June 24, 2021
Space Changes on the Post-Pandemic Campus
By Elliot Felix
How will campuses change post-pandemic? We know campuses are in flux – 60% of the nearly 90 institutions in our recent national benchmarking survey are planning to do a campus master plan in the next year! The big picture is clear, but the details are still emerging.
More remote and hybrid work, reducing the need for some workspace (which is often the largest chunk of space on a campus). More online learning, particularly for large lectures that are better online anyway. Greater use of outdoor spaces, for which most colleges and universities have a new-found fondness. More porous campuses, welcoming industry and community partners to share space and ideas. A campus focus on community and creative activities that can’t be done as well (or at all) online.
Like these changes on the spaces colleges and universities offer, there will also be operational and organizational changes as well. There will be greater focus on sustainability, resilience, and health and wellness. Just as people have become more attuned to ingredients and nutrition, we are now more attuned to the quality of air, the quantity of surfaces we touch, and access to the outdoors. Well before the pandemic, brightspotter Abigail Smith Hanby predicted that people would soon pay as much attention to what they put their body in as what they put in their body.
While these big picture changes are clear (and you can read more about them in this article by Kelly Sanford, Dave Herd, Stuart Brumpton, and me), what’s less clear is how these changes will play out at the more detailed level as you go space by space to see the effects on the campus. Based on roundtable discussions and interviews with dozens of colleges and universities, here are 12 detailed changes coming soon to a campus near you:
1. The converted lecture hall
As more learning moves online, campuses will have a surplus of lecture halls designed for individuals. Some can be kept as-is and used for events, but others should be converted from individual seats in individual rows to group spaces with larger tiers infilled. These spaces can then be used for somewhat smaller courses with students sitting and working in groups and by student teams/groups dropping in during off-hours. This also creates a more equitable learning environment for women and students of color. Imperial College London has some nice examples of these conversions.
2. Flat classrooms
One campus architect we spoke to noted that during the pandemic “Fixed seating became our enemy.” As campuses rethink their classroom portfolio to increase resilience and enable more active learning, the focus will be on flat, flexible space. Interestingly, while online learning will drive down space needs by reducing the number of classrooms needed, this flexibility will drive it up by requiring more space per seat, generally at least 30 square feet per seat to enable tables with chairs in clusters.
3. The flexible workplace
In our recent benchmarking survey with the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP), 82% of colleges and universities surveyed plan to increase the use of remote work for staff and 73% for faculty. As a result, 62% of institutions plan to create flexible administrative workplaces with shared/unassigned seating and 54% for their academic counterparts. This flexible workplace means having a different mix of spaces and being able to choose where and when to work – and having the systems in place to book, monitor, and manage spaces. This flexibility is not only a productivity issue, it is also a key equity issue; for instance, enabling people to balance care of a family member with their workload.
4. Hybrid meeting rooms
With some people in the room and some people remote, meetings (and classes) can go south quickly, unless it’s a room designed for hybrid meetings and classes; for example, folks at home can’t see or hear those in the room or those in the room can’t see the screen as well as they could at home. In addition to better mics and cameras, colleges and universities will need intentional protocols to make meetings equitable and effective. They can also experiment with new types of spaces to level the in-person/remote playing field.
5. The satellite space
When international students couldn’t come to the states, several universities decided to go to them. They partnered with co-working companies like WeWork to provide dedicated classroom, study, and meeting or access spaces to use general spaces – or both in their home countries. For example, NYU accommodated 3,100 additional students in Shanghai in 7,000 square meters of WeWork Space. Going forward, institutions will keep or create satellite locations as well as micro-campuses for online students as well.
6. Functional outdoor spaces
While some campuses like Harvard had long ago created functional outdoor common spaces, across the country, the pandemic prompted a wave of innovation in the use of outdoor space. This was not just as ceremonial lawns but as functional spaces for gathering, study, classes, and socializing. For instance, the University of Notre Dame created a “library lawn” with lights, seating, and fireplaces. As colleges and universities create functional outdoor spaces, they must also keep accessibility in mind so they are inclusive of students with disabilities.
7. Enhanced and expanded multi-cultural and other identity centers
These centers – whether organized around race, lived experience, sexual orientation, or other aspects of student identity – help students find resources and community and serve as counterspaces. Unfortunately, on many campuses, these spaces are stuffed in dingy basements or located on the margins. As colleges and universities broaden and deepen their commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion, look for the expansion and enhancement of these cultural centers and related spaces – in our recent survey, 48% plan to build/renovate these spaces in the next year!
8. Residence halls for learning and living
Well before the pandemic, universities discovered that many students enrolled in “distance education” were actually on-campus. Hence, apart from a blip during 2020 for the uninitiated, the term is used much less. To accommodate these activities along with clubs and community programming, dorms have become blended living/learning spaces and this will only increase going forward, as more learning happens online and fostering a sense of belonging becomes more and more crucial.
9. Disappearing leased space
Universities lease spaces off campus for administrative groups like advancement, IT, and facilities who often don’t need to be on campus or for other ventures where proximity to off-campus partners is key. As they use space more efficiently, reduce costs, and embrace hybrid work, we will see a reduction in leased space. In our recent survey, 38% plan of institutions plan to reduce leased space in the next year.
10. Online swing space
Over about the last 15 years, the average four-year college or university campus added 210,000 net square feet per year. Often swing space was needed for classroom, lab, office, study, and residential space in the interim during an addition or renovation. We’ll see more work and learning happen online to reduce the need for swing space. One downside: these temporary spaces often made for great pilot projects for new ideas. For instance, when we planned a new kind of workplace for international and interdisciplinary centers at the University of Michigan’s Weiser Hall, we first piloted the flexible workplace strategy with the Barger Leadership Institute.
11. Centralized study and classroom spaces
As campuses raced to reopen last fall to accommodate socially-distant students in classrooms, libraries, dining halls, and dorms, this forced many institutions to take a holistic inventory of their spaces and to centralize the control and booking of them. When libraries reduced their seating to accommodate social distancing, they sought to increase the discoverability and access to the other study spaces on campus. Expect the central control of spaces to persist so that they can be more easily discovered and more efficiently used.
12. Expanded student service hubs
The pandemic highlighted basic student needs that colleges and universities must meet; for instance, the Hope Center’s national survey of 86,000 students uncovered significant amounts of food insecurity and housing insecurity. So, institutions are working to address these needs with everything from improved access to food pantries to lending technology like laptops and Wi-Fi hotspots. In addition to sustaining or expanding pandemic-level support, look for institutions to also consolidate these support services and resources into hubs like libraries and student success centers as one way to end the runaround.
As you move ahead adapting your campus and piloting these new space types, we can offer a kind of formula to guide you:
- Fix what was broken, like systemic inequities of higher education
- Keep what was working, like active learning classrooms
- Maintain the new flexibility from the pandemic to work remotely and learn online
- Scale up the pandemic innovations like functional, outdoor spaces
- Adapt spaces to meet new needs and “grow in place”
When you do so, keep in mind Wharton professor Adam’s Grant’s advice that, “Now is a bad time to make plans but a good time to run experiments!”