Matt Gerstner: 0:00
This is Side of Design from BWBR, a podcast discussing all aspects of design with knowledge leaders from every part of the industry. Hello and welcome to Side of Design from BWBR. I'm your host, Matt Gerstner. On this episode, we'll be digging into student housing design, a key element in building community, improving wellness and shaping the student experience on higher education campuses. Joining the conversation from BWBR are Amanda Aspenson, Senior Project Manager, Kevin Gamelin, Senior Architectural Designer, and Anna Pratt, Senior Project Manager. Thank you for joining me today, everybody.
Amanda Aspenson: 0:37
Thanks, Matt, for having us.
Kevin Gamelin: 0:39
Thank you.
Anna Pratt: 0:39
Yeah, thanks, looking forward to the conversation.
Matt Gerstner: 0:42
All right, we're just going to jump right in with questions. I wanted to get to know. you know, student housing is continuously evolving to go beyond bare necessities of living space. I mean, we've kind of seen it. It's gotten away from you got a room with a bed and a dresser and there's, you know, a communal shower and washroom down the hall. I. It's getting away from that. What are some ways you see these facilities developing to meet the needs of today's students?
Amanda Aspenson: 1:10
Matt. Great question to start off with. Students are coming into higher education institutions not just housing, but with even higher expectations than ever before for what is included within housing. You know you mentioned, matt, you know, the traditional kitchenettes and laundry and storage and gathering spaces Now students are really looking for. I mean I was thinking about there are three sort of three, four key things that we've been noticing.
Amanda Aspenson: 1:42
So one, inclusive design right that we've been noticing. So one inclusive design right. I mean going above and beyond, whether it's variety of spaces for neurodiversity, intergenerational, universal design within the whole housing facility itself. We've been seeing living and learning communities, communities a lot. So that means you know, both the students are living within the housing and they're also bringing a portion of their learning, whether that's classroom learning or other learning inside the residential housing areas. And then wellness I mean wellness from a whole gamut of students are really expecting this place to be a place like home that really looks at whether it's meditation or prayer space or exercise or mental health resources, but looking at wellness as part of their living environment is also really important.
Matt Gerstner: 2:38
That's an amazing amount of things that are going into…
Amanda Aspenson: 2:42
Exactly, it is everything and anything nowadays, um, but yeah, it's, it's a, it's a home, it's, it's where, especially after covid, you know. So it's really becoming something, even more than just where you live during your college experience. And I'll pile on to that, Amanda.
Anna Pratt: 3:03
One of the projects that I recently completed was for Greek housing. We did one building for the fraternities, we did one building for the sororities, and so while that's their living quarters, it's also their chapter house. So they have all these fraternities living in one building. So they had individual chapter rooms. They had small lounges, large lounges, study rooms, things like that, and then same thing on the sorority side. They had chapter rooms for each of the sororities that were living in the house. And then, on top of that, flexibility because chapter numbers vary depending on the year, and so we were strategic in how those buildings were laid out, different locking mechanisms on the doors and where doors were placed within corridors, so that fraternities and sororities can grow and expand or shrink as the years go by.
Matt Gerstner: 3:56
That's an interesting concept. I hadn't heard of multiple fraternities or multiple sororities sharing the same building. That's unique. Is that something that's happening more often that you're aware of? I hadn't heard of it.
Amanda Aspenson: 4:09
It is. I've heard of a couple different institutions and the idea of flexibility that Anna was getting at is really important, whether it's with a sorority or fraternity, or male, female or gender based or whatever. It might be that having the flexibility to ebb and flow as populations change right, Whether that's exactly where the door is placed, where there's security or not security. So that flexibility is a really good point.
Matt Gerstner: 4:40
Very, very cool. That's an interesting concept. I've been on many university campuses and you see, you know frat row, sorority row, and it's all these houses and everybody's separated. I find it fascinating that you're bringing more community together that way.
Kevin Gamelin: 4:56
And I think that's really the key word is community. College is a really unique time in anyone's life because you really start to build connections and new friends by really just interesting things. Your new best friend you might wear the same shirt as them on the first day of class, or you become friends with the person across the hall from you because of the poster they have up in their room, and really that's really one of the big drivers and one of the big requests is how do we really make these spaces, you know, not only internally but externally, become a community and really drive what brings people together? You know, how can we encourage students to interact beyond the traditional dorm room in the corridor? How can you know we really open this up and, you know, make spaces that are private but public and semi-public and kind of build these interactions? How do we, you know, encourage students to go into extracurricular activities? You know, play sports together? You know, take the stairs, make good choices and really, you know, build and make friends that will last a lifetime.
Matt Gerstner: 6:09
You bring up some really great things there, kevin, because you're talking about challenges, if you will. You know how do these things happen, so I'm wondering have you encountered any common challenges that universities face, you know, particularly when working with, like an aging student, housing that no longer meets ?
