Fancy Building, Fancy Science?

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

Not strictly higher education, but the blogger at Corante has some interesting perspectives on the design of science facilities, as do his commenters.

[I] kept wondering, where have I heard descriptions like this before? Oh yeah, the last time I moved into a new building. Actually, every single time I’ve moved into one, come to think of it. I was part of a gigantic corporate move in 1992 into what was billed as a “high-interaction facility”, which was nothing of the sort. And then at the Wonder Drug Factory, one of the new lab buildings had the whole research area behind a large glass wall; it was the first thing you saw when you came into the place. Unfortunately, since it was full of snazzy equipment, it became part of the standard tour for visitors (the combichem labs were largely abandoned by then), and the people working there sometimes felt like zoo animals. And my current building has the labs all around the outside walls, and a huge atrium in the middle of the building (to what purpose, no one is sure; it’s completely empty).

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

Taking the 'Institutional' Out of Institutional Design

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

Writing in College Planning & Management, Tim Culvahouse emphasizes some of the design practices and concepts campus planners could learn from the hospitality industry:

The challenges are significant. Campuses have grown incrementally over many decades, during which time changing architectural fashion has diluted the sense of campus unity and identity. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, dormitories and other campus buildings were often conceived more as riot-control devices than as places of comfort and nurture. And, as is always the case, expectations have risen faster than budgets.

Even the best campus planners and architects, immersed as they necessarily are in the familiar patterns of institutional design, rarely have the tools they need to address these heightened expectations. But their colleagues in hospitality design do. Design for hotels, resorts, spas and wellness centers, restaurants, and the like is steeped in the principles of a welcoming architecture and in the planning, construction, and budgetary efficiencies of an industry that has always depended on getting the most gracious bang for the buck. What are some of the things that campus architecture can learn from hospitality architecture?

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA - "Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats"
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

Strategic by Design: Iterative Approaches to Educational Planning

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

In the push for accountability, colleges and universities resort to simplistic, linear thinking when planning—an approach not well-suited to academia. In this well-regarded recent article from SCUP's Planning for Higher Education, Shannon Chance shares her view that:

[I]t is not enough for institutions to simply shed mechanistic and deterministic traditions—the greatest rewards will accrue to institutions that are conscientiously, and consistently, proactive.

Helpful precedents for non-linear planning already exist on university campuses that offer studio-based curricula. Planning strategies employed in architecture and other design programs incorporate non-linear, iterative, synthesizing processes. The studio format itself requires high-order thinking in even the earliest classes; as such, studio-based curricula can serve as models for preparing educational planners to develop and implement responsive, well-synthesized plans. Universities can—and should—learn from the design studio example. Doing so can improve their strategic planning processes and foster critical thinking and adaptive learning among students, faculty, and administrators in all fields.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA - "Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats"
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

What's Next? Next Year? 5 Years? Ten Years?

SCUP–45 offers LUs for AIA.

Metropolis magazine's current issue has a feature, What's Next: The 1–5–10 Issue, which is describes as "Predications for the future in the form of predictions—from the wildly speculative to the intensely pragmatic. Some snapshots from among the 15 topical categories:

• Preservation: 1, GPS for disaster recovery; 5, losing old trades skills; 10, laser-scan imaging
• Green Building: 1, On-site energy; 5, prism windows; 10, aerogel insulation
• Landscape Architecture: 1, New levees in New Orleans; 5, "City Sink," embedding carbon storage in existing infrastructure; 10, Soft coastal engineering
• Health Care: 1, Urban Zen; 5, Pleasant smells; 10, Nursebots

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

Another New Building by a Dead Architect?

Lawrence Biemiller of The Chronicle of Higher Education is a graduate of Franklin & Marshall College and he's not happy that there's another new building on that campus designed by an architect who's ben dead since 1938. (Sort of.) His post has stimulated a nice discussion on the Chronicle's Buildings & Grounds Blog:

There's no question that Franklin & Marshall has an attractive campus. Many of the buildings are appealing, and the ones that aren't—mostly on the residential quadrangle—are at least well landscaped. Klauder and his imitators get a fair portion of the credit for everything I like about the place. What nags at me, though, is the sense that the college is entrenching itself in the architectural past. The only truly modern building on the campus—the College Center, by Minoru Yamasaki—was completed just before my freshman year, and that was 1976. No academic department at a college of Franklin & Marshall's calibre would think of cutting itself off from advances in its field the way the college has cut itself off from advances in architecture.

New Academic Complex at the Polytechnic Campus of Arizona State University, Mesa, AZ

This "desert tough" facility "provides 245,000 square feet (22,800 square meters) of space for science, agribusiness, education, and humanities programs, with functions ranging from a black box theater to a hazmat facility" at a LEED Gold level (pending). There was a 22-month design and construction schedule and a budget of $104 million to work with. This article in Architecture Week has some great images.

