FEATURE
LET’S GET STICKY
Duncan Gunn from Architects GUNN Associates, looks at the planning considerations for learning spaces and student accommodation, as universities look to provide safe environments for students, staff and visitors in order to fully re-open after COVID-19.
Reimagining campus and student life after the pandemic means a shift in planning out learning spaces is required. Smart teaching, research and learning spaces will remain at the forefront of student experience, but as universities open once again, the re-planning of student facilities and accommodation is essential to keep students and staff safe. It’s been necessary to fast-track digital transformation and transform our places of working and learning.
Our work with Regent’s University London is an example of the journey from campus masterplanning to re- planning. It’s a campus in Regent’s Park, which has two listed buildings, and is part of the Crown Estate. We have assisted Regent’s over recent years in developing the Estate Masterplan, known as the Regent’s Blueprint. An estate masterplan is usually a vision for the future evolution of a campus, which details significant investments, and key development initiatives that ensure a first-class living, learning and study environment.
The overall brief originally centred around keeping the campus available to students when in structured teaching and private study, or simply connecting with fellow students and cohorts. When we first started to work on this masterplan, it involved a complete reshape of the way the campus worked, around a concept known as ‘sticky campus’. The sticky campus is a place where students want to spend time even when they have no formal lessons to attend. It embraces everything about students
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so that they can fully live amongst their learning. The objective is to create environments that provide students with collaborative learning facilities for both formally taught sessions and personal study.
We were able to build new and emerging space ideas around this ‘sticky campus’ concept by understanding the connections, relationships, and requirements of a wide group of stakeholders. In universities and higher- education establishments, hierarchies of needs exist between students, academics, staff members, and maintenance teams. They all want very different things when it comes to how they best use teaching, research and learning facilities.
This University estate is a group of mainly 1950s and 1960s buildings, many of which were repaired and added to, during the post war years. There are a number of older listed buildings too. The buildings present a rather solid structure of form and are difficult to change or adapt in anyway physically. Moving walls to create space is not an easy option at any time, and with a campus in use virtually all year round, windows of opportunity for heavy construction work are few and far between.
Experience and knowledge of the estate is valuable here; we already knew the size of different departments, how they relate to each other, and could plan and re-plan campus improvements accordingly.
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