Kevin Gamelin: 6:27
A big thing is a driver of space. A lot of universities and colleges they're landlocked. A lot tend to be in urban areas or pretty developed suburban areas. So we recently had a project where they couldn't lose beds during the school year. So what happened is a lot of students who were on a J term and on a study abroad program moved into this housing that we were able to phase kind of the demolition of and then basically build back over the summer and into a semester where another group of students was able to study abroad. So really we lost no beds during the phasing of the construction. So sometimes you kind of have to think outside the box, but you know it's definitely a challenge.
Amanda Aspenson: 7:17
To tag on to that. I mean we are seeing all over. You know accessibility issues and lack of elevator, you know. Getting to back to Kevin's point on community space, you know a lack of community space, security, aging toilet rooms, lack of ventilation, et cetera are all things you know everyone is running into and really the the idea or the question that institutions are running into is what's the return on investment, whether you renovate or you build new. When you look at these aging buildings and it's different for every institution that return is different.
Amanda Aspenson: 7:57
We were recently working with an institution that wanted to strategically go in and first focus on deferred maintenance within the building. So what are the primary elements that need to be updated from an HVAC standpoint, etc. And then they looked at for the next area of renovation, what were those elements that were key recruiting elements for students. So a key recruiting element, for example, was an added community room. In this particular location they actually did take down one unit or one residential unit so that they could renovate that unit into a community space for the building as a whole. So in that case there was the return of the recruitment that the community space provided was worth taking out one unit per se, so it's different for every institution, but looking at what the return is and what the priorities are is really important.
Anna Pratt: 9:00
On our project out at University of Nebraska at Kearney, the Martin Hall renovation. That project. The building was originally a women's dormitory built several years ago and they had a really fantastic great room and had great big floor to ceiling windows, a lot of character, beautiful marble fireplace, some really nice wood trim elements throughout and the chancellor really liked that room. He saw the potential of that room and so that's the reason even though it was no longer being used as a dormitory, it was being used for storage and the chancellor saw the potential there and said it's not coming down.
Anna Pratt: 9:40
We got to do something better with this building and where the students were living those were more temporary housing and so this was a perfect opportunity to gut the building gut Martin hall and we actually even in looking at the existing drawings from from Martin hall, we were able to dig out another six feet down below the basement. Footings were low enough. We were able to dig out and create a space that was was actually usable for for a new basement and so that started to create the the new kind of Greek village area at UNK and it was a really neat project to see that great room restored and see the university kind of almost put it back to what it started as a residence hall.
Matt Gerstner: 10:29
It' s fascinating that you know we're talking about some renovations, some new. You're clearly saying it kind of depends upon what the needs are of the campus, how things might work, what kind of return on investment you've got. So how does design in student housing tie into building and reflecting a university's unique culture and mission? Because I'm sure that has a couple of different takes, whether it's remodel versus building brand new.
Amanda Aspenson: 10:58
Again, the answer is so different per institution, right, Matt?
Amanda Aspenson: 11:03
And and when you think of how to reflect the university's, a university's unique mission and vision within any space, you know there are simple things that we see in terms of, okay, brand and color, and and you know what is the style of the architectural style that that may correspond with that institution's overall culture mission.
Amanda Aspenson: 11:28
But we work a lot with institutions that are starting to think about how space, and to go back again to the community, to go back and say you know some of the traditional first year housing facilities, for example, that have the very traditional double rooms with the larger restroom area. There are institutions that are rethinking that setup because of their mission and vision. Maybe it's because they're really looking at how they can get first-year students more fellowship, for example, together. So we have one institution in particular that transformed and said you know, first-year students are no longer going to have those more individual rooms but they're going to have pod suite style rooms because we really want them to build a community within a small group and then building those community spaces outside as well, so they can build, as a first year collective group, that community outside their pod as well. So really looking at how the overall layout and even circulation within the housing reinforces the mission and vision of the experience is what we're seeing today, both from first year all the way through graduate housing.
Kevin Gamelin: 12:52
Part of that, you know study and housing type too. we recently had a client at St John's University up near St Cloud, Minnesota, and initially when they approached us on the housing project it was a more traditional dormitory-style plan and the feedback we received from students and leadership really pushed us away from that traditional plan and we ended up going with a townhouse-style unit and that ability for upperclassmen to have a more independent role in their living and their decisions but still have a lot of community space. You know one of the drivers they had was they do a weekly meal of beans and rice. Hey, can you give us a space big enough that you know we can have this kind of small group dinner but still can we have kind of our own, you know private kitchen and you know how can we build kind of individual camaraderie but still really linked together in a larger community. So there's a wide array and you know I think every client is unique. So how can we take, you know, input from their student organizations, leadership, their enrollment numbers? You know always budget, but how can we take all these factors and really make something that is a reflection of their values, both internally to the campus but also at the community at large. So it's a really exciting challenge.
Amanda Aspenson: 14:26
And that is what's so fun about this building type too is because it connects with how just how we live and just the trajectory of student learning, and you know, kids are at home and then go off, and and so it's part of kids and students' development right, as they move through college.