Book: Opening Spaces. Design as Landscape Architecture

This is a 2003 book, but we have not previously reported on it. You can purchase it at Amazon here.

What resources are available for designing open spaces? How is it possible to exchange descriptions and concepts dealing with this? How can social and perceptual aspects be included and how can they be taken into account by the design process? What part is played by conditions deriving from nature? And what is more: how are locations and spaces created in the open air, how are paths routed and boundaries set, how are hard and soft materials used? This book identifies and analyses the elements that come together to create landscape architecture. The authors draw on their practical and theoretical experience to reveal the central components of design and the intellectual paths followed in the design process.

Healthcare Design Strategies

This resource shares some results from the 2009 Survey of Design Research in Healthcare Settings: The Use and Impact of Evidence-Based Design. It begins by defining "evidence-based design": 

There is often discussion about using the term “evidence-based design”-the availability and credibility of evidence, the use of the term as marketing jargon, and misperceptions about aesthetics versus tangible outcomes. The concerns about EBD are often a result of the term not being well defined, even within healthcare. The Center for Health Design defines EBD as the process of “basing decisions about the built environment on credible research to achieve the best possible outcomes” (The Center for Health Design 2008). As there can sometimes be a casual use of the term, the survey posed a question about the best definition of EBD. While the results indicate a familiarity with the formal definition, many also feel that EBD uses a combination of sources and information that may expand the “evidence” base beyond the rigor of what may be deemed credible research.

The Civic Value of a Bold Statement: New Academic Building at the Cooper Union

This New York Times reviewer, Nicolai Ouroussoff, really likes the new academic building at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art:

"And when we look back on this era, the new academic building will stand out with a handful of other designs — the New Museum, perhaps, and the renovation of Alice Tully Hall — as projects that we, as a city, can feel proud of. They leave you with the comforting thought that even in egotistical times, a spirit of generosity can assert itself."

Read more here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/arts/design/05coop.html?_r=1

The Case for Architectural-Design Competitions

Roger K. Lewis argues in the Chronicle for Higher Education;

"A well-publicized design competition is especially beneficial for universities. It allows them to enhance fund raising and stimulate design consciousness among students, the faculty, and even members of the surrounding community. Yet universities rarely conduct competitions, and instead select architects for major projects through a multistep, closed-door procurement process, with little or no participation by faculty members."

Read more here:
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i34/34b02401.htm

Slide Show: Top 10 Earth- and People-Friendly Buildings

Scientific American shares some comments and then a slide show of the AIA's Committee on the Environment's recent awards for buildings that are both green and friendly to their occupants.

"From a low-income apartment building situated by a light rail line to a new town center that reused materials from its old municipal buildings for construction, these projects are putting Earth and its residents on equal footing."

See it here:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=top-10-green-buildings

Practice and Pedagogy of Architecture Must Change?

Minoca Ponce de Leon, dean of the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, writes about how the pedagogy and practice of architecture must be transformed: "Our teaching methodologies and the predominant model of studio instruction has remained virtually unchanged for more than 100 years. More importantly, in the last 20 years architecture has stagnated in the midst of architectural research that focused too closely on topics that proved to have little consequence."

"Today, with accelerated advances in digital fabrication technologies and their widespread application, I believe that we find ourselves in the midst of a second digital revolution. Not unlike the 1980s, as we argue over the significance of these “tools,” digital fabrication is fundamentally changing construction methods and transforming the building industry. This second time around, however, we have a remarkable opportunity to take a more critical stance toward technology and articulate its potential for social engagement, or else we risk perpetuating the divides that threaten to limit the relevance of architecture to the actual circumstances of the building industry—as the current economic downturn has demonstrated.

Other fields are wrestling with these very same issues. Not only will architecture be best served by entering into a conversation with these disciplines, but architecture will best serve and participate in the construction of culture. Much of what lies at the core of our discipline is already playing a central role in the redefinition of other fields. It is telling that design is now an integral part of the curriculum at top business schools across the country. Engineering departments have developed coursework around notions of creative practices, while schools of social work and public policy have aligned social activism with entrepreneurship and design thinking. The value of design has increased in all aspects of society, at the same time that the pertinence of architecture has decreased. By remaining hermetic and, dare I say, self-absorbed, we run the risk of relegating to other fields the cultural power of design as an agent for social change."

Read more here:
http://www.archpaper.com/e-board_rev.asp?News_ID=3464

World Expo Shanghai 2010 - Country Pavilion Designs

We haven't seen a lot of regular media attention on this, but these kinds of designs are always interesting, especially to the architects among us. Picture the Dutch of Romanian pavilion on your campus. :)

http://en.expo2010.cn/participation/pop/moren.htm

Art Institute of Chicago Addition - Renzo Piano Embraces Chicago

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Related: NEW BOOK, Planning Successful Museum Building Projects, published by formed SCUP President, L. Carole Wharton.

