Prefabricated furniture models can be installed and switched out later to meet the needs of a college or university. This rendering illustrated a shared loft bed configuration that features a built-in media screen, roll-out closet, and couch seating.

The 21st Century Project Summit was the debut event of the 21st Century Project initiative, sponsored by the Association of College & University Housing Officers—International (ACUHO-I). The summit convened more than 100 collegiate housing professionals, architects, designers, financial officers, academics, and students who were charged with shaping the future of student housing. Through moderated small-group discussions, participants debated the needs and desires of future students as well as how collegiate housing could better meet the collective goals of both students and administrators. Through the collaboration, they developed a thorough understanding of the construction process as a whole: Architects and developers learned the motivations and goals of educators; housing officers prepared to converse with their campus finance officers; university administrators became familiar with the challenges of construction; and everyone listened to the desires of students.

As students continue to demand more of their residential experience, administrators must realize the advantages of delivering a unique, functional, and technologically advanced living experience. Meanwhile, outside forces, such as ever-changing technology, student security, stagnant (or even reductions in) government funding, corporate involvement, and an increased concern for sustainability will shape how students live and learn in the future, and how campuses will serve them. Ideally, future residence halls should be shaped by four defining concepts: community, flexibility, technology, and sustainability.

Community cohesiveness
Regardless of where a college is located—in a bustling urban area or rural countryside—its residence halls should intertwine with the surrounding community. These halls should be situated among commercial, professional, retail, residential, and recreational facilities so that students, faculty and staff, and area residents can contribute to and benefit from the vitality and utility of the entire neighborhood. Similarly, because students spend significant time inside these halls, their interiors must also include mixed-use space.

To maintain that cohesive sense of community, planners need to develop a controlled, secure environment that also is free of cumbersome check-ins. Applying the mixed-use principle and high-densities rule, architects can create interior and exterior nested zones, which allow visitors free access to the appropriate spaces while preserving student privacy. Likewise, use of a series of public/private perimeters creates safe, intimate spaces within the building, with the ultimate safe harbor being the room itself. Residents have access throughout the building and, with permission, to the private rooms of others, without the need to contend with difficult security barriers. Integral security systems, possibly utilizing unobtrusive biometric technology, should continuously screen all residents and visitors.

This rendering illustrates an online system students could use to select the features of their college residence. The system allows students to choose preferences, such as a room with abundant natural light, a central location on campus, an extra long bed that converts to a sofa, and satellite technology access.

Flexibility for the future
The future residence hall will provide space for most of the institutional roles of the college and university, including instruction, residence life, socialization, recreation, counseling, and school administration. Not only is the building home to multiple functions, it must readily flex to accommodate shifts in those functions.

Adjustable boundaries allow students to fully open individual rooms into a suite or common space, or by sliding walls, close off rooms for privacy or group immersion. The principle of flexibility puts a high value on giving the individual student the ability to achieve a degree of privacy, even in doubles and other multiple-occupancy rooms. At the same time, to nurture informal social and academic interchange throughout the day, the building should include small alcoves that are conducive to impromptu hallway conversations.

By selecting unique physical design features, halls can more readily reflect characteristics of the residents. For example, rooms and halls can be modified to suit married students, resident faculty, older learners, students with disabilities, as well as quiet students, nonsmokers, or groups identified by academic level or field of study. In addition, physical design features—such as room sizes, suite populations, common area ratios, heating and lighting controls, kitchen and bathroom ratios, finish materials, and furnishings—should be reconfigurable. To maximize the flexibility of space and compensate for high-density living, furniture should break down, fold, stow away, or disappear at will.

Technology talk
Today’s students have been using computers their whole lives, and they arrive at school expecting a wireless environment. So how can residence halls embrace the technophile aspects of the students and utilize Web-enabled systems for education and research, student services, peer-to-peer messaging, e-commerce, and other facets of modern life 30 years from now?

First, most of the equipment in the residence hall should “talk” to other equipment and anticipate residents’ needs, and students should be able to use their personal computers anywhere through universal wireless connectivity. Because academic and social lives are intertwined, a variety of school-sponsored intranet directories, message centers, chat rooms, blogs, instant messaging services, and Web sites will connect the school community and reduce social isolation.

Second, technology will also allow students to personalize their living areas without paint or other permanent space modifications. Lighting intensity and coloration can be adjusted to reinforce or counter ambient moods, for instance, and can be linked to pre-selected music that begins playing upon entering the room. Computer-generated patterns can decorate the walls, and personal workstations can be pre-programmed for touch-and-go activation in configurations that are most comfortable to the student. 

Technology could also play a role in selecting a room and the furniture modules that would be part of that room. Flexible and designed specifically for each student, furniture becomes yet another way for a student to express individuality.

Sustainability inside and out

Just as the concept of sustainability has exploded among the general public, it also has evolved from an interesting option to an embedded expectation for campus operations and buildings of the future. For a greener tomorrow, those involved in the construction process must discuss how to frame the issue, develop support among decision makers, and create the necessary financing to get long-term sustainability projects underway today.

Basic aspects for improving sustainability include the selection of building materials, the implementation of building-management systems and recycling programs, and exploration of alternate energy sources. Participants in the 21st Century Project also anticipated the need not only to rehabilitate and update residence halls on a 20-year cycle, but also to make that process as easy and inexpensive as possible.

One approach is to combine a relatively permanent, load-bearing exterior shell of the building with a free-span interior that is readily reconfigured for future needs. The shell utilizes a combination of new high-strength, nanotech-enhanced construction materials; native and recycled architectural materials; and costly, classic high-end materials that are appropriate for the shell’s anticipated long life. The interior, in contrast, is reconfigured easily to accommodate changing needs and technologies, without incurring the high costs and environmental damage that accompany gut rehabilitation or teardown.

Collaborative efforts
Armed with this analysis and information and powered by their own ingenuity and creative resources, campus officials and developers can envision the residence hall of the future today. However, all of the stakeholders must be willing to come together, bringing their particular areas of expertise along with a willingness to complement—and sometimes even defer to—the knowledge of others at the table. When the participants display this openness, higher functioning residence halls will be achieved and the future of the 21st century will look bright indeed.

For more about the 21st Century Project, go to www.21stcenturyproject.com.

Jim Curtin, AIA, is a principal with Solomon, Cordwell, Buenz, and Associates, Inc. in Chicago and a founding member of the 21st Century Project. Reach him at jim.curtin@scb.com.