which was the onlyplace to buy books in Gambier, Ohio (pop.2,100), and a faculty committee drew up anidealistic wish list for an enlarged exem-plary bookstore. The president endorsedtheir report. To the amazement of the fac-ulty, I took their report seriously and a de-cade ago begun to build their ideal store.We expanded into a former pizza restau-rant next to the college, renovated thebasement for sales space, and built an addi-tion to the building so that Kenyon nowhas a 15,000-square-feet store.

102

A most unusual place

The Kenyon College Book Shop is openfrom 7:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., 365 days ayear. The floor is carpeted and the 14-foothigh walls are covered from floor to ceilingwith oak shelves of books. In the rear of thestore we have a living-room-like readingarea with sofas and upholstered chairs, andlarge windows that look out into a green,wooded area. There is piped-in classicalmusic, and kites hanging from the ceiling.(Above the cash register, a local artistquilted a replica of Michelangelo's SistineChapel ceiling to hang from our ceiling.)We used to have flowers and plants allaround, but that became too expensive.

You can get coffee, bagels,ice cream, and rootbeer.

'%',11224A

The Kenyon College store stocks about80,000 book titles a year. With certain publish-ing houses like Oxford University Press orHarvard University Press we buy a copy of ev-ery book they publish, and we have them onour shelves months before the reviews comeout (Our librarians thus can inspect newbooks before they buy them.) You can find anextraordinary range of just-published books inour store, from medieval medicine to the latestpoetry of Maya Angelou. We keep new booksfor one year or two, then return most of themto the publishers if they don't sell, so we sel-dom compete with our college library.

We also stock about 500 magazines andscholarly journals, from Rolling Stone toVogue, covering computers, tennis, foreignaffairs, religion, and African arts and culture(Callaloo). These are very popular with stu-dents and faculty, who often read an article,walk to one of our photocopy machines tomake a copy, then replace the magazine.(As with books, most magazine publishersaccept returns, so we feel we can stock asmany as we have space for.) The texts forcourses are in a separate section.

There is an area where you can get cof-fee, bagels, Ben and Jerry's ice cream, and

10 varieties of root beer. You can have break-fast and lunch in the store and spend all daytill nearly midnight browsing and reading inan armchair without buying a thing. No oneis pressured to buy; but curiously the morewe let people explore and read, the morethey buy. The Kenyon store sales have qua-drupled in the past 10 years. Our staff con-sists of 22 full-time and four part-time trainedprofessionals. We use no student clerks.

There is a conference room, and wehold classes in the store. There is a hugebrag board with newspaper clippings aboutour students, Kenyon's teams, and facultybook reviews and articles. We have poetryreadings, small concerts, and displays ofthe best student art.

The Kenyon College Book Shop alsotries to provide for all the daily needs of stu-dents, faculty and staff. So we sell musictapes and CD's, basic hardware and furni-ture, cards, art supplies, stationary, aspirin,printer ribbonsreally a bazaar of studentand faculty needs. We also try to provide sur-prises so that people keep coming in. The

'VW" MittIMVSOIMLiaZiaira

We are inventing anon-campus intellectualcommunity centergikViglaafte ItrffiNNINESISAS

store once sold live baby rabbits and fuzzy,yellow baby chicks for Easter; but the crea-tures chewed on electrical wires, createdsafety and health problems, and the adminis-tration and maintenance staff told us, "Neveragain." When we opened a camping section,we brought in six-foot stuffed bears to sleepin our pup tents, complete with jars of honey,canoe paddles, and magazines that bearsmight read. Little did we imagine that facultychildren would crawl into the tents and usethe large bears as couches while they readtheir children's books. Our store gets clut-tered from time to time, but our view is thatwhere there is occasional mess there is life.The students love it.

The Kenyon store does a considerablemail-order business. We order all the books

for the college library. We even orderbooks for the University of Tokyo! (Theyheard of us, and our book prices arecheaper than those in Tokyo). We also helpfaculty with out-of-print book searches, andhave a service desk to answer any studentquestions about books or journals. Surpris-ingly, the Kenyon bookshop has no secu-rity guards, and has almost no pilferage, or"shrinkage" as store managers call it Stud-ies have found that one in eight store visi-tors steal, especially in urban areas; but wehave so far not had a problem.

The Kenyon Book Shop has elementsof a library, newsstand, student center,Viennese cafe, and convenience store buthas mixed the elements. We believeKenyonand other institutions like usare inventing a novel kind of place, an on-campus intellectual community center.Students write their class papers in ourchairs and play chess. A few faculty and stu-dents have written novels in our bookstore.

Does it make money? Properly run,these new college bookstores can andshould earn a small profit, as the Kenyonstore does. In fiscal year 1995-96 we hadrevenues of $2.4 million (excluding com-puter sales)in a tiny Ohio town of 2,100people. One hundred percent of our netprofitabout four percent of total grosssalesgoes to the college's student schol-arship fund, which we think is proper butwhich also helps sales because studentsknow they get back some of the moneythey spend.

But the real "profit" comes in otherforms. The Kenyon College Book Shop isused by the admissions office to attract thebest students; and at least a few recruitedfaculty have chosen Kenyon because theyhave the same access to new books, jour-nals, and magazines in Gambier, Ohio asthey would in Cambridge, New York, orSan Francisco. A store like Kenyon's saysto visitors, "This is a college where learningis taken seriously." Our bookstore makes astatement about Kenyon College. It differ-entiates us.

Perhaps the largest profit is the sheerpleasure of large open spaces, warm in win-

7

ter and cool in summer, where one can read,explore, talk, eat, relax, and listen to theworld's best music and informal little con-certs, where sophomores can literally bumpinto their professors, discover new journalsand ideas, savor the latest clothing fashions,poetry, and tips on bicycles, and buy deli-cious new chocolates from Switzerland.

Wh etre the !ingredients?

This new kind of college bookstore has sev-eral features I think are imperative.

Space. Space is the key element. Mostuniversity stores are only one third or oneOWAWKIMPINGOORWWWWWWWW,, AIWEE1

Space is the key element°i>3;12171EFYMhalf the size they should be. You needmore room for tables, chairs, and sofas, andaisles that are wide enough. The ceilingsshould have height too. The most stunning,inspiring bookstore I have ever seen is inHelsinki, Finland. It was designed by the

.74

noted architect Alvar Aalto and has a veryhigh curved ceiling, giving the shop a ca-thedral-like grandeur.

The walls should be lined with books;that creates a lovely ambiance, as it did inJ.P. Morgan's magnificent library. You'llneed to provide chairs and tables for 100 to200 students, racks for 500-600 magazineand journals, as well as a dining area wherestudents, faculty, and staff can have coffee,a soft drink, and a gourmet snack.

Long hours. One reason many peopledon't visit bookstores is because they areusually closed. Colleges need to find a wayto have their community center-bookstoresopen earlier each day and later each night,seven days a week. Bookstores shouldhave hours like a cafe, not like a bank.

Quickness. Colleges can get Sundaybook reviews from leading newspapers onFriday. There's no reason to wait for the re-views before buying new books. Ideasshould be handled like hot news, not likeyesterday's beer. Students and faculty appre-ciate a college store that helps them stay at

dr

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The Kenyon College Bookshop has classical music, bagels, and 500 magazines and journals,and stays open 365 days a year.

1 08

104

the forefront, especially in non-popular fields.Professors get a jolt by discovering new stuffthey didn't know was published yet.

Provision for daily needs. The best newstores on campus are really attuned to sup-plying student and faculty needs: a well-

"ZlitaraW0 Ideal=114.1,011MThe best new campusstores bristle with life andactivity.MitAltf-MISFA. -11.10210411

brewed cup of coffee, the best cheap pens,computer discs, comfortable jogging shoes.Know your students and professors andwhat they require in their daily intellectualwork and their best leisure.

Intimacy with the college. It is surprisinghow little most campus book shops relate tothe special activities of their institutions. Of-ten the local taverns feature photographs ofthe sports stars from the college teams, andlocal restaurants list the coming lectures,concerts, and dramatic shows on campusmore than the campus bookstore does. Fac-ulty books, articles, and photographs, andstudent accomplishments and productionsshould be prominently displayed, and bulle-tin boards should pin up references to thecollege, to alumni, to trustees, and commu-nity leaders.

Life. The best new campus storesbristle with life and activity. Students espe-cially are a boisterous, irreverent, athleticgroup. They are different from other adultcommercial shoppers. The campus book-stores of the future will reflect that energy,as well as young people's quieter quests forlearning and love, friendships, and a phi-losophy or religion to live by.

POSTSCRIPT

John Finefrock has updated the information containedin this 1993 article to reflect more recent data. In ad-dition, he offers the following postscript:

A trend toward leasing?

There appears to be a growing trend toward leasingout bookstore space and associated operations. In1990, according to the National Association of Col-lege Stores, 655 college bookstores were managedby lease companies. By 1996, the number of leasedstores grew to 1,065, or about twenty-five percent ofU.S. college bookstores. Institutional stores repre-sent half of all college stores, while private storesrepresent fifteen to twenty percent of the total, andcooperatives make up roughly five percent.

Among the recently leased bookstores are thoseat Harvard, Yale, and the University of Chicago. TheUniversity of California at Berkeley is taking thisoption under consideration. Meanwhile, ColumbiaUniversity has retained its lease operator for text-books and supplies, while simultaneously providingspace in a new building for a privately-owned aca-demic bookstore. Columbia promotes the privatebookstore on its web site.

There are a number of reasons for this apparenttrend. College stores, which have existed in somecases for a hundred or more years, are facing in-creased competition from the burgeoning ranks ofthe superstores. In many instances the profitabilityof college stores, usually marginal to begin with, hasdwindled significantly.

Even when financial officers are not demandinghigh rent or high return from an institution's invest-ment, they are less and less willing to support abookstore's annual losses Leasing is seen as a wayto bail out a faltering operation while increasing in-come to an institution. It is also a way to continueoffering bookstore services to the campus commu-nity, often in space that has been newly renovatedand decorated at the lessor's expense.

Will bookstores cease to exist?

Does the apparent trend toward leasing bookstorespace and operations presage the future on collegecampuses? The shift toward leasing may also ulti-mately affect libraries and computer centers, particu-larly if lease operators can offer students more ser-vices at a lower price than traditional institutional li-braries and information services.

Why, some might argue, is a physical location orbuilding even required for a bookstore? Such maybe the case as colleges engage in distance learningand explore alternatives for delivering commoditiescurrently provided by bookstores. Yet, bookstoresare potentially very different from each other,grounded in distinct institutional identities and pro-viding privileged commodities such as books alongwith generally available items such as sweatshirts,pens, and mugs. If these campus-run bookstores arehomogenized into a superstore or another centrallycommercialized entity, much would be lost

105

09

BOOK REVIEW

Residence Halls as aPlace to LearnRealizing the Educational Potential of Residence Halls, by Charles Schroeder and Phyllis Mable.

