Brief Thoughts on Building Design

As part of the Future Learning Spaces Conference I am attending, we toured Northeastern University’s Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex in Boston. The takeaway for me as an advocate for active learning is how much the design of such a space can be engineered to foster community and collaboration among students and faculty. Certainly the glass-walled classrooms and

laboratories take away the isolation and separation (though I still wonder about distractions and, to a lesser degree, the periodic need for more private, introspective work); but the proximity of the first floor café, the arrangements of chairs and couches on each floor, as well as a publicly available open kitchen on each floor with sinks, microwave, refrigerator, and counter space, encourages interaction among the students while it creates a comfortable environment that would more likely encourage students to stay in the building, to continue networking ideas and working on projects.

In his presentation the next morning, Musa Pam, Director of Operations, Logistics, and Support for Brown University, in describing their recently completed Engineering Building, began by emphasizing the need for the learning environment to address the students’ sense of well-being, of inclusion, and of lessened anxiety, and one of the students he referred to described their space as both “studious and social.” I believe that’s what Northeastern’s ISEC building does, and it’s what I’ve seen Auburn’s Mell Classroom Building do as well. And I would add that the attention to open spaces and aesthetic design also inspires confidence and creativity in all these buildings in ways shoebox classrooms with cinder block walls and fluorescent lighting can never match.