Future of Learning Spaces in Higher Education

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Purpose:
To explore the question, "what is the question that you would like your clients (those just now anticipating new spaces for science) to be asking you?"

Participants:
Representatives of twenty architectural firms in the Boston area, colleagues from MIT and Brandeis, Jeanne Narum from PKAL.

Background:
Two of Jeanne's most frightening "late-night" thoughts are:

• that coming generations of planners are content with cloning the current generation of spaces for science, giving no attention to the changing context
  that in 2030 people will be bemoaning the current generation of spaces in the same way we are now bemoaning those from the Sputnik era.
• We don't want to be stuck with a static model of the 21st century science facility.

PKAL's focus on facilities was an integral part of PKAL from the beginning, recognizing that new approaches (new wine) would not work in most old spaces (old bottles) As with all PKAL, our focus on facilities emphasized that there were already pioneering thinkers about the relationship of space and program, and PKAL took care to identify those pioneers and capture their wisdom and experience—translating experience---translating that into some theories that could inform the broader community of planners (academics and architects alike). Thus, we never just helped people fix leaky roofs, but always forced planners to begin from "what do you want to do" and "why do you want to do it now" and "who are the students you seek to serve" in planning new spaces for science. That said, it is remarkable now to step back and see how dramatically and rapidly the world is changing, in ways that we could never have anticipated in 1989, or in 1992 (the year of the 1st PKAL facilities workshop).

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• the speed and pervasiveness of pedagogical change, which is increasingly coupled with assessment of how new pedagogies succeed (and why they succeed—implications succeed---implications for space planning
• the focus on student and student learning, instead of on teachers and teaching
• the focus on students as "digital natives"
• the potential of technologies as tools for learning, research and teaching—within teaching---within an individual campus community, within disciplinary communities locally, regionally, and globally

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• how will the building express the soul of our community?
• how can the building illustrate the culture of our campus?
• what should we be able to do inside the spaces (what do you want to do inside the spaces?)
• what are the characteristics of the graduates who will have learned and worked and lived in these spaces?
• where is the evidence for spaces that work, what do you mean by spaces that work?
  (See list of questions submitted by architects prior to the forum.)

  Questions Posed by Architects

Group Discussion

Question A:

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• no need for inventory on individual campuses
• promotes 24 hour life cycle of a space in being a "serial reusable lab," with project based activity space elsewhere
• the '"virtual' " requirements are electronic or paper
• activity is/can be small scale, components (e.g., small robotics)
• students have the ability to build something complex, such as a material or a chemical process
• need a separate, "hands-on" personal space for recreation, such as a greenhouse for growing orchids.

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• flexible spaces that can change many times during the life-time of the facility
• building components that will remain stable during the useful life of the facility
  Further questions: who Who owns or controls the facility? Who owns or controls the program spaces?

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• To have a major posting on the PKAL website on these and relevnat issues by the end of June, 2006.

Photos from Boston Forum