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Former SCUP president Cal Audrain, now retired from the Art Institute of Chicago, was deeply involved in this project. Here is a New York Times article on the architect, Renzo Piano, and what the institute called "the Modern Wing."

The new $294 million Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, which opens on Saturday, is the closest Mr. Piano has come in at least a decade to achieving this near-classical ideal. Its delicate structural frame is a sparkling counterpart to the museum’s 1893 Beaux Arts building. The light-filled galleries show the Art Institute’s marvelous collections of postwar and contemporary art in their full glory, including many works that have been buried in storage for decades. Most of all, the addition manages to weave the various strands of Chicago’s rich architectural history into a cohesive vision, one that is made more beautiful by its remarkable fragility.

The 264,000-square-foot wing is the largest expansion in the museum’s 130-year history. The addition stands behind the original building, across a set of commuter railroad tracks. The two structures are joined by a small gallery building from 1916 that bridges the tracks. Millennium Park, its far end punctuated by the swirling steel forms of Frank Gehry’s band shell, extends to the north.

Needed: Design in the Public Interest

Thomas Fisher, dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education about "public interest design," the need for it and whether it fits best as a concept within current design education or ought to be its own profession:

At a time of declining employment in architectural offices and fading prospects for architectural graduates, an enormous amount of work remains largely overlooked by the profession: the provision of design services for the billions of people on the planet who need what architects can provide but who lack the ability to pay. Most architects have long sought more-lucrative work among clients who do have the means to pay. But with the financial crisis putting a severe crimp on traditional commissions, the time has come for designers to rethink our reason for being. Do we really want to continue to be servants of the superrich, or does our responsibility — and our overlooked opportunities for new types of services — also lie with the health, safety, and welfare of all?

University of California-Irvine, Anteater Recreation Center (ARC) Expansion

American School & University Magazine's current issue has a useful project report on the new University of California-Irvine, Anteater Recreation Center (ARC) Expansion.

The ARC expansion provides 20,000 more assignable square feet for a weightroom, and classrooms for dance and martial arts. It also includes a contemporary fitness/wellness center, physical-therapy rooms, a body-composition system to measure body fat, and cutting-edge technology for cardiovascular and metabolic analysis. . . . Redefining agrarian for the 21st century, the design team created a modern “farm” building with steel trusses, pitched roofs, and split-face concrete block and glass. Classrooms have sprung floors and mirrored walls.

Embedding Nature in the Built Environment

The designers among us will want to read this article. We wish we had time to follow the links in it.

In a recent Yale University podcast, Steve Kellert, professor at the university's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and editor of the book The Biophilia Hypothesis, speaks of biophilia as an essential part of sustainable design. The general concept of sustainable or green design focuses on minimizing or avoiding the harmful effects on the natural environment. Kellert's argument is, “that [it] is necessary but not sufficient to achieve sustainability. That if you achieve that effect in a building—a hermetically sealed skyscraper where people are working in windowless environments—that won't be sustainable because basically those environments do not produce physical and mental wellbeing.” (http://www.healthcaredesign magazine.com/YalePodcast)

Because physical and mental wellbeing is top concern for a hospital, exploring the biologically based bond between humans and nature is especially important in these environments where medical technology and products seem to be an antithesis to nature.

Designing On the Triple Bottom Line in Sri Lanka

Sustainable design in connection with "workforce, economic, environmental, and catastrophic event management goals":

A public and private collaboration, the Embassy Medical Center’s (EMC) multipronged sustainability initiative includes using the presence of international firms as an educational and economic primer for local companies. With a projected completion date of January 2011, the project is being developed by Silvermere Hospitals, Ltd., and includes a 500,000-square-foot hospital and clinic, dormitory, parking structure, and two bio-anaerobic digesters.

Is a new healthcare facility really a different kind of animal in Sri Lanka?

In the United States, healthcare executives think of their facilities as a cost, as an expense. But here is a case where a facility will actually be an asset, a driver for economic development, a source of education and training, an incentive for companies to come, and attract international money through medical tourism. It’s more than just a liability and a piece of architecture. It has inherent creative potential.

ACRL/LAMA Guide For Planning Higher Education Library Spaces

This guide - Guide For Planning Higher Education Library Spaces - from the Association of College & Research Libraries and the Library Administration and Management Association compiles a number of "guidelines" and links to specific resources as well as to sets of related resources. It is a must-bookmark resource for architects and designers in higher education. "In response to frequent inquiries for information about planning academic library buildings, [we] provide a basic framework for architects, planners, and librarians embarking on planning and design of libraries for higher education."

Cost/Benefit for Sustainable Design

A design time in 2008 has a lot more options than before to find sustainable design applications (and LEED credits) that don't cost a ton of money. Paying attention to site selection, for example, can gain credits early on and no additional cost. Another factor is to ensure that whenever you're going to have to conform to environmental regulations anyway—such as local runoff water regulations—be sure to get those related credits. In this 5-minute video from Healthcare Design magazine, James Moler covers some of this ground.