Jossey Bass, 1994. 319 pages. ISBN 0-7879-0018-4.

Reviewed by Carmen Guevara Neuberger

n the 19th century colleges had toprovide housing for students becausethe colleges were usually built out-side of cities, because most studentswere young teenagers in need ofguidance, and because of the diffi-

culty of travel. Then, college leaders oftenhad educative goals for the student houses.Discipline in the dorms, harsh by modernstandards, aimed at developing students'"character" and instilling good values. In afashion that usually combined the spiritualand the secular, residentially-based institu-tions sought to educate the "whole person."

The goal of developing the whole per-son is still alive, and may be returning in anew form. As Charles Schroeder, vice chan-cellor for student affairs at the University ofMissouri, Columbia, and Phyllis Mable,vice president for student affairs atLongwood College in Virginia, write in

Carmen Guevara Neuberger is president of Tu-ition Exchange, Inc., a national scholarship ex-change service, based in Washington, D.C. Shegraduated from the University of Maryland,earned her Ed.D. from American University,and a law degree from the Washington Collegeof Law. She has been a dean of students at bothAmerican University and Dickinson College.Last year she received the Esther Lloyd-JonesDistinguished Service Award from the NationalAssociation for Women in Education.

their new book, Realizing the EducationalPotential of Residence Halls,

Historically the student affairs profession hasshifted its emphasis from controlling studentsto serving students, to the current emphasison student development....By developing aphilosophy of student learning, residence hallstaff can use student development theory andprocess models as a means to facilitate stu-dent learning.

With great earnestness, this book in-sists that "residence halls must becomepurposeful and intentional educational envi-ronments." And Schroeder and Mable,both of whom were directors of studenthousing in their earlier years, haverounded up a dozen student affairs expertsand scholars to contribute chapters thatadvocate their cause. It is a formidable ar-ray of experience, knowledge, and skill.

Schroeder and Mable address the bookmainly to student affairs professionals and toprovosts, deans, and department chairs whowant to improve undergraduate learning butwho "often overlook the role of the resi-dence halls." The 13 chapters are acceptablywritten and organized into three parts: his-tory and practices, innovative approaches,and educational impact All the writers seemwell aware of the powerful influences ex-erted upon individual students from closeand constant association with their under-

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graduate peers. Each chapter has a strongbibliography behind its paragraphs.

All the contributors agree that thoseresponsible for an institution's academicaffairs must be involved in the discussion ofplans and programs in the residence halls.They do not, however, include others whomight make a contribution, such as admis-sions officers, officers responsible for thefinances of the dorms, and representativebodies of parents. But in the end, it is thefaculty and the students that are the crucialdyad on which better learning is built.

The authors provide a wealth of sug-gestions. John Welty, for instance, paints apicture of "the residence hall of the future."Arthur Levine recommends "guerrilla" tac-tics such as arranging the spaces in thehalls more cleverly, taking advantage ofteachable moments, and recognizing exem-plary behaviors in some prominent way.His essay is surprisingly the only one thathints at the hedonistic culture of much con-temporary dormitory life, as Moffat de-scribed in his 1989 book Coming of Age inNew Jersey: College and American Culture.

Elizabeth Whitt and Elizabeth Nuss pro-vide excellent examples of residence pro-

grams that are trying to integrate curricularofferings, such as those at Earlham Collegeand Stanford, and they describe the LymanBriggs School at Michigan State, a residen-tial program for students interested in sci-ence as a career, and the University ofMaryland's Honors Living /Learning Center.This is an especially rich chapter for detailson apparently fruitful experiments.

Another chapter that planners may findhelpful is that of Terry Smith, who believesthat "residential colleges are having a re-naissance." Smith's chapter is valuable toobecause, unlike the others, his addressessome of the considerable obstacles to edu-cation in the residential halls. Among thenumerous barriers Smith notes: "Residen-tial colleges are not cheap," and "Facultytend to see residential colleges as 'housingstuff" and not really part of their business.Most of the other chapters scarcely men-tion the faculty's current preoccupationsand their reticence to assist in residencehall learning. Who is to do all this newteaching in the dorms, and how and why, islargely missing from this book.

One question I find to be urgent but un-answered by the book is that caused by the

Residence hall at Earlham College in Indiana, where students learn as well as reside.

growing popularity of interest-centeredhousing, whether multicultural, the arts, aforeign language, African American, com-munity action work, foreign students, orsome academic major. Do such clusters en-hance or hinder the aims of a broad, liberaleducation and student development? I alsowould have enjoyed reading more content ofa hands-on nature about how colleges anduniversities can actually introduce innova-tive learning programs for the two millionAmerican students who live in campus dor-mitories. The book is rich in invocations andurgings that residential life and classroomlearning be brought closer together. Moredetails on how this might be done, whoshould do it, and how it would be financedwould have made the book more valuable.

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Along with similar recent books such asFaith Gabelnick et al.'s Learning Communi-ties: Creating Connections Among Students,Faculty, and Disciplines (1990), George Kithet al.'s Involving Colleges: Successful Ap-proaches to Fostering Student Learning andDevelopment Outside the Classroom (1991),R. B. Winston et al.'s Student Housing andResidential Life: A Handbook for Professionals(1993), and Bloland, Stamatakos, and Ro-gers' provocative, new Reform in Student Af-fairs: A Critique of Student Development(1994), the Schroeder and Mable book pre-sents a forceful case for higher educationleaders to consider. Youth culture needs tobe brought closer to the culture of seriouslearning and professional skills if U.S.higher education is to improve its quality.

BOOK REVIEW

Gender Equity in Athletics:What Does the Law Require?A Practical Guide to Title IX: Law, Principles, and Practices, by Walter Connolly, Jr. NationalAssociation of College and University Attorneys, 1995. 499 pages. (No ISBN.)

Reviewed by Marsha Moss

nstitutions of higher education arestruggling with the challenges ofachieving gender equity in intercolle-giate athletics at a time when finan-cial resources are constrained andwhen many athletic programs across

the country are experiencing operatingdeficits. How can institutions develop plansto provide equal opportunities for women inathletics which will meet the requirementsof Title IX, be defensible against lawsuitsbrought by individuals or the federal gov-ernment, and preserve their intercollegiateathletics programs?

This compendium, assembled by WalterConnolly, Jr., an attorney who specializes inthe practice of labor, equal employment op-portunity, and Title IX litigation, providessome answers to these complex questions.

Designed primarily for attorneys andTitle IX compliance officers, a majority ofthe articles give detailed attention to thelegislative history and case law relating toTitle IX. Two articles focus entirely on de-

Marsha Moss is assistant vice president and di-rector of institutional studies at the University ofTexas at Austin. She received her B.BA andM.BA from UT Austin and has written on infor-mation systems for academic reporting aboutstudent athletics.

fending against Title IX lawsuits: one fromthe standpoint of providing equal opportu-nities to participate in sports, and the otheron athletic coach assignment and compen-sation claims. These technical though read-able chapters allow administrators andplanners to grasp the complexity of the is-sues surrounding this 1972 law.

The principle chapter in this compen-dium is written by Walter Connolly, Jr. andhis associate, Jeffrey Adelman, and is titled,"A University's Defense to a Title IX Gen-der Equity in Athletics Lawsuit CongressNever Intended Gender Equity Based onStudent Body Ratios." It gives an excellentoverview of the provisions of Title IX andhow they are being applied by the courts,and offers suggestions to institutions re-garding compliance and defense against au-dits and lawsuits. This chapter, like muchof A Practical Guide to Title IX, presentsinformation that campus officials will findrevealing and contrary to some impressionabout the law's requirements.

So what are the requirements? Title IXof the Education Amendments of 1972 stipu-lates that "[no] person in the United Statesshall, on the basis of sex, be excluded fromparticipation in, be denied the benefits of, orbe subjected to discrimination under anyeducation program or activity receiving Fed-eral financial assistance." A 1974 amend-

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ment requires the Secretary of Health, Edu-cation, and Welfare to prepare regulations toimplement Title IX "relating to the prohibi-tion of sex discrimination in federally as-sisted education programs, which shallinclude with respect to interscholastic ath-letic activities reasonable provisions consid-ering the nature of particular sports."

If federal funds are received by anypart of an institution, including individualstudents receiving federally funded studentfinancial aid, then the entire institution issubject to Title IX regulations. These regu-lations were developed and are enforced bythe Office of Civil Rights Compliance(OCR). According to Connolly, institutionsare in compliance with OCR regulations ifthey: "(1) provide athletic positions to menand women in proportion to their enroll-ments, or (2) demonstrate a historical andcontinuing practice of increasing athleticopportunities for women, or (3) are fullyand effectively accommodating the inter-ests and abilities of both sexes."

While the courts have only recognizedthe first provision as satisfying OCR re-quirements, Connolly contends that institu-tions should continue to promote the othertwo conditions as they create their plansand defend against challenges. He arguesthat measures such as high school and in-tramural sports participation rates are moreappropriate measures of women's andmen's athletic interests and ability than un-dergraduate enrollment rates.

OCR regulations further stipulate thatathletic scholarships must be awarded tomen and women in proportion to their par-ticipation rates in intercollegiate athletics,that discrimination based on gender is pro-hibited in all athletic programs, and thatequal opportunities to participate in sports

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must be afforded to men and women. A listof ten factorsfrom travel budgets andhousing to practice conditionsis exam-ined in the determination of equal opportu-nity to participate. Connolly presents anin-depth legal analysis of all of these compli-ance issues and points out the flaws insome of the courts' interpretations of theseregulations to date.

Connolly effectively presents the nega-tives surrounding the implementation andinterpretation of Title lX regulations. He de-votes less attention to the positive aspects ofthese requirements. One article, however,written by Donna Lopiano, president of theWomen's Sports Foundation, highlights thehealth benefits for girls and women who par-ticipate in sports and tries to dispel the no-tion that the gains in women's athleticopportunities have resulted in diminishedopportunities for men, particularly in foot-ball. Lopiano also offers a list of measuresthat can be taken to cut costs and increaserevenues in order to fund additional sportsopportunities for women which will not ad-versely affect participation rates for men.

Connolly's final contribution to thisguide is a valuable set of questions andtables that institutions can use as a self-study document to identify, by sport and byathletic program, any areas in which gen-der inequities may exist This in-house au-dit of athletic programs should be highlyuseful to institutions worrying about TitleIX litigation or an OCR audit.

For anyone who has administrative re-sponsibility for athletic programs, budgets,Title IX compliance, or for facilities, thiscompendium provides an excellent and de-tailed analysis of the gender equity in ath-letics requirements. If you do not, consideryourself lucky.

