SCUP Annual International Conference

This year’s Society for College and University Planning conference contained a number of themes: demands for innovative classroom and group study spaces, a need to improve utilization of facilities, rising emphasis on sustainability and energy efficiency, the impact of globalization on Canadian and U.S. campuses, and, in a world of finite and, in some cases, declining resources, a need for smarter strategic planning and budgeting schemes.

But one session Wednesday — the final day of the meeting in Montreal — highlighted the tensions that can arise when some of those themes collide.

The session, entitled “Next Generation Learning Environments: Does One Size Fit All?”, featured an effort to build a 120-seat “theater-in-the-round”-type classroom as part of construction of a new School of Kinesiology and Health Studies Building at Ontario’s Queen’s University.

Labels: architecture, learning space design, space management