Talking Stick - July/August 2013 - 50

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Common Space for the Common Good

space of their room, encounter other
students, and gather in larger groups.
This counteracts the threat of isolation
new students face, easing the first-year
transition to a collegiate environment.
The common living space offers a place
for students to explore diversity, practice
interpersonal skills, and develop the
relationships that will help them thrive
during the next few years.
By the time students become
seniors, most have already formed
strong relationships. They opt for
smaller communities, now choosing
specific living mates and more private
settings. The most self-contained
arrangement is the apartment, which
has its own common living space,
bathroom, and kitchen. Designed to
accommodate a few older students,
apartment common spaces are smaller
than those in residence halls for
first-year students. This configuration
encourages students to become more
responsible for their own space. While
a building custodian maintains the
common living spaces in traditional
residence halls, students in apartments
must learn to share responsibility
for the bathroom, living, and kitchen
spaces. In such ways, the apartment
provides a training ground for life after
graduation.

like-minded students in residential
communities, such as in honors or
substance-free residence halls. At
Miami University, living-learning
communities (LLCs) help to organize
the lives of first-year students.
Incoming students select housing
by thematic interest, not by location.
These themes reflect academic or
cultural topics and are tied to required
curricular offerings; thus, livinglearning communities