May 2019 Monthly Newsletter

Insights: University Facilities Conference, USA

Associate Director, Will Evans has returned from his educational adventure through the United State of America, attending the Tradeline conference in Arizona. The conference focused on university facilities was a great opportunity to see first-hand the American approach to facility management, design and construction. A couple of highlights from the conference include:

Design of new agile learning spaces including 'maker' spaces, robotics and computer facilities.
Design of student well being centres
Master planning processes, including methods to assess and model existing building stock.
Design of new teaching facilities to incorporate virtual reality and other types of technology enabled learning.
American approach to project procurement and types of collaborative building contracts. The contracts used appeared to have guidelines to facilitate collective problem solving and decision making.

Will has brought home lots of great learnings from this conference - please feel free to contact us should you want to get any further insight into any of these topics.

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From,
Brad and everyone at the DM2 team

Maker Space
One of the main drivers for new construction on American campuses appears to be the integration of agile learning spaces with “makerspace” facilities (ie- engineering workshops, and computer labs). These two learning environments seem to be at the forefront of most of the teaching programs in the fields of computer science, artificial intelligence and robotics. Across the board these facilities are planned around a central common space, which connect students and staff to both the lecture type spaces with the more self-directed learning/flexible environments.
EYP’s Centre for Science and innovation at Trinity (above) is a great example of this. It uses central makerspace zone which is fed by private study, team breakout rooms and academic offices.

Student Well-being
Furthering student engagement on campus has seen a number of facilities built which provide student support facilities. These “Student Commons” buildings give the students access to counselling support, student aid, therapy and exercise facilities. This need is a direct response to rising counselling centre utilisation rates and mental health trends on campus. They also foster an integrated wellness approach towards the student experience. They are modelled as a hub for the campus which is available 24/7 and in turn also provide access to group and individual study rooms.

Architect - Queensland

May 2019 Monthly Newsletter

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