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Abstract
Evolved design theories of student learning are impacting the built environment of universities. Regardless of a move away from traditional lecture theaters toward online learning, the presence of social learning spaces that aim to facilitate student engagement and collaboration is becoming increasingly important to universities who are trying to attract students in a competitive neoliberal marketplace. This paper examines the prevalence of informal learning spaces that encourage social interaction within three university buildings designed by acclaimed Irish architects O’Donnell and Tuomey: the Saw Swee Hock Student Center at the London School of Economics (LSE); Budapest’s Central European University (CEU) redevelopment and; the Hub Project at University College Cork (UCC). Through similarities in relation to views, connections, permeability, and the provision of informal learning spaces, the O’Donnell and Tuomey university buildings demonstrate the ability to encourage social interaction and connection to the public realm.
Notes
1. Hugo Radice, “How We Got Here: UK Higher Education under Neoliberalism,” ACME 12, no. 3 (2013): 407–418.
2. Paul Temple, “Learning Spaces in Higher Education: An Under-Researched Topic,” London Review of Education 6, no. 3 (2008): 229–241.
3. Committee Joint Information Systems, Designing Spaces for Effective Learning: A Guide to 21st Century Learning Space Design (Bristol: University of Bristol, JISC Development Group, 2006); Charles C. Strange and James H. Banning, Educating by Design; Creating Campus Learning Environments That Work (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2001).
4. Strange and Banning, Educating by Design; Creating Campus Learning Environments That Work.
5. Jonathan Coulson, Paul Roberts, and Isabelle Taylor, University Trends: Contemporary Campus Design, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2017).
6. George D. Kuh et al., Student Success in College: Creating Conditions That Matter (Washington: John Wiley & Sons, 2011).
7. Daniel T. Okoli, “Sense of Place and Student Engagement among Undergraduate Students at a Major Public Research University” (PhD diss., Colorado State University, 2013).
8. Ernest T. Pascarella, Tricia A. Seifert, and Charles Blaich, “How Effective Are the Nsse Benchmarks in Predicting Important Educational Outcomes?,” Change; Philadelphia 42, no. 1 (2010): 16–22.
9. Temple, “Learning Spaces in Higher Education”.
10. Peter Jamieson, “Designing More Effective On-Campus Teaching and Learning Spaces: A Role for Academic Developers,” International Journal for Academic Development 8, no. 1–2 (2003): 119–133 states that iconic building can often be “educationally problematic” and Coulson et al., University Trends: Contemporary Campus Design states that exhititionist buildings can often be “more about the architcts’individual proclivitieis – his trademark bulges or undalations – than the context, user needs and the institutions mission.”
11. Catherine Brown Molloy, “A Tale of Two Buildings Separated Only by the Distance of Time,” in Distance Looks Back, ed. Victoria Jackson Wyatt, Andrew Leach and Lee Stickells (Sydney: SAHANZ, 2019).
12. OD + T’s portfolio of university buildings also include; University College Dublin’s Centre for Research into Infectious Diseases (2003–2005), Trinity College Dublin’s Irish Art Research Centre (2005–2007) and Letterfrack Furniture College, Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (2001). Other recent projects under construction at the time of publication include the Academic Hub Building at the Technological University Dublin along with two international design competitions won by OD+T in 2019; the new Student Hub at University of Leeds and the School of Architecture at the University of Liverpool.
13. Aldo Rossi et al., The Architecture of the City (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982).
14. The New Zealand Institute of Architects, “O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects In:Situ,” (2015), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-xM8buX2Dk (accessed March 04, 2015).
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Brian Edwards, University Architecture (London: Taylor & Francis, 2014).
18. David E. Whisnant, “The University as a Space and the Future of the University,” The Journal of Higher Education 42, no. 2 (1971): 85–102.
19. Douglas Spencer, The Architecture of Neoliberalism: How Contemporary Architecture Became an Instrument of Control and Compliance (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), 79.
20. Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey, Space for Architecture: The Work of O’donnell + Tuomey (London: Artifice Books on Architecture, 2014), 45.
21. Ibid; The New Zealand Institute of Architects, O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects In:Situ.
22. The New Zealand Institute of Architects, O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects In:Situ.
23. Edwards, University Architecture.
24. Marily Oppezzo and Daniel L. Schwartz, “Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition 40, no. 4 (2014): 1142–1152.
25. Flora Samuel, Le Corbusier and the Architectural Promenade (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2010).
26. During her time at Stirling Wilford, O’Donnell worked on the design and detailed development of the Tate’s Clore Gallery (1980–1985) at Millbank and gained experience in the design of specialist galleries, conservation workshops, and public facilities.
27. Spencer, The Architecture of Neoliberalism, 22.
28. Duncan McCorquodale and Julian S. Robinson, Saw Swee Hock: The Realisation of the London School of Economics Student Centre (London: Artifice Books on Architecture, 2015).
29. Whisnant, “The University as a Space and the Future of the University."
30. Spencer, The Architecture of Neoliberalism, 76–78.
31. Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community (New York: Marlowe & Company, 1999), 93.
32. Farid Mokhtar Noriega et al., “Building Better Learning and Learning Better Building, with Learners Rather Than for Learners,” On the Horizon 21, no. 2 (2013): 138–148.
33. Jacinta Francis et al., “Creating Sense of Community: The Role of Public Space,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 32, no. 4 (2012): 401–409. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2012.07.002.
34. Ziona Strelitz, “Post Occupancy Review Researching Users' Experience,” in Saw Swee Hock, the Realisation of the London School of Economics Student Centre, ed. Julian S. Robinson (London: Artifice Books on Architecture, 2015).
35. Elizabeth Yarina, “How Architecture Became Capitalism’s Handmaiden: Architecture as Alibi for the High Line’s Neoliberal Space of Capital Accumulation,” Architecture and Culture 5, no. 2 (2017): 241–263, doi:10.1080/20507828.2017.1325263.
36. McCorquodale and Robinson, Saw Swee Hock.
37. Spencer, The Architecture of Neoliberalism, 37, 88.
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Catherine Brown Molloy
Catherine Brown Molloy is a registered architect (Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland) who has extensive experience in private practice. As an academic, she has been a researcher for the Welsh School of Architecture on the Sustainable Building Envelope Demonstration Project. A graduate of the Queen’s University Belfast (2003), she has been awarded a four-year PhD Studentship at University College Cork for research related to architecture and pedagogy as part of the Student Hub Research Program.