My group’s project scope is designed to innovate undergraduate on-campus housing with focuses on sustainability with a flawless architectural blend of privacy and community. We all split up to observe many different environments. We split up several communal areas: the lounge of the Sadler Center basement, the newly constructed health and wellness center, and two college dorms on campus, Hardy and Lemon. I observed lounges in Hardy and Lemon. We chose these dorms because they’re the newest on-campus housing buildings, having been opened in the summer of 2006.
After evaluating the floor plans of both buildings, I noticed the first 3 levels seemed to have a very traditional architectural dorm design. However, their attics looked very communal on paper. I also saw that both dorms are nearly identical, so I decided to spend observation times in two different areas of Lemon — the dorm adjacent Landrum Dr. as opposed to Jamestown Rd. I observed a lounge room in the Attic (the communal area) and a lounge on the 1st floor (where the most foot traffic would occur).
The attic lounge was extremely quiet. I didn’t see anyone use the lounge and hardly noticed any foot traffic in the hallways outside of it. I visited mid-day, so I assume the lack of activity can be attributed to the busy schedules of the college students living there. I guess they’d all just left for the day! Nonetheless, I was curious as so why the lounge was so underutilized. What were its flaws? What could make people want to visit? It was rather bare-bones and uncustomizable to its residents living within the complex. Although it had a TV, the furniture looked bleak and was uncomfortable, and there weren’t many outlets to provide the charging of any electronic devices. Perhaps, if given ample time before move-in, offering residents the option to choose the layout, furniture, amenities, etc. of the lounge would give them more incentive to spend time there? Although the attic seemed like an opportunity to observe people in similar architectural design that my team might consider implementing in our project, I think my observations could have been improved had I done them at a busier time of day, and they may have been totally different if the attic scheme was on a level with more foot traffic instead of secluded to the top floor.
Contrary to the attic lounge first floor multi-purpose room was BOOMING with activity. For the 30 minutes I spent observing, I noticed dozens of people walk in and out of the building. The room connected to a kitchen, where people where two friends were cooking up a pasta meal to share together. I also shared the space with one other person in the corner across the room from where I sat and observed. The furniture gave a similar aesthetic to that of the attic’s, but I doubt that negatively affected the amount of people who used it. There was also a television for communal use. Overall, I think the amount of people using the room can be attributed to the foot traffic of the ground floor — anybody who entered Hardy at the dorm’s main entrance saw the multi-purpose room to their right and could easily and use it if need be.
In conclusion, I think the two spaces were very similar in layout. The attic lounge lacked a connecting kitchen, but several communal suites surrounded it. The difference between the usage each room saw was probably attributed to the room’s position in the dorm. The attic is 4 flights of stairs and a long elevator ride away from anyone using it — this probably reserves it mainly for the tenants of the attic to use. In contrast, the multi-purpose room can be seen by everybody entering or leaving the dorm, giving it a much higher probability of being utilized by residents or guests.