OutdoorSpaces

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New forces are ruining many college landscapes. Anovel planning activity can help halt the erosion.

The Neglected CampusLandscapeMichel Van Yahres and Syd Knight

Look carefully at the photographsused in the admissions viewbookto help sell your college to pros-pects. Whether you are a smallcollege, large state university, ora prestigious institution, it is a

sure bet that the prospects will see picturesof impressive architecture in a park-like set-ting. There will be shots of the campus foun-tain (if there is one) and students studyingor socializing on green lawns or under theleafy canopies of mature trees.

It's a simple fact young people andtheir parents respond to such images. Afterall, it is "home" to the undergraduate forfour or more years. When high school se-niors were recently asked how they chosetheir college, a surprising 62 percent said itwas mainly by "the appearance of the build-ings and grounds" (Boyer 1987, p. 17). Thefirst impression of a campus can have apowerful effect.

But while admissions officers andsome devoted alumni appreciate the impor-

Michel Van Yahres is chairman of Van YahresAssociates, an award-winning landscape archi-tecture firm in Charlottesville, Virginia, special-izing in campus planning and design. He earnedhis BA in history at Allegheny College and anM.L.A. from the University of Virginia. He haslectured and written articles on the topic of cam-pus landscape design.

tance of the campus landscape, most per-sons at a college or university rarely per-ceive landscape design as worthy of thecare and attention paid to other aspects ofthe institution. The campus landscape isoften the neglected realm. Even experi-enced campus planners tend to worry moreabout interior spaces and architecture.

But a college or university campus ismore than just the buildings and theirrooms. It is also the rational organization ofoutdoor spaces and all they include: pave-ments, walls, lawns, trees, fences, shrubs,ponds or streams, signs, outdoor furniture,lighting, waste disposal containers, utilities,parking areas, and outdoor art. The campuslandscape is the fabric that holds the build-ings together. (The word "campus" comesfrom the Latin word for a field.) It's the firstthing people see when they enter a school,and it's the image they carry in their mindswhen they leave. It's where students andfaculty often mingle and new friendshipsare formed. At its best the campus land-

Syd Knight is senior landscape architect andproject manager with Van Yahres Associates.He has a baccalaureate in urban planning fromthe University of Cincinnati and a master's de-gree in landscape architecture from the Univer-sity of Virginia. He has directed landscapeassessments and design projects at numerouscolleges and universities.

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scape can be a serene and sensual experi-ence. It should not be neglected.

Ot's um one's responsibility

There are reasons for this neglect. Campusplanners and resident architects usuallyconcentrate on buildings, equipment, andthe academic programs inside the build-ings, where the students go to classes. Of-ten the campus landscape is left to thegroundskeepers, some of whom may betrained in horticulture but most of whomare not. Master plans usually focus on siteplanning for buildings, and frequently ne-glect the impact of these buildings on theoutdoor spaces. Faculty members tend tosee money spent on the campus grounds asa frivolous expenditure that would be betterspent on their own salaries or on libraryand computer purchases. And the vora-cious demands for more parking space fre-

`IN

quently prompt universities to pave everlarger sections of the greensward.

In their attempts to accommodatethese conditions, attitudes and trends,

The first impression ofa campus can have apowerful effect.

many institutions have created some newcampus problems. Here are a few.

Inappropriate development model. Inthe absence of a clear understanding ofcampus design concepts, some collegesand universities have adopted a model fortheir landscape that is becoming the normelsewhere: that of suburban commercialdevelopment. A growing number of institu-tions are abandoning the long-established

e. A

An attractive, park-like setting is a distinctive feature of the design of most American college anduniversity campuses.

1 1 4

practice of primarily using mowed lawnsand large trees in open unpaved areas, withshrubs reserved for important spaces andpurposes. Now, regardless of location andrelative importance, buildings are more andmore often surrounded by seas of floweringshrubs, bulbs, and annuals in an attempt athorticultural display. The result is thatnewer campus plantings look like thosearound large suburban homes or shoppingmalls rather than traditional college cam-puses. This new-model campus horticul-ture erodes the spatial hierarchy that is socrucial to campus legibility and function.

Faculty members tendto see money spent oncampus grounds as afrivolous expenditure.

Transgressions of the organization ofspaces. Appropriately designed campuseshave a well-ordered sequence of spaces,each possessing a special character whichdefines its importance in relation to the restof the campus. And most of the finest cam-puses have a definable centersuch as thefamous lawn at the University of Virginiaaplace where, if someone says to meet him orher "at the center of the campus," no furtherexplanation is necessary. But developmentrecently has eroded this spatial claritythrough construction of new mega-build-ings, or by piecemeal building-by-buildinggrowth, or by small parking lots placed nearbuildings, violating the inner spaces. Insome cases, the campus no longer has a cen-ter, or, as at very large universities, severalcentersfor the undergraduate, graduate,medical, and business school complexes.

Confusing circulation. A byproduct ofthe loss of spatial clarity is that circulation isconfusing to visitors, especially prospectivestudents and their parents. As more institu-tions try to satisfy the demands of variouscampus constituencies for easy access, theyhave built a hodge-podge of internal paths,roads, and parking areas. And good signage

is frequently missing (Brown 1992-93). Thiscan have negative consequences. Many pro-spective students and their families apply a"moment of truth" test, asking themselves,"Is this a college where I will feel comfort-able, where I would like to spend the nextfour years?" Institutions which do not have aclearly defined entrance, a campus map, ob-vious roads to important destinations suchas the admissions office and the campuscenter, may have lost an opportunity to cre-ate favorable first impressions.

Inconsistent use of materials and details.Without a campus landscape plan anddriven by the pressure to try new materialswith lower purchase and installation costs,campuses are increasingly ignoring long-term benefits, life-cycle costs, and aesthet-ics. The result is often a mish-mash ofelements and materials (wood, concrete,light metal, etc.). The outdoor appoint-mentswalkways, light fixtures, horticul-ture, benches, trash receptacles, signs,bollards, and moreshould have the sameconsistency of design and materials as thebuildings on campus.

Hard-to-maintain plantings. Institu-tions are now planting trees of the shorter-lived varietiesBradford pear trees,flowering crabapples, and the likethat areoften handsome flowering specimens butare poor long-term investments. Over 75percent of the trees planted on campus to-day have a life expectancy of less than 30years (see Figure 1). What's more, thesetrees have far higher maintenance needsthan do long-lived species. The new empha-sis on shrubs, flower beds, and unusualground covers also requires greateramounts of labor, fertilizers, pruning, water-ing, and attention.

Utilitarian parking spaces. To satisfydemands for in-close parking, many schoolsare simply paving over campus open space.Instead of considering parking spaces aspart of the campus landscape and subject tothe same values and standards, collegestend to view parking areas as a separate, un-related issue. Campus parking is essential;but it should complement the visual charac-ter of the campus, not violate that character.

What's the corrective?

We think the most effective way of halting theerosion of the campus landscape and its risingmaintenance costs is a two-part planningeffort. One is a new procedure we have devel-oped called the campus landscape assess-ment. The other is the more familiar campusmaster plan, but one that employs the samegood thinking about outdoor spaces as it doesto the location of new buildings.

The campus landscape assessment issimplicity itself. A small team of expert land-scape architects who appreciate the specialcharacter and needs of college and universitycampuses assesses the present character,condition, and maintenance schedules of aninstitution with an eye to three concerns: thecharacter and educational aims of the col-lege; the appropriateness, beauty, and func-tion of the landscape and its plantings; andthe costs of its upkeep. (The landscape asses-sors usually work closely with the campusarchitect or facilities director and the directorof grounds maintenance, or at a small collegewith the president or board of trustees.)

The campus landscape assessmentevaluates what is being done right and showshow to build on these strengths, and offers anaction plan to correct those practices that areinappropriate for the university and its tradi-tions, for the regional arboriculture and horti-culture, and the overall campus design. Italso suggests how the school can reduce its

Newer campus plantingslook like those aroundlarge suburban homes.

expenditures on the grounds upkeep. Inmost assessments, the appraisal, which usu-ally costs from $10,000 to $40,000 (dependingon campus size and complexity), pays for it-self in a few years by reducing managementand maintenance costs, as well as by prevent-ing costly mistakes.

For example, at a small, rural college inthe southeastern United States the archi-tects had proposed in their master plan six

An example of poorly done new landscaping. Secondary spaces are overembellished, and dozens ofplant specimens are used, increasing maintenance costs as well.

1 1 6

KEY TO AGE

50454035

rt 3025

170 20

15105

FIGURE 1.

Average Life Expectancy of Campus Trees

40 years after planting

25 years after planting

5 years after planting

YoshinoCherry

BradfordPear

ThornlessHoneyloaist

new buildings and renovations, each withelaborate student plazas. In the campus as-sessment that followed the master plan sub-mission, the assessors noted that thecampus gained its strength from its systemof lovely paths in a rural setting. The land-scape assessors pointed out that the pro-posed outdoor, paved plazas wouldcontradict the college's chief physical as-setits rural characterand might not beused by the students and faculty. The pla-zas would also cost an extra million dollarsor so, add to the college's maintenance bud-get, and probably require an additional em-ployee for upkeep.

At Virginia's James Madison Universitythe task of the campus landscape assess-ment was to "showcase" the campus betterwhile at the same time reducing the workforce for the grounds. The assessors ob-served that the university campus was com-posed of precincts, as defined by exposure tothe public and by use of the students andstaff. The assessment proposed that eachprecinct have customized design and mainte-nance standards according to its relative im-portance. So the main quadrangle would nolonger aspire to continuous floral exuber-ance which required labor-intensive upkeep,but would be restored to a grand lawn withformal hedges to reinforce the walkways and

WhiteOak

AmericanBeech

SugarMaple

complement the historic buildings. And themain road into the campus would become acanopied avenue parkway, with the currentplantings replaced with tall, long-lived trees,again requiring less maintenance.

The campus landscape assessment is adifferent animal from a campus masterplan. While the master plan guides futurecapital development with an emphasis onsites for future buildings, the landscape as-sessment focuses on the college's currentlandscape and its design, circulation, plant-ing, and maintenance practices. We believethe landscape assessment should precedeor go along with the master plan creation(Biehle 1991).

How does it work?The campus landscape assessment usuallytakes two to four months, but can take sixmonths or more for a major university. Wethink the process works best if it followssome steps we have found successful.

