Annotations of “The Innovation Campus: Building Better Ideas

Can architecture spur creativity? Universities are investing in big,
high-tech buildings in the hope of evoking big, high-tech thinking.

I wonder why universities believe these high-tech buildings will bring about high-tech thinking. It is worth the investment if the buildings don’t generate high-tech thinking?

They and their partners in industry are pouring millions into new buildings for business, engineering and applied learning that closely resemble the high-tech workplace, itself inspired by the minimally partitioned spaces of the garage and the factory. (paragraph 1)

How will the money spent on these new buildings affect prices at the university? Does tuition go up, or housing? Also, what about comfort? I can’t imagine a garage or factory being very comfortable to work in.

What architects take from Building 20 is not its ramshackle aesthetic — though some believe less polish provides more freedom — but the importance of mixing disciplines, of work performed out in the open, and of transition zones like hallways and staircases as sites for productive run-ins. (paragraph 3)

Open space is always good, but “work performed out in the open” could make the stealing of ideas easier. I’m sure there are ways to combat this, but I fell like open space is best in areas of collaboration but not when one is doing an individual project.

In many of the new buildings, an industrial look prevails, along with an end to privacy. (paragraph 4)

This sounds like the university lofts, though some rooms are more private than others. The lofts are the school’s attempt at modern which really brings about a need for more artificial light and the need to always wear socks because of the concrete floors. I can’t imagine having less privacy, especially at school.

Staircases and halls are wide and often daylit, encouraging people to dwell between their appointments in hopes of having a creative collision. Exposure to natural light itself contributes to improved workplace performance. There’s also much more to do with your hands than take notes in class: The need to move your body, by working on a prototype, taking the stairs or going in search of caffeine at a centralized cafe, is built in, providing breaks to let the mind wander. (paragraph 5)

The author, Lange, really seems to believe in group efforts, but what about people who are shy, have anxiety, or just prefer to work alone? I do like the idea of more hands-on learning, in some cases, it is the best or most effective way to learn, though I imagine it would be hard to incorporate into every class.

No one has a private office at the Bloomberg Center, the primary academic building, and opaque walls are few. The only spaces faculty members can truly call their own are lockable storage cabinets, with carts for equipment. (paragraph 10)

No private offices, so how do you talk to a professor about something private? Also, where do they keep all their things for classes, just in a cabinet, since there are no offices?

“As you begin to understand how people work together, there is an ideal size of collaboration,” said Ung-Joo Scott Lee, principal at Morphosis, the architects. “Beyond five people it is too much of a crowd.”(paragraph 11)

I completely agree with this concept, working in smaller groups is much more ideal so that everyone has time to speak their minds and share their points, but there is still enough time to do work because the group is so small.

If this sounds like Silicon Valley, it should. “We looked at Pixar in Emeryville very carefully, along with Bloomberg L.P. and Google, who have sizable office space in New York and understand the constraints of the urban environment,” Mr. Huttenlocher said. (Until it moves onto its own campus, Cornell Tech is headquartered in the Google building in Chelsea — every designer working for a university, it seems, has taken a swing through Mountain View.) (paragraph 12)

Google is nothing like a garage or a factory like mentioned in the first paragraph. So all of these schools are going for high tech, but implementing it in different settings. I wonder how that can affect things. Working with technology in a setting like Google headquarters is meant to promote creativity and “high-tech thinking” but I don’t think the same results would come about in an area that resembles a garage or factory.

Residents, who can be graduate or undergraduate and in any major, can choose pods (cubbylike rooms with built-in bed, desk, storage and TV), lofts in an industrial vernacular (beds in a communal setting with shared kitchen, lounge and bathrooms) or more traditional single or double rooms. (paragraph 16)

Who would choose a pod bedroom? Also, I wonder if their lofts are anything like Georgia State’s lofts. By traditional, I wonder if Lange means dorms that do not have kitchens, just the bedroom, and bathroom, or something more like the University Commons with a kitchen as well, just nicer than the lofts. It’s not very detailed and I feel like where you are staying on campus is pretty important because it needs to be somewhere you can be comfortable.

“One thing about the building is it has no formal classrooms, and no faculty or staff offices,” said Troy D’Ambrosio, executive director of the institute. “We didn’t want to have a classroom because that says, ‘In this room you learn, out here you don’t learn.’” (paragraph 18)

No formal classrooms, so where are the classrooms and what are they like? Outside, inside, in a workshop, coffee shop? What is a classroom for the students? Depending on what the use for classrooms I can envision is being quite easy to become distracted by what is happening all around and not being able to focus on what is being taught.

To read the full article:

The Innovation Campus: Building Better Ideas

Citations:

 Lange, Alexandra. “The Innovation Campus: Building Better Ideas.” The New York Times.        The New York Times Company, 04 Aug. 2016. web. 13 Oct. 2016.