The Innovation Campus: Building Better Ideas is an article by Alexandra Lange, a noted architecture critic. The author has the ability to make claims to ethos, and does so ocasionally.

“…Building better Ideas…”(Lange,Title)- what exactly makes an idea better than others, and how are ideas built?

” …buildings for business, engineering and applied learning that closely resemble the high-tech workplace…”(Lange, Paragraph 1) – which leads to the conclusion that this artlce is focused on stem fields than liberal arts.

“…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…”(Lange, P3)-This seems to be the theme of the artilce.

“…Though studies…”(Lange, P4)-Which ones?

“…an industrial look prevails…”(Lange,P4)- What is an “industrial look”? more specificity would have been nice here.

“…”garage” has workshops equipped with 3-D printers, laser cutters and other prototyping tools, available to anyone at the university and staffed by work-study students…”(Lange,P4)- this is really cool.

“…seating is flexible, ranging from bleachers to sofas, office chairs to privacy booths. Furniture is often on wheels, so that groups can rearrange it. …”(Lange P4)and”…Staircases and halls are wide and often daylit, encouraging people to dwell between their appointments in hopes of having a creative collision…”(Lange,P5)- both claims are very simmilar to those made by Scholl and Gulwadi.

“…Exposure to natural light itself contributes to improved workplace performance…”(Lange,P5)- Here is a claim without any evidence or explanation.

“…“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.”…”(Lange, Cornell)- This is a really a disjointed quote, it feels really out of place in the article as its given it’s own paragraph.Also, how is is Lee an expert in groups?

“…The studios are named after a Canadian businessman, Pierre Lassonde, who gave the initial $7 million for the building (he and his late wife, Claudette MacKay-Lassonde, are Utah alumni)….”(Lange, University of Utah)-This is an unrelated individual who nevertheless ties in with the business sector. The bit about his wife is interesting, as it seems completely irrelevant to Lange’s argument.

“…Gone is a first year of large lecture courses on basic science. Instead, students work alone or in small groups on a “passion project.”…”(Lange, York University)-Yes please. This sounds awesome.

“…hey would come to us, and then we would gently start introducing mathematics. Learning by doing and learning in social spaces with professors is reflected in the design.”…”(Lange, York University)- This sounds really great to me, but I can see others having serious issues with the completely independent system they propose.

“…The 11,000-square-foot Garage, Northwestern’s interdisciplinary accelerator space, opened last year inside a parking garage. To maintain a sense of the provisional and knockabout, the architects preserved the parking lines on the (cleaned-up) concrete floors and used inexpensive plywood, embellished with spray-painted graphics, for many of the walls…” (Lange, Northwestern University)- Sparks hall did this first, theirs is  just much, much cooler.

“…“Engineering majors are often impressed by art students’ relative high level of tool knowledge…”(Lange, University of Iowa)-Really? This quote is a sweeping generalization without context, why did she chose to include this?

“…Today’s innovation campuses tend to make their pipeline to the real world explicit. Airbus Americas is moving its engineering center, and 400 Wichita employees, to a new structure on the campus, to be built on ground leased from the university. The center will also have room for up to 100 student workers. In another partnership, a law enforcement training center, with construction costs paid by the city and county, will serve the police departments as well as Wichita State’s criminal justice students…”-This is neat and all, but how do the companies participating profit? Its good publicity, but that’s about it, why move headquarters?

“…An anecdote from Kevin B. Sullivan of Payette, whose firm has interdisciplinary science and engineering centers under construction at Northeastern and Tufts, underscores the urgency. “I’m on the board of my daughter’s high school, and what they are doing there is taking the existing library, gutting it and turning it into a tech-enablement space,” he said. “The college process may be dumbed down from what they do in high school…”(Lange last paragraph)- So what? Why is this relevant in any way to the topic at hand? What makes Sullivan an expert in STEM expansion?

 

Citations-

Lange, Alexandra. “The Innovation Campus: Building Better Ideas.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 06 Aug. 2016. Web. 13 Oct. 2016.