Matt Gerstner: 14:49
it's exciting fun. It really is. It really is. So what role do factors like sustainability and accessibility play in improving student well-being in their living spaces? Are there key ways design can support this kind of thing?
Kevin Gamelin: 15:04
I think, as a baseline, we really want to create spaces that incorporate a lot of these values in our design. As a baseline, a building doesn't need to necessarily be LEED certified or WELL-certified to do this. But how can we take those ideas and really create, you know, create a space that's going to last, something that you know parents can say, hey, I lived there when that was new. And you know, oh, hey, I went to college there and it still looks great. What feels like a lot of years ago when I was looking around to go to school, as you know, a 16, 17, 18 year old, y o y you walk into the dorms and you go 'Can I see myself living here? ' it's subtle because you know, as you know a high schooler, you're thinking about where do I sleep and how good is the cafeteria food, but it does kind of impact a lot of decisions you're going to make. So it's an exciting challenge.
Amanda Aspenson: 16:08
Students are, so they're so savvy in terms of bigger, bigger, broader issues, and sustainability and accessibility only being two of those Right, so you know we've had, we've had students come to user group meetings asking about okay, what are what recycled content do you have in your materials? And you know, are all of your materials low VOC or bio-based materials, or so we, I mean students are asking these really smart questions. So it's validating in terms of what we're already doing is, I mean, it's making a difference and they're challenging us to to keep pushing and keep thinking farther related to these issues, cause it's no longer about code minimum or or whatever it might be, but it's about broader, bigger issues of whether it's advocating for different issues or whatever it might be that we need to pay attention to. So being inclusive for all you know, not just one group, but being inclusive for all and sustainability being more than sustainability but being about wellness and mental health for for these students. So the students are really pushing residential and student housing to a whole new level.
Matt Gerstner: 17:28
It is kind of crazy because you said, you said two great words there. It's reaffirming some of the things that we're doing, but it's also challenging. Yeah, it's amazing what young students today are aware of and what they want to be involved in and the kind of change that they're driving really.
Amanda Aspenson: 17:51
Exactly, Yeah.
Matt Gerstner: 17:52
So how does BWBR's work in other markets help inform student housing design?
Anna Pratt: 17:57
A lot of our market sectors overlap, especially in wellness, in some of our design elements, our durable environments we're looking at, . Amanda Amanda was talking about the low VOC materials and bio-based materials and things like that and I think those are some common themes that we're seeing in healthcare and science and technology and higher education and student housing is one of those.
Matt Gerstner: 18:27
It's great to hear that there is crossover from different markets into other markets, for lack of a better way of saying it.
Amanda Aspenson: 18:34
Yeah, and to add on to Anna's comments in terms of looking at other aspects of higher education, looking at recruitment and retention for students and that being key factors, especially in higher education today, you know, whether it's the Instagrammable moments that are created or the amenities around campus, all of that feeds into our work for student housing and, as Anna had mentioned as well, behavioral health. I mean we're learning a lot in our behavioral health markets about wellness and materials and privacy and help seeking environments, and that all wraps into successful student housing and student living.
Matt Gerstner: 19:21
It's so good to hear that kind of thing. I'm sure that we haven't hit on everything, so I'll just ask the question. You know, is there anything else that we haven't touched on that you wanted to add into this?
Kevin Gamelin: 19:32
How do you design for flexibility in the future?
Matt Gerstner: 19:36
That's a fantastic point. How do you design for flexibility when you're talking about student housing, when you're talking about there's known spaces that they're going to need, you know the bedrooms and that kind of thing and maybe common space, and but how do you make that building flexible?
Amanda Aspenson: 19:55
I think, going back to some of the earlier conversations, and flexibility, like you said, Matt, we don't, we don't know what the cohorts of students are going to look like, or you know in, in 10 to 20 years, for example, and so whether it's being able to, uh, segment floors or we've, we've looked at, Okay, how do you separate between, like I said, separate between floor levels, or are there doors placed in smart locations so that you have the flexibility of of opening up or closing down certain areas of buildings, depending on what your cohort looks like or what your mission is for for that year. Also, I mean having the infrastructure that's flexible enough, like we said. Also, I mean having the infrastructure that's flexible enough, like we said, you know, flexible enough. So the technology and so that you can, in the future, turn, let's say, a room into a community space or whatever it might be, is going to be really important as we move through the next 10 years.
Kevin Gamelin: 21:14
And even to that, you know planning for universal design as much as possible. Can rooms accommodate people with additional needs or is there availability to control even some minor things like lighting and temperature within spaces? You know some people have preferences for cooler and warmer, and how are we managing that, you know, in a sustainable way rather than kind of outputting one temperature? And you know you've seen the traditional dorms where students have the windows cracked in the middle of January. So how can we be a steward of the environment and you know resources as well.
Matt Gerstner: 21:55
Those are all fantastic points and, honestly, I think you've probably given our listeners a lot to think about today. Thank you again for joining me today. This has been a fantastic conversation.
Amanda Aspenson: 22:06
Thank you.
Matt Gerstner: 22:09
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