1. Analysis and inventory. The campuslandscape assessment should begin witha brief analysis of the college's historyand the factors that have affected itsgrowth, and of the special qualities, tra-ditions, architectural design, and educa-tional emphases of the institution.Interviews with institution leaders and

1 1 71 ir-) O.

representatives of key constituencies arehelpful to determine the principal valuesand most important goals of the collegeor university.Then the assessors should evaluate the

elements that make up the outdoor cam-pus: lawns, pavements and roads, fences,irrigation, trees, outdoor furniture, and thelike. Do they enhance the historic tradi-tions and current goals of the institution?Are they appropriate for the kind of highereducation offered, for the student clientele,for the buildings on campus? How well or-ganized are the spaces?

2. Arboriculture and horticulture appraisal.Trees play a central role in campus land-scape design. The assessment shouldnext examine the campus trees' condition,location, and species, yielding informationthat ensures the maximum survival of theexisting trees and that helps decide on re-placement or new trees. The same shouldbe done with the shrubs, grasses, andground covers. Are the plantings right forthe topography, soil, climate, and har-mony of physical appearance?

3. Circulation appraisal. The assessorsshould pay particular attention to thepaths for pedestrian and vehicular move-mentfrom jogging or bicycle trails totruck deliveries. Is the circulation clearand rational? Is the signage adequate? Dothe parking areas intrude and disrupt, ordo they fit into the landscape fairly well?

At Hampton-Sydney College's historiccampus, the campus core had in the pasthalf century been covered with a scatteringof small parking lots to place parking closeto each building. An assessment studyfound that most faculty, staff, and studentsparked their cars for the entire day, thenwalked or biked around campus. So the col-lege created long-term parking lots on thecampus periphery and restored the hand-some campus core.

4. Maintenance and management. We findthat maintenance of the existing land-scape is often the most overlooked com-ponent in campus planning and design.The assessors should be certain to re-

view the maintenance schedules, staff,equipment, and decisionmaking. Whodirects and manages the landscaping ofthe campus, and how well is it beingdone? How much is spent, and how canmaintenance costs be reduced?

5. Guidelines and alternatives. The land-scape assessment should then developsome guidelines for the college's staff tofollow, guidelines and standards that willbest arrange spaces, circulation, andplantings, given the institution's mission,history, and strategic emphases. And thelandscape architects should provide twoor three alternatives the college can con-sider for maximally protecting and en-hancing its appearance and functionality.

The campus landscapeassessment is a differentanimal.

Each alternative should include the ap-proximate costs in both dollars andstaff/crew time.

6. A preferred action plan. To be fully re-sponsible, the campus landscape asses-sors should suggest their preferredaction plan. It should be concise, practi-cal, and directive, with clear and specificpriorities and recommendations, time-tables, costs, and advice about whoshould be responsible for what. It willprobably correct or compensate for land-scaping inadequacies and faults, andshould point to attractive new arrange-ments that will augment the school'seducational programs and provide posi-tive visual memories for the graduates.

We are of course prejudiced becausewe are landscape architects. But we believea college or university should make all ofits physical plant as functional, rational, andappealing as it can by integrating superiorarchitecture and superior landscape design(Sensbach 1991). The American collegecampus is a unique development in world

architecture. As architectural historian PaulVenable Turner wrote (1985, p.6),

To a remarkable degree, college planning inAmerica has an independent history, evolving itsown forms and producing its own innovations,less subject to European fashion than otherfields of architecture and design...As a result,[the American campus] has been the laboratoryfor perhaps the most distinctively American ex-periments in architectural planning.

The campus landscape is an integralpart of the design of these "distinctivelyAmerican" academic enclaves. It is also asomewhat separate entity, worthy of thesame careful design and preservation asthe buildings within it. Indeed, campus

The American campus isa unique development inworld architecture.

landscape architecture might help furnish amodel for design in the rest of society. Inthe words of San Francisco Chronicle archi-tecture critic Allan Temko:

It is on the campus, as virtually nowhere elsein the country, that architectural permanence,rational organization of diverse activities, gen-erous provision of open space and a liberalrespect for the arts and sciences...can beseen acting together to provide an. organicmilieu for civilized life.... The campus, at itsfinest, embodies principles of design whichmay be fruitfully employed throughout ourcivilization ( Temko 1993, p. 137).

REFERENCES

Biehle, J. 1991. Successful Master Planning. Plan-ning for Higher Education 19 (4): 21-26.

Boyer, E. 1987. College: The Undergraduate Experi-ence in America. Harper & Row.

Brown, R. 1992-93. Improving Campus Signs. Plan-ning for Higher Education 21 (2): 1-6.

Sensbach, W. 1991. Restoring the Values of Cam-pus Architecture. Planning for Higher Education20 (1): 7-16.

Temko, A. 1993. No Way to Build a Ballpark andOther Irreverent Essays on Architecture.Chronicle Books.

Turner, P. V. 1984. Campus: An American PlanningTradition. MIT Press.

New developments are changing the faceof campus grounds.

Approaches toContemporary CampusLandscape DesignCarol Johnson

uch has been written aboutcampus master planning,the arrangement of build-ings on a campus. The fab-ric of the landscape onwhich the buildings are

placedthe surfacing, site furniture, circula-fion routes, and vegetationusually receivesless attention. Yet in the final analysis, it isoften the landscape fabric that makes a cam-pus truly memorable. Particular campus fea-tures are frequently the first thing loyalalumni and alumnae mention when discuss-ing their fondest memories of college.

If the Greek idea of the total personcan be characterized as a sound mind in asound body, then the modern idea of a total

Carol Johnson is president of Carol Johnson As-sociates, landscape architects and environmen-tal planners in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Agraduate of Wellesley College, with an M.L.A.from Harvard, she has worked as a town plannerand taught at Harvard's Graduate School of De-sign from 1966 to 1973. Her firm has wonawards for its landscape designs for cities, build-ings, and colleges. A frequent lecturer at U.S.universities, she is Civic Design Commissionerfor Boston and a trustee of the Hubbard Educa-tional Trust (to further education in landscapearchitecture).

college or university might be said to beoutstanding classes in an outstanding land-scape. Every institution should create andmaintain noteworthy campus areas, andemploy a team that includes a landscapearchitect, the campus planner, administra-tive and maintenance staff, and faculty andstudent advisors. Each college can, andshould, provide a unity of landscape treat-ment in the smallest paths, parking areas,and entry spaces to give its environment asense of seamless order and harmony.Simple things like consistent lighting, pave-ments, signage, and edging clarify an instit-ution's image and add delight for studentsand professors.

Also, the condition of its landscapeshould represent the college's devotion tostewardship of the land. Ill kept, degradedareas for informal car parking orfor dumps,and eroded paths send a message to thepublic about the values of the college lead-ers. Universities still represent ideal com-munities as few places do, and should be inthe forefront of ecologically sensitive andsustainable management practices such asreuse of materials, planting for climate con-trol, reuse of surface run-off, and erosioncontrol. Universities should be sensitive totheir neighborhoods too. Good landscape

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design can help handle lighting, screening,land use, and circulation problems, whichsometimes anger nearby property owners.

However, putting good landscape de-sign and maintenance into practice thesedays can result in dilemmas. For example,a university may develop an in-house nurs-ery to grow trees, shrubs, and flowers forcheerful campus displays. But maintainingan in-house nursery may make the cost oftrees more expensive than purchased trees

Universities still representideal communities.

from an outside nursery. Likewise, it is usu-ally cheaper to buy chrysanthemums eachfall than attempt to plant and maintain thempermanently. It may be helpful to look atthree central elements in campus land-scape design: hard surface areas, site furni-ture (benches, lights, kiosks, securitydevices, signs, bicycle racks, trash recep-tacles, fences), and soft surface areas.

Those hard surfaces

A key campus landscape ingredient is thebalance between hard paved surfaces andsoft, grassy surfaces. At urban universities,where soft areas are limited, the soft sur-faces require special treatment for maxi-mum impact. At rural campuses the balanceis often affected largely by the requirementsof daily usage, especially the need for paths.

The width and surface of pedestrianpaths is an issue.

For example, the frequency of use of apath across campus may suggest that it benarrow. But in colder climates where snowclearing equipment is used, the paved areamay need to be wider. Even in warmer cli-mates, the increasing use ofmaintenancevehicles may require extra pavement.Maintenance vehicles also require turningradii or their tires will scar the lawns at thecorners. The new practice of using golfcarts, as many institutions now do, reducesthis problem, but sometimes materials

must be transported by a larger vehicle. Ithink it is desirable to pave these turningradii in a hard material different from thepath, such as cobblestone, preserving thevisual character of the path.

At one time stonedust was acceptablefor little-used paths; it is inexpensive, slowswater run-off, and can be plowed of snow.However, mechanical wheel chairs some-times get the tiny pieces of stone caught intheir motors, so most paths are now pavedin hard surface materials.

The Americans with Disabilities Act of1990 mandates ramps for all buildings, sothis has become another hard surface con-cern. The legislation requires that rampsbe three feet wide, sloped no more thenone foot every 12 feet, with handrails. But iframps have a slope of one foot every 20feet, no handrails are necessary. Rampswithout handrails are easier to maintainand look less cluttered, so installing thelower pitched ramps are preferable. What-ever the pitch, the exact connection ofthese ramps, especially to historic collegebuildings, poses a problem of enormousproportions. A ramp structure at grade,separate from the building but sympatheticwith its materials and style is very difficultto design. The simplest, and most naturaltreatment may seem to be raising the gradearound the building, but the bases onwhich the architectural character of thebuilding is established may be covered.The best solution for this new hard surfaceis usually some compromise that providesnew handicapped access, improves entryfor the general public too, and preservesthe architectural integrity to the greatestextant possible.

What kind of paving and edging mate-rials are best for campus paths and drives?Characteristically, many universities havepaved walkways in either Portland cementor bituminous concrete, except for specialplaces. In northern climates, bituminousconcrete surfaces have a tendency toheave, and tree roots break its surface eas-ily. The alternative, cement concrete, ismore expensive but more permanent, un-less considerable salt for melting snow is

121 4

applied on it. Some campuses have con-crete pavers or brick on their walkways, butbudget constraints often limit their use.

Material

Bituminous ConcretePortland CementConcrete PaversBrick

Cost per square foot

$1.50

3.50

10.00

12.00

Whatever the paving material, findingthe desirable width of main campus walk-ways is a puzzling problem. No matter howwide the path in intensively used areas, astrip of worn grass or broken plants nearlyalways appears just outside the pavementedge. Widening paths further is not the so-lution. A low pedestrian curb at the edge ofthe walk does seem to help. Raising the softsurface beside the walkways also seems tohelp control student movement.

In the past two decades more roadsand larger parking areas have encroachedon the campus landscape. At many urbancampuses parking garages have creatednew pedestrian movement and desire lines.At rural campuses surface parking lots areused, often at the outer edges of the cam-pus. But security concerns have begun tolimit the use of remote parking lots. If thedemand for parking is allowed to expandfurther, the typical college greens will beseriously impacted. Universities should ex-

plore alternatives to providing ever-increas-ing parking spaces.

