Research on Planning

Roadmap: Process

The fulcrum of the LSC Roundtables is indeed the interactions between academics and architects, open-ended opportunities to explore and arrive at a common language, a common vision, a common understanding of the students (the USERS) of the spaces under consideration. The process of the Roundtables is a process that could be adapted at the earliest stages of thinking about spaces. From the Roundtable at the University of Washington:

We think a good question for the planning team to ask each other would be: How do you describe or define yourself as a whole person?
Are you recommending a specific question relating to inclusivity that those responsible for shaping learning spaces have in their tool box of questions to ask at the beginning stage of planning?
Not really. I think you walk into planning recognizing the opportunity to design for inclusivity rather than designing to address a “diversity” problem. We receive feedback from students on planning teams when they feel they are representing the “x” minority community of students rather than all students. It takes time to talk together without being afraid of pronouns, without people feeling anger and incriminated by language others are using. It takes time to become aware of personal. biases. This takes time, especially when the campus does not have a culture of conversations about diversity.

Why Space Matters to Creativity

When we walk into a space, we ask and determine what we can do in that space: What is acceptable? What is allowable? What can happen here and what cannot? What should happen here? We scan the environment, which in its design/structure/furniture helps us produce inferences that allow us to come to provisional answers to […]