policy & reform
undergraduate, researcher and educator.
In addition, he says, flexible designs should reflect the principles that a university stands for: inquiry, freedom of thought and the ability to ascend.
pus that fits
heads towards a review of space expectations and use.
Malatt says the federal government has put some new controls on universities, requiring them to describe their space allocation and use before any further funding is approved.“ I think the government is perhaps aware of the fact that there is the tendency for space to proliferate at universities without a specific use being assigned to it,” he says, commenting further that the quality of space at some Australian universities is poor.
Using space wisely In properly managing space, higher education institutions must focus on three things, according to Malatt: teaching spaces, research spaces, and enough social spaces for the undergraduate students.
He says more social space should be created because going to universities is about the social experience of engaging with the lecturers and tutors, student bodies and colleagues.
“ One of the challenges for the universities now is to maintain their desirability as the place to be,” he explains.“ Some of the universities have been falling behind quite badly in this respect.”
That feeling of personal experience needs to be returned, in his opinion.“ I think in general the push is less space per student,” he says, but in return for providing less space per student, the proportion of social space has to be increased to compensate for that.“ The number of students has doubled, sometimes tripled. And the social spaces haven’ t been increased.”
How can universities oversee the amount they need in the future? Universities in Australia already try hard to achieve flexibility in design, Malatt says.
For example,“ all of them are now using a centrally programmed timetable to maximise the use of teaching space, to avoid space with low occupancy over the course of a semester”. But he thinks they should fund research into the allocation of space and proportion, within the context of the experience of the
Refurbish or build? In striving for these goals, Malatt says, refurbishment is often a better idea than building anew but it needs to be looked at closely because it’ s not always less costly.
“ Refurbishment certainly has its own advantage from a sustainability point of view,” he says.“ It’ s getting more and more expensive to refurbish, especially for those [ sites ] with technical requirements, like laboratories and extensive training areas.” He says one of the ways refurbishments can make new adequate space is by repurposing locations that are outmoded.
“ Spaces have usually become inadequate or not particularly well suited to modern teaching,” Malatt says.“ Most of the older buildings are very difficult to use other than for their original purpose. Often they’ re extremely good buildings in their old forms, and they’ re quite good to repurpose as student or research spaces, but they’ re often not good for their original purpose, like home to the faculty or education space.”
On the other hand, Geoff Hanmer, director of ARINA Hayball campus architects, says refurbishment is not necessarily better than building anew.
“ The case for refurbishing science buildings or laboratory buildings is quite weak because the sorts of laboratory that were cutting edge in the 1960s are not cutting edge now,” Hanmer says.“ I think we need to think about providing new buildings for new scientific processes.”
For other parts of the universities, he says it’ s a matter of having a careful plan.
Less space Hanmer insists that Australian university plans should have a working space target, rather than simply letting building areas accumulate as they may.
“ Australian universities have a wide allocation of space per student,” he says.“ Universities tend to aggregate spaces instead of plan them. Existing buildings are often just left as they are. This, of course, is a situation where we have what we call‘ legacy buildings’ from the’ 60s and’ 70s.” Clearly, universities need less space, according to Hanmer. In the UK, the Space Management Group identifies ideal space as less than nine square metres per student. Hanmer compares this with Australia, where the space proportion in university campuses ranges between five and 20 square metres of usable floor area per effective full time student load.
“ In Australia, the Tertiary Education Facilities Management Association [ TEFMA ] carries out a similar role to the SMG, but it sets its targets by surveying existing space use,” he says.“ According to TEFMA, the space occupied by most higher education institutions in Australia is … at least 1.4 times more than the SMG target.”
He also points out that the amount of space the university needs decreases over time, due to factors such as web-based undergraduate teaching. Hanmer says a sustainable plan will reduce the area of a building to the minimum necessary to perform its mission.“ This will reduce the amount of energy required for operation and maintenance.
“ In Australia, we have too much space but less quality,” he explains.“ We have a lot of space that is not contributing properly to either teaching or research.
“ What we need in Australia is a counterpart to the SMG that has a clear remit from the government to properly manage space in the sector by setting measurable guidelines that universities must follow if they wish to receive federal funding.” n
www. campusreview. com. au Issue 8 2013 | 23