Planning the campus furniture

Few colleges or universities have site furni-ture (benches, fences, signs, etc.) that isharmonious with the campus architectureand compatible with the values of the insti-tution. The site furniture is usually the re-sult of accretions over time and of variedsolutions to particular needs: a sign forsome building, lights for a special area, or asingle outdoor telephone station.

Colleges ought to bring order to theprofusion of site furniture. But the budgetimplications of such an initiative are huge.An opportunity often presents itself, how-ever, when a large new projecta new li-brary, science building, or field houseisabout to be constructed. In designing thefurniture outside the new building, campus

Colleges should bring orderto their site furniture.

planners should use the occasion to designa complete renewal of all the campus furni-ture. Then, as money becomes available aphased implementation of the overall sitefurniture system can be carried out.

Before (left) and after photographs of an area at Babson College after a street was discontinued.

X25122

All the elements of site furnitureshould be considered simultaneously:lights, security devices, bicycle racks, mes-sage kiosks, signs, benches and tables,bollards (posts), trash receptacles, fencesand rails. Steel supports for benches andtrash receptacles ought to be similar tosteel members used for fences and bikeracks; or wooden benches should resemblewooden light poles and sign supports.

Some institutions prefer to make someof the site furniture in-house, using cata-logue items as models and modifying them.Others prefer to buy their benches fromone supplier to achieve uniformity. I thinkcolleges should try to build sitting or perch-ing walls. They accommodate more people,avoid visual clutter, and decrease mainte-nance. Some campuses have chosen to in-troduce singular furniture such as thewooden benches, stage, and platforms builtby students at Duke University's East Cam-pus. These may not be elegant but they area special student expression which enlivensthe campus. The benches sit in front of theresidence halls where the landscape hassuffered from very intensive use. A morethoughtful, organized landscape treatment,using edges, pavement, and walls to protectthe plants, would give this Duke campusarea a better look.

Student barbecues are becoming a spe-cial landscaping problem. At Duke studentspull wheeled barbecues out of the dormito-ries, requiring special paths for this use. AtWilliams College students have erectedbuilt-in barbecue structures. As barbecuestructures become more prevalent, design-ers should site them carefully and surroundthem with a well-designed landscape treat-ment, including structures for studentcooks to set down their food and utensils.

To protect pedestrian areas from auto-mobile traffic the use of bollards (thick,wharf-like posts) and gates are often neces-sary. If access for fire-fighting equipment isimperative, the bollards must be removable.In Europe electronically powered bollardswhich descend into the pavement automati-cally are becoming common, but they are asyet seldom used in the United States. An

even simpler device, and one less disruptedby ice and snow, is a simple chain attachedto two permanent bollards. The lock whichkeeps the chain in place can be cut by fire-

Many colleges now askfor well-lit campuses.

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men who have tools for emergencies. But itis essential that the chain be completely vis-ible at night. Bollards of wood or metal canbe attractive sculptured elements with thecollege colors or signage.

Trash receptacles are also becomingmore prevalent, even on the smallest cam-puses. The receptacles are essential, ofcourse, near snack bars or barbecue areas;but they are important at many places forthis fast-food, throw-away generation. Re-ceptacles are hard to make attractive, butusing materials and designs similar to thatof other site furniture can help. A particu-larly difficult item is the rapidly growinguse of ash urns just outside buildings ascampus buildings become smoke-free. An-other new and difficult item is the largedumpsters many campuses use to collectmaterials to be recycled. However, by de-signing special areas in the landscape, withgood access, well-paved floors, and sur-rounding planting, colleges can accommo-date even the largest dumpsters nicely.

The new security problem

One area where campus landscape deci-sion making has become newly critical isthat of security. Where once suburban andrural colleges would request architects toprovide restrained outdoor light levels toretain the sense of being in the country,many of the same colleges now ask for well-lit campuses. A skilled landscape architectcan design a campus lighting system whichgives good visibility without glare and onethat has a character different from that ofan urban area. But this requires lots ofteamwork and a thorough examination ofoptions, and installation of trial areas usingdifferent lamps, refractors, and bulbs.

123 126

A good lighting system is ineffective,however, if dense undergrowth and shrub-bery are allowed to obscure views. The se-curity problem thus compels a regularcampus review of overgrown plantings.Plantings need to keep security in mind.Even with open, well-lit areas, many institu-tions find it necessary to install emergencytelephones along remote campus paths.The visual character of these telephones isintrusive; and access to these telephonesby police cars is desirable, which usuallymeans costly new pavement.

Two pieces of site furniture are particu-larly important in determining the charac-ter of the landscape: lighting and signage.The two can make a huge difference to anycampus' appearance.

Where campuses have a well-estab-lished architectural character, a harmoniousdaytime appearance of light fixtures is al-most as important as their night-time func-tion. Fixtures which harmonize with theexisting architecture yet are flexible in theirway of distributing light are of particularvalue. I am thinking of fixtures with shieldsto diminish light on one side and increase iton the other to be used along paths nearbuildings. Certain fixtures which are idealfor an area of historic buildings may notwork so well near contemporary buildings,and in such cases two types of fixtures, simi-lar in some way, may be acceptable.

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.1 A-17i.Lighting on campus has become more impor-tant, and lighting fixtures should be similarand appropriate for the architecture.

Next to the quality of vegetation, thequality of signage is the most important as-pect of overall campus appearance.' A unifiedgraphic system with standard colors is essen-tial. So is the use of similar materials andshapes for all signs. Entrance signs; "you arehere" maps, and kiosks for special eventsnotices should be available on every campus.

What should be done about donatedsculptures, memorial benches, and plaquesto beloved teachers or famous students? Aproliferation of these can create visual clut-ter and maintenance problems. On theother hand, if they are properly placed and

Grass has come underparticular scrutiny.

landscaped they can add pockets of interestto a campus. Each college should have apolicy about memorials in the landscape.The campus landscape master plan shouldidentify areas where memorial benches,plaques, and sculptured elements would bedesirable. For example, Wellesley Collegehas a policy that the Trustees' GroundsCommittee must approve all campus me-morials, and all plaques must be handcarved in stone. Students can thus studythe graphic artistry of various stonecarvers.

Vegetation for intellectuals

Outstanding planning for the soft surfaceareasgrass lawns, flower beds, shrub-bery, trees, gradingcontributes hugely tothe beauty of a campus. But in recent years,skilled horticultural grounds people havebecome rarer on campus, and environmen-tal concerns have made sustainable land-scape practices a goal at a growing numberof campuses. Grass has come under par-ticular scrutiny. Some studies suggest thatthe resources and equipment to maintainlovely lawns exceed that needed to main-tain shrub beds. Yet lawns are a historic,distinctive feature of American college anduniversity campuses?

There are two aspects of this dilemma.One, where landscape architects in the past

127124BEST COPY AVAILABLE

have planted beds of native shrubs on cam-pus to reduce resource depletion, thesebeds have sometimes been replaced withlawns. The reason? Shrub beds need regu-lar weeding, pruning, and mulching, and attimes watering. This must be done byknowledgeable horticulturists, for whomother work must be found in winter. With-out such people, shrub beds fill up withweeds and the shrubs lose their shape.Still, if colleges will commit themselves to

It takes courage and love ofnatural surroundings tosupport landscape funding.

employing skilled horticultural workers,then more campus areas can be plantedwith native shrubs, ground covers, andflowering trees instead of grass.

Two, there is little doubt that outdoorrooms of grass enhance the quality of stu-dent life. But on rural campuses, collegeplanners can seed some grassy areas withwild flowers and create low-maintenancemeadows. Also, campuses can compostgrass clippings and leaves so there is sym-biosis between the shrubs which needmulch and grass which produces it.

Some universities have an arboretumor endowed botanic garden. Other cam-puses, such as Davidson College, are arbo-retums in themselves. The grounds haveplant identification tags to make theplantings educational, and the visual quality

of this campus makes it a most satisfyingenvironment for living and learning. Thecharacter of the tree planting is simple, or-dered, and strong. But all campuses withordered tree layouts have difficulty main-taining their imageable landscape becausetrees get old or diseased and die. Tree re-placement planning is a must. This hasbeen especially vital for campuses withAmerican elms, which are dying off fromDutch elm disease. At Andover Academypin oaks were planted between each elm. Itis important that universities not plant asingle tree species everywhere, althoughrows and allees of similar trees should notbe ruled out.

Cases in mind

To illustrate some new directions in cam-pus landscape design and some new ap-proaches, I will comment on a few cam-puses with which I am quite familiar.Wellesley College has a program for thereuse of bituminous concrete. When exist-ing parking areas are resurfaced, the bitu-minous concrete is ground up in place,compacted, and then used as a sub-baseupon which the new pavement is laid down.If the bituminous concrete surface is re-moved from the campus, Wellesley peoplereturn it to the asphalt plant to be recycled.Babson College and Williams College areemploying this same technique for reusingbituminous material.

Both Babson and Wellesley have com-post and leaf mold areas which provide or-ganic materials for new plantings, as many

Before and after photos of Wellesley College's Shakespeare House, showing the importance ofregular pruning and clearing on campus.

128125

other colleges also do these days.Wellesley rents a screener once a year andmakes its own loam, using a mixture ofpoor soil stripped from project areas, streetsweepings that contain grit spread onsnowy roads and pavements in winter, andcomposted leaves and grass clippings.

New campus lighting is increasingly acollaborative effort. At Williams, the im-proved lighting was developed by students,administrators, staff, and the landscape ar-chitect. My firm met in the evening with stu-dents and measured the light levels untilthe students approved. The final plan pro-vides an average .5 footcandles with a .25minimum on traveled ways, in parking ar-eas, and along walkways; and we eliminatedfloodlights. We found that one particularlyinteresting version of the typical fixture is alight mountable at the corners of buildingsto light two sides with just one fixture.

One last observation. Colleges and uni-versities go through frequent changes. Arelocation of the students' mailboxes refo-cuses student desire lines. A change in thelocation of the Student Center will requirenew access for services and new student cir-

1 9

culation routes. Landscape design shouldtherefore be continuous, not infrequentlyepisodic. Each change means that the oldsites and traffic routes need to be recon-figured. And each change should be madeas part of the larger vision or landscape or-ganization that creates a distinctive outdoorspace for your college or university.

In the final analysis, campus adminis-trators, trustees, and leading faculty mustmake a commitment to have a high-qualitycampus landscape. And it takes courageand a love of handsome natural surround-ings to support fundingfor the landscapewhen there are so many other campusmonetary needs. But only in this way can acampus build and maintain a natural envi-ronment that nurtures the scholarly life.

ENDNOTES

1. See Robert Brown, "Improving Campus Signs,"Planning .for Higher Education. 21 (2): 1-6.

2. For information on this subject, Richard Dober,"About Campus Lawns,"Planning forHigherEduca-tion. 20 (4):17 -22.

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As universities become more complex and open to thepublic better signage is a must.

Improving CampusSignsRobert Brown

Campus signage is often one ofthe weakest design elementswe see when we drive into, orwalk around, the grounds of acollege or university. Thoughfinding one's way around an

unfamiliar campus is essential for a visitor,a prospective student and her or his par-ents, new students, and guest faculty andlecturers, most college planners and admin-istrators do not seem to understand theimportance of wayfinding signs and build-ing identifications. Good campus signage isseldom a design priority.

For many academic institutions therestill appears to be an attitude that clearlymarked signs are not necessary or appro-priate on campus, perhaps because signsare regarded as too corporate or commer-cial. Academics seem to believe that peopleshould write ahead for a campus map orsimply ask directions when they arrive. Or,possibly some administrators look back to

Robert Brown is director of graphic design atSasaki Associates, a leading planning, landscap-ing, and design firm based in Watertown, Mas-sachusetts. A graduate of Rhode Island Schoolof Design, he directs the firm's print and envi-ronmental graphic work Sasaki Associates hasdone master planning, landscape architecture,and design for U.S. colleges and universities for40 years.

Oxford, Cambridge, the University of Paris,or the University of Salamanca and see noprecedent for campus-wide signage.

For some others, signage is consid-ered to be the responsibility of the archi-tects of the buildings. A few architects doaddress signage for both the interior andexterior of their buildings; others prefer nosignage or small, unobtrusive signs. But anarchitect is not likely to be asked to contrib-ute to a comprehensive signage programfor the entire campus.

But times are changing. Today, mostinstitutions have large adult education pro-grams with nightly or weekend visitors.There are more foreign students and morefirst-time ethnic college-goers. There aremore visiting faculty, speakers, artistic per-formers, and lectures and concerts for thepublic. Admissions has become more criti-cal, so prospective students coming to lookover the campus require artful guidancethrough signs. Also, universities havegrown more complex, larger, and more inneed of directions and identifications. Thentoo, there is a burgeoning interest in TQMand serving and helping the clients. So bet-ter signage now seems imperative.

Regardless of past attitudes, therefore,colleges and universities that wish to re-main competitive and to serve the publicand their students must now communicate

127 130

more effectively with their constituencies.Excellent campus signs are one of the bestways to convey both image and informationto a broad audience.

New world of environmental design

When I graduated from design school andbegan work as a graphic designer on archi-tectural projects, I found there was little re-spect for the kind of knowledge graphicdesigners could bring to built projects.Many architects felt capable of designingall aspects of a projectfrom landscapecomponents to interiors and furniture, andfrom outdoor signs to room identifications.

But in recent years the profession ofarchitecture has been dividing into special-ties (Gutman 1988), and a new kind ofgraphic designer has emerged. These areindividuals whose interests and expertiseare applied to the design of informational,directional, orienting, and regulatory signsystems as well as to other forms of three-dimensional communication. They arecalled environmental graphic designers,and unlike print graphic designers and signmakers and contractors, they are usuallyfamiliar with the comprehensive signageneeds of universities, hospital, governmen-tal and nonprofit offices, large exhibits, ser-vice companies, and the like, and with

There still appears to be anattitude that signs are notnecessary orappropriate.

signage planning and the entire design pro-cess. This process includes environmentalanalysis, preparation of sign messageschedules, generation of sign alternatives,sign location, construction details, andsignage fabrication materials and techniques.

There is even a relatively new organiza-tion, The Society of Environmental GraphicDesigners (SEGD), devoted to providinginformation to designers and clients whowish to know more about environmental

design. When embarking on a campussignage program, institutions may find ithelpful to write SEGD to get the names offirms specializing in academic sign pro-grams. (SEGD, One Story Street, Cam-bridge, MA. 02138; (617) 868-3381.)

Planning for better signs

The impact of a good sign program can besignificant. Besides helping to create a con-sistent and attractive image of the institu-tion, and saving time and labor by having astandard look for signs, a good sign pro-gram can expand pride and improve mo-rale. For example, our firm recentlycompleted the first phase of a signageproject that had to be halted because of the

Signage can be introducedin phases over two or threebudget years.

college's shortfall of resources. The stu-dents, however, were so pleased about thenew signs that were installed that they allo-cated student government funds to allowthe signage project to continue. Admis-sions officers and educators hardly need tobe reminded of the evidence that the physi-cal appearance of the campus is often asimportant in the decision to enroll at a col-lege as the quality of the institution's educa-tional programs.

If a university is considering installingfirst-rate signs, an early question is nearlyalways, "How much will it cost?" This is adifficult question to answer simply. A con-sultant friend of mine responds with an-other question, "How much does a newhouse cost?" She points out that just ashouse construction costs depend on its lo-cation, size, quality, and other factors, thecost of a signage program depends on thesize of the campus, the complexity of thesignage needs, the financial resourcesavailable, and other factors.

Still, based on Sasaki's experience with

128 131

numerous institutions, I offer some usefulestimates in Table 1. For institutions withconstricted financial resources, the signageprogram should be introduced in phasesover two or three budget years: analysis,design format, color, and placement deci-sions in budget year one; fabrication in yeartwo; and installation in year three.

Like much else in higher education,good planning is essential for an outstand-ing and widely accepted signage program.But frankly, the planning phase is the mostchallenging aspect of a signage program.Development of a signage program in-volves not only directional information andsigns for individual buildings but also aes-thetics and image, and campus persons of-ten have quite variedand sometimesfierceviews about how the campusshould look. In signage many people re-gard them as amateur experts. Argumentsabout whether the signs should be quietand unobtrusive or colorful and bold, oldstyle or modern, wood or metal, Garamondtypeface or Helvetica, and using theschool's athletic team colors or, say, grayand white, can produce heated meetingsabout the proposed campus signs.

As a rule, therefore, I encourage eachinstitution to assemble the smallest pos-sible decision-making group to work withthe environmental graphic designer. Butthe group must include the key individualsresponsible for communication on campus,persons who can consult subgroups andimportant constituencies, as well as includethe facilties planner of the college.

Wide communications is imperative inthe planning and development stage. Once,our firm had gone so far as to produce pro-totypical mockups for each sign type forreview and approval. Suddenly, importantindividuals on campus appeared who werenot satisfied with the design on themockups. We learned that the signage

In signage many peopleregard themselves asamateur experts.

committee members never informed theirconstituencies or superiors about the de-sign and review progress. This created adifficult situation for the vice president foradministration and the president, and causedbad will toward the signage program. Theadvance planning must include broad consul-tation, frequent information sessions, and thepresentation of design options.

Elements of good sign design

A good campus signage program has sev-eral basic elements. If planners understandwhat these elements are it makes the de-sign, placement, and implementationeasier. Most important of all is a signagemaster plan that nicely reflectsand evenenhancesthe nature and essence of a col-lege or university, its values, and its long-range goals. A great sign program is onethat is perfectly fitting; the signs signify

TABLE 1

Estimated Costs of a Campus Signage Program

Size of the Institution Designer's Fee Fabrication Costs Total

500 to 3,000 students $20,000-30,000 $60,000-90,000 $80,000-120,000

3,000 to 10,000 students $30,00060,000 $90,000. 150,000 $120,000-210,000

over 10,000 students $60,000100,000 $150,000-300,000 $210,000-400,000

129 132

what the institution is really like. (That'swhere the disagreements enter, becausemany on a campus have different viewsabout what the college is really like, or whatit should become.)

The sign format. The most basic com-ponent of a sign program is its format,meaning its shape, size, and proportions.The format itself can convey a modern or atraditional image. A modern format mightlook strange at institutions such as the Uni-versity of Virginia or William & Mary justas a colonial format might look unusual atWashington's Evergreen State College orthe University of California at Santa Cruz.

Campuses should not mix sign formats,even though they may be tempted to put adifferent sign format in front of the historicOld Main building from that in front of thenew Arts Center. (See Figure 1.)

Fabrication Materials. Careful selec-tion of appropriate materials out of which tomake the signs is essential. Traditional signformats should be constructed of wood orstone, or steel carefully handled, whilemodern signs are often made of aluminum,fiberglass, or plastic. Some materials con-note tradition, others convey contemporarylife. Knowledgeable environmental graphicdesigners are not only well versed in the

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Modern

Figure 1. Sign formats.). 3 3

130

aesthetics of materials but also familiarwith fabrication techniques that will pro-duce signs that are economical and durable.

Typestyle. Many colleges and universi-ties use a specific typeface for their station-

ary, publications, and vehicles. (Think ofthe gothic type of the New York Times and

Signs signify what the insti-tution is really like.

the Chicago Tribune mastheads or the mod-

ern sans serif type of airlines such as SwissAir and United Air Lines.) In some casesthe familiar typeface of the stationary maynot be suitable for signs because of poorlegibility, as in the case of a script typeface.Signs need to bequickly and easily readable.

An environmental graphic designercan help a college select a proper typefacefor the signs. Typefaces have character.Some, like Caslon, suggest colonial times;others, like Franklin Gothic, look modern;and others appear 19th-centuryAmerican,chic-urban, rustic, etc. Once a typeface hasbeen selected and approved, it should beused throughout the entire signage pro-gram to create a consistent image.

The Graphic Layout. The nextdecisionto make is how the graphic elementsthe

name of the institution, the name of thebuilding or the directional information, therules or borders, and the possible inclusion

of the institution's seal or logotypewill bearranged on the signs. (See Figure 2.) How

these elements are arranged on the signhelps determine the look of the sign sys-tem, and can enhance or frustrate the over-all aesthetic. For example, traditional signsfrequently have borders, contemporarysigns seldom do. Again, whatever relation-ship of the graphic elements is decided upon,

that layout should be employed for each sign.Colors of the Sign. Colleges and univer-

sities generally have their school colors. Inmost cases these colors are the logical onesto use for the signs. However in some situ-ations where the school's colors do not of-

fer sufficient contrastpink and white,

Typefaces have character

yellow and white, or dark green andblacka substitution of one of the colorsmay be necessary. Also, when there is a hi-erarchy of information to be conveyed atsome locations, it may be useful to add athird color.

Location of the Signs. Part of any goodsignage master plan is an analysis of wheresigns are needed and exactly where they

Figure 2. Alternative graphic layouts for signs. The arrangement ofgraphic elements seems more

harmonious in the sign at the left

131 134BEST COPY AVAILABLE

should be located. Here the environmentalgraphic designer, usually a stranger to thecampus, can be a special help in locatinginformational and directional signs, whilethe facilities planners and campus commu-nications experts, who are more knowl-edgeable about the campus, can help locatethe identity and regulatory signs. Position-ing signs in a consistent manner in relation

Good signs are a mark ofcourtesy.

to building entrances, paths and walkways,street furniture, etc. is important for a suc-cessful signage program. For example, theoptimum position for a building identifica-tion sign is to the right of the door, and thisshould be done for all buildings. (Figure 3.)

The new law

In 1992, Congress passed the Americanswith Disabilities Act. While the majority ofthe Act deals with architectural require-ments, there is a section that discusses newsignage requirements. Most of these re-quirements do not regulate exteriorsignage, but the impact on signs insidebuildings is considerable.

Most colleges and universities willneed to redo their interior signs in the nextfew years, especially those which identifypermanent room spaces. These room signsmust contain both raised, tactile capital let-ter forms and Grade Two braille. Lettersmust be at least 5/8-inch high, and theremust be a strong contrast between signwords and the background field of color.The Society of Environmental Graphic De-signers has published an interpretive docu-ment on the ADA and its new signagerequirements.

The neglect of good signage, even byauthors who say they want to make the cam-pus "a work of art" (Gaines 1991), shouldcome to an end. Artful signs for newcomersto the campus can be nearly as important asthe campus open spaces, landscaping,building exteriors, and interior design. Ifnothing else, good signs are a mark of cour-tesy by the college's leaders and faculty toall who wander through their campus.

REFERENCES

Gaines, T.1991 The Campus as a Work of Art Praeger.

Gutman, R 1988.Architectural Practice: A Critical View.Princeton Architectural Press.

Figure 3. Location of building identification signs. Signs should uniformly be located to theright ofbuilding doors, not scattered in several locations, as on the two buildings at the right.

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How colleges can design buildings to fostercollegiality and productivity.

Campus ArchitectureThat Shapes BehaviorJames Burlage and Wendell Brase

As available land at colleges anduniversities becomes scarcer,institutions have been forcedto build taller buildingsfourto eight stories instead of twoor three. This has led to the

separation of people on campus by floorsbecause visits, conversations, and socializ-ing tend to take place more easily in horizon-tal spaces. Floors are more confining thanwalls. Persons will often walk 160 feet downthe hall to visit someone, but balk at goingup or down one flight of stairs to confer withsomeone closer.

This architectural situation exacerbatesthe already fragmenting academic life thatexists at all but the smallest colleges; and itcontributes to the increasing loss of commu-nity, friendship, and scholarly collaborationson campus. So the question arises: how canarchitects design for improved social inter-actions and better academic productivity inthe new mid-rise college buildings?

James Burlage, FAIR, is a principal of Burlage &Associates Architects of Sausalito, California,and an award winning architect who has de-signed 17 college and university libraries as wellas campus office buildings and scientific re-search laboratories, and has conducted masterplanning at institutions such as Stanford. He is agraduate of the University of Notre Dame whoreceived his M.Arch. from Columbia.

133

First, an assumption. We believe thatbuilt environments should serve people'sneeds, especially their social needs. To usthis is the essence of good architecture.Buildings should be more than masonrysculptures or imaginative flights of archi-tectural artistry. We can shape social be-havior to a certain degree by the spaces wecreate.

Social and intellectual exchanges arecritical for colleges and universities. Thisseems to be particularly so for the labora-tory-based sciences and engineering,where teamwork rather than the efforts ofisolated individuals is vital to research pro-ductivity. But the need for interaction is notlimited to the sciences and engineering.Academic and facilities planners shoulddemand that building renovations or newarchitecture pay attention to the enhance-ment of exchanges and visits among all fac-ulty, students, and staff. How can this beaccomplished?

Wendell C. Brase is Vice Chancellor Administra-tive and Business Services at the Univetsity ofCalifornia, Irvine. With nineteen years of experi-ence in the UC system (thirteen years at UC SantaCruz, six years at UCI), Mr. Brase is responsiblefor UC Irvine's administrative, financial, and busi-ness services including a comprehensive pro-gram of process improvement and administrativestreamlining (recently awarded first-place inNACUBO's Higher Education Awards Program).

Distance as an enemy

The most important factor in determining theamount of interaction in a workplace is thedistance that two people have to travel to con-verse. Several studies indicate that strong in-teraction is most likely within a 30-foot radius.One professor of engineering management,Thomas Allen of MIT, has shown that theprobability of exchanges drops close to an as-ymptotic level when the distance within abuilding between two individuals exceeds 50meters or so, or 165 feet (Allen 1977, 1980).

Planners should demandthat architecture payattention to the enhance-ment of exchanges andvisits.

So the first thing to keep in mind is the desir-ability of keeping university people close to-gether as much as possible. With mid-risebuildings this may actually be easier to dothan with low, sprawling structures.

For example, in the design of theSinsheimer Laboratories at the University ofCalifornia, Santa Cruz, the building's design-ers, ED-2 International of San Francisco,made use of this finding. Peter W. T. Wong,ED-2's principal-in-charge, and key sciencefaculty visited Dr. Allen at MIT and touredBoston area projects to study features thatpromote collaborative work and researchproductivity. As a result, the architects clus-tered all the faculty and staff offices at SantaCruz in a central mid-rise building, segre-gated from the laboratories, which are con-tained in two flanking wings. In the 50-meterenvelope (including the vertical transitiondistance), they carefully placed numerous"magnets" to pull people together: drinkingfountains, restrooms, mailboxes, bulletinboards, photocopiers, vending machines,and conference rooms. The "magnets" areimportant to draw faculty out of their officesor laboratories to the interactive node of thebuilding. And separating the offices from the

labs requires walking, and encourageschance meetings and communication.

Thomas Allen has said, "The Sins-heimer Laboratories building goes furtherthan any other university project I know inmaking use of the behavioral research thatlinks internal architecture to academic pro-ductivity." Wong and ED-2 Internationalhave recently extended the interaction-pro-ducing design concepts to laboratories atthe University of Minnesota and IBM.

Faculty who work in Sinsheimer Labsseem to like the building too. CharlesDaniel, a biology professor, reports, "Oneof my recent grant proposals would neverhave come about without the discussions Ihad with John Tamkun and Cliff Poodry[faculty in other specialties] ." Others usewords like "obvious" to attest to thedesign's benefits from tighter interactionpatterns. And Howard Wang, chair of thebiology department, says, "The more fre-quent interactions translate into new ideasfor research and different approaches forexperiments. You can actually feel the waythe building acts as an intellectual catalyst"

The four promoters of talk

We think there are four spatial arrange-ments that are most conducive to greaterfaculty, faculty-staff, and faculty-studentmeeting and exchanges:

1. public spaces

2. functional rooms3. support spaces4. circulation

Public spaces. Nearly everyone knowsabout the town squares of European citiesor the village greens of East Coast towns inAmerica. These are the places where thepublic gathers. They unite a city, town, orvillage (Whyte 1980), allowing people toeat, talk, trade, stroll, or rest together.Some campuses also have quadrangles, in-ner courtyards, or central lawns borderedby patios where people gather.

Universities can provide such publicspaces for their mid-rise buildings, throughthe design of one of three kinds of publicspace. One means is through the location ofa new building adjacent to a campus space

134 13 7

that allows for the creation of an outdoorarea where faculty, students, and staff cangather, whether in a small park-like setting

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The other two kinds of public spaces area courtyard and an atrium. The building canbe a hollow square or U-shaped structurewith an inner courtyard containing a foun-tain, sculpture, trees, shrubbery, benches, orflowers. The courtyard is a more privaterealm than the "town" square beside a col-lege building, but it draws people togethereffectively too, as medieval cloisters andSpanish inner spaces do.

An atrium was an open courtyard inlarge Roman houses; but today the term isusually used to describe a covered courtyardor glazed winter garden inside a building.Modern atrium design incorporates specialwall enclosures, sunshading, ventilation de-vices, and subtle means of controlling tem-perature and humidity. The Ford Founda-tion's headquarters in New York City has astriking atrium, and Graham Gund placedone at the heart of Davidson College's VisualArts Center. (Gund and Dorsten 1994, p. 23).Atriums have become popular recently forlinking floor levels within a large interiorspace because they increase visual aware-ness between floorspeople can see bothhorizontally and vertically to the otherfloorsand help break the sense of enclo-sure. The building's users share views, light,noise, and smells and can gather easily in thecentral space.

Functional rooms. These are roomsthat allow faculty or other campus personsto carry out some task. Daily routines arefilled with such tasks. These include formalrooms such as lecture halls, laboratories,conference rooms, and libraries, and infor-

Magnets are importantto draw faculty out oftheir offices.,,;:,41&;4P,zaF Osag-N,Mre.:T4,:,riTC4ntaaig5.410t-vi

mal rooms such as cafeterias, lounges, ex-ercise rooms or gymnasiums, lockerrooms, and administrative offices. The loca-tion of these functional rooms can enhancemeetings, as can the rooms' shape, enclo-sures, scale, furniture, light, and views.

For instance, the Sinsheimer Laborato-ries have two-story conference rooms de-signed to function with either closed oropen doors, inviting unscheduled, sponta-neous use. Faculty have found these confer-ence rooms most useful when their use is

Atriums have become pop-ular for linking floor levels.

least structured, and meet there frequentlyfor impromptu discussions. One problem isthat students also find the conferencerooms attractive places in which to study ordiscuss academic assignments.

Support spaces. A majority of traffic in abuilding results from the movement to andfrom certain necessities during the day:restrooms, supply rooms, vending areas, in-formation display spaces, drinking foun-tains, coffee stations. What is common tothese support spaces is their opportunity toattract people. So their location and the de-sign of these spaces must be such that theyinduce conversations.

At Stanford University's Terman Build-ing the snack bar and lounge spaces were lo-cated in a highly trafficked area and created awonderful activity space. To get to therestrooms in the basement, persons had topenetrate this activity zone, further enhanc-ing the use of these support spaces. Also atStanford, in the Keck Building, the drinkingfountains, copy machines, coffee machines,bulletin boards, and writing boards were allsituated along the atrium corridor, pullingpeople into meetings and conversations infor-mally all day long. A unique device for draw-ing people together was the seismographmachine in Stanford's Mitchell Building. Dur-ing periods of ground tremors in California orelsewhere people on campus rushed to themachine. (It is probably the only crowd at-traction in the Mitchell Building.)

Moving people on campus

Circulation. The circulation spaces mayhave the greatest effect on how people per-

139136

ceive a campus building. Also, one's orien-tation to a building is highly dependent onher or his understanding of the circulationconfiguration. The paths connecting thevarious functions can promote or deter in-teraction. Circulation networks includeboth horizontal and vertical movement. Es-pecially important, the intersections andterminations of circulation paths are amongthe most active social spaces in a building.

Horizontal spaces are made more wel-coming to interaction if the corridors can besingle loaded, with office doors on only oneside of the corridor. Atriums or courtyardsfacilitate this kind of corridor. Doubleloaded corridors, with doors on both sideslike hotel corridors, have a strong institu-tional feel and retard social exchanges. Butcorridors have four faces, and the walls,floors, and ceiling can be manipulated to es-tablish greater variety and interest. Walls,for instance, can be punctuated with loungesand other open spaces. As for the largerhorizontal spaces such as the entrancelobby or a courtyard, these can be parti-tioned by columns or low walls to definemovement and by furniture and indoor land-scaping to create tidy interaction spaces.

Vertical circulation connecting the floorsof a building has become more important asuniversity buildings have increased in height

But stairs can be designed to be inviting andattractive, with large landings where pass-ersby can stop and converse. An especiallynice touch is if the landings have a view intoactive areas, perhaps through location opento an atrium space, to encourage persons topause and observe the building's users.

Elevators are of course necessary formulti-story buildings and for the disabled.But elevator speed can encourage movementup and down. And the lobbies in front of eachelevator entrance can contain bulletin boards,a few chairs for impromptu discussions, and

Campus architectureshould be grounded in theresearch on behavior

acoustics that permit informal comments andintroductions. As campus buildings shiftfrom low-rise to mid-rise, the importance offresh, imaginative design of vertical circula-tion cannot be overemphasized.

Robert Geddes, dean of Princeton's ar-chitectural school in the 1960s, once wrote:

There are limits of size for every group be-yond which friendships do not form...The fre-quency of involuntary, personal face-to-face

Cross-section of the office core building, with its atrium, at the Sinsheimer Laboratories at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz. The aim is to provide maximum exchanges among the faculty andbetween faculty and students.

137 1 4 0

contacts is one of the most important factorsin the formation of groups and informalfriendships. The layout has a direct bearingon the formation and maintenance of informalsocial groups. Circulation, as well as variousprogrammatic and support spaces, must bedesigned to facilitate interaction.

With the advent of more and more mid-rise buildings at colleges and universities,the necessity of designing spaces that en-courage and increase chance meetings, in-formal discussions, intellectual exchanges,and views of other persons at work has in-creased. Campus architecture should begrounded in the research on behavior, es-pecially intellectual work behavior; andmust make good social interaction and highproductivity a goal for its design.

REFERENCES

Allen, T. 1977. Managing the Flow of Technology.MIT Press.

Allen, T., Lee, an M. Tushman. 1980. R & D Perfor-mance as a Function of Internal Communica-tion, Project Management, and the Nature ofWork. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Man-agement.

Ching, F. D. K. 1979. Architecture: Form, Space,and Order. Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Consentini Associates and Architects Collabora-tive. 1985. Atriums: Four Case Studies. AIA Foun-dation.

Gund, G. and J. Dorsten. 1994. Art Buildings andIdeology. Planning, for Higher Education 23(1):15-23.

Whyte, W. 1980. The Social Life of Small UrbanSpaces. The Conservation Foundation.

141

BOOK REVIEW

Landscapes, Work, andPeopleA Sense of Place, A Sense of lime, by John Brinckerhoff Jackson. Yale University Press, 1994.205 pages. ISBN 0-300-06002-5.

Reviewed by George Anselevicius

hile John BrinckerhoffJackson taught the his-tory of the American land-scape at both Harvardand Berkeley, he used todrive his motorcycle be-

tween the two universities so he could expe-rience the countryside and explore itsbyways. This devotion to understanding theAmerican environment also prompted him topublish and edit Landscape beginning in1951, a journal that became one of the mostinfluential publications in its field.

Now the 85-year-old cultural geogra-pher and pioneer of landscape studies hascollected 14 of the essays he has writtenduring the past decade in A Sense of Place,A Sense of Time, a book which continueshis lifelong observations of and insightsinto the physical realities that surround usall. Jackson's fascination is with how the

George Anselevicius, FAIA, is professor emeritusat the University of New Mexico's School of Ar-chitecture and Planning, where he served asdean from 1981 to 1993. Previously he was chair-man of Architecture at Harvard's School of De-sign and at SUNY Buffalo and served as dean ofthe architecture school at Washington Univer-sity in St Louis. A graduate of Leeds School ofArchitecture in England, he has received sev-eral design awards for his architecture and haspublished numerous articles.

land we live on has been shaped by and forhuman needs, especially "the more popu-lar, more everyday symbols in the Ameri-can landscape." The book includes viewson tool sheds, small churches, trucks, gar-dens, mobile homes, and roads; and it con-tains black-and-white illustrations thatrange from a garage in New Haven to aZulu Pueblo dance.

Jackson's prose is elegantly lucid with-out pedantry and hyperbole. He spares usthe esoteric complexity and pretentious-ness that seem fashionable in much archi-tectural and literary writing and criticism atthis time. The footnotes are scarce, but theobservations are many, first-hand, and of-ten striking. Jackson prefers to study lifeand people directly as well as other schol-ars' articles and books.

Jackson is a 20th-century originalun-conventional with a no-nonsense concernfor the rich tapestry of humanity and na-ture. He is no model for romantic preserva-tionists. He sees history from the bottomup rather than from the top down. It is notthe landscape of fashionable thinking or ofbourgeois and aristocratic styles whichtend to emphasize leisure, pleasure, andpictorial beauty, but is a landscape that isregional and shaped without much pre-tense for the practical and commercial usesof the vast majority of working people. Jack-

1 391 4 2

son writes of places and times where ordi-nary people struggle weekly with the diffi-culties of living and making a living in theirsmall communities. To him, this gives ourlandscape its true meaning if not beauty.Yet he has only dismissal for Marxist work-ing class dogmas.

Nor is Jackson a model for the radi-cal environmentalists, most of whom, henotes, come from the upper-middle class.He confesses:

I have no great liking for wilderness and for-est, but like the majority of Americans I amfond of trees: individual trees, trees in rowsalong the street or in orchards, trees in parks.

I myself have no liking for the cultural anar-chy preached by the radical environmentalists.All too often their credo resembles that ofsome obscure and short-lived Christian heresyin which the cross would be interpreted as thesymbol of the dismembered forest tree...

He views the Sierra Club and other ra-bid environmentalists as producing "a bodyof anti-urban, anti-technological, anti-people, anti-history books and pamphlets,all anthrophobic, all urging us to worshipnature." Jackson sees people as an integralpart of the landscape, like birds; and hehonors the human work ethic and personswho labor hard to feed, clothe, and housethemselves and to find a little merriment,peace, and joy in a hostile world.

As for architecture, Jackson thinks it isbeing displaced by roads, highways, andairportsa new network of arteries to pro-vide accessibility.

Architecture no longer provides the impor-tant symbols. Architecture in its oldest andmost formal sense has ceased, at least in ournewest landscapes, to symbolize hierarchyand permanence and sacredness and collec-tive identity...A landscape tradition a thou-sand years old is yielding to a fluidorganization of space that we as yet do notentirely understand.

Roads, for him, are creations like build-ings, symbolizing freedom and providingnew connections between people. He seescars, trucks, and airplanes as a new humanresource. But he says the landscape ofroads, automobiles, and the ubiquitous and

democratic grids exposes a paradox: on theone hand a marvelous new mobility andflux, and on the other hand people's peren-nial need for stability, sense of belonging,and sense of place.

Gardens, trucks, and all that

A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time is organizedinto three parts. In part one, the author, wholives outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, offersfive essays about the harsh, dry landscape ofthe Southwest. He writes of the cultural tra-ditions, dwellings, and communities of theNative Americans and the Spanish settlers,and about the new face of the region whichincludes many mobile homes, now a promi-nent part of the landscape.

Part two is entitled "Environments."Here Jackson discusses how much ofAmerica and Europe has changed from awilderness to a land to support utilitarianneeds. It includes a superb essay on en-

Jackson's fascination iswith how the land hasbeen shaped by and forhuman needs.

closed "vernacular gardens," which are al-most "unknown in subtropical regions of Af-rica and Asia" He traces the development ofgardens from a vital source of food, herbs,and flowers "essential to the welfare and co-hesion of the family" to the contemporary"sterile display of close-cropped grass andfoundation greenery." The section also con-tains an essay on "Working at Home," lead-ing readers to assume it will be a discussionof computers and other devices. Far from it!J.B. Jackson is more concerned with work-ing-class families where the home is less aprivate refuge and more a resource for gen-erating income through auto repairs, uphol-stering, haircutting, or baking.

In the third part, "Towns, Cars, andRoads," Jackson's four essays address is-sues which I believe are as close to his heartas any roads, cars and trucks, America's use

140 143

of grids as a way to organize space, and thedifficulty Americans have finding a sense ofplace. He says,

The truth is, Americans are of two minds asto how we ought to live. Publicly we say harshthings about urban sprawl and suburbia, andwe encourage activity in the heart of town. Intheory...we want to duplicate the traditionalcompact European community...But at thesame time most of us are secretly pining for asecluded hideaway, a piece of land, a smallhouse in the country.

As a result he believes most of us getour "sense of place" largely from events, notbuildingsa graduation ceremony, a reli-gious revival service, a football game with atraditional rival, a country fair, dinners onSunday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

The average American still associates a senseof place not so much with architecture or amonument or a designed space as with someevent, some daily or weekly or seasonaloccurrence...What made the marketplace sig-nificant was not its architecture; it was theevent which took place there...It is our sense oftime, our sense of ritual, which in the long runcreates our sense of place, and of community.

Colleges in the landscape

What does Jackson's outlook mean for col-leges and universities? Colleges are both aplace of worklike a factory, monastery, orlarge office buildingand a place of retreat,

a landscaped park, an enclosed sanctuary.Campuses always need to plan both for in-dustry and productivity and for contempla-tion and memorable spaces that stimulateevents and life-shaping exchanges. If weagree with J.B. Jackson, colleges also needto design their academic years to have the

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Architecture no longerprovides the importantsymbols.age INgitif:ir

kind of social events that stick in ourmemories over a lifetime.

A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time linksthe god-given grandeur of the earth's land-scape with the fragile, man-made landscapeof working people who must fish, maketools, write books, and cook food in orderto survive. Without preaching, J.B. Jacksonreminds us of necessary and simple reali-ties. The book is a refreshing counterpointto much of the expressionistic elitism incontemporary architecture and divisive ide-ologies in modern society and academiclife. Jackson, who is a guru to some, givesno prescriptions but he continues to pointto the basics of life and work and to the is-sues which could lead to a more civilizedlandscape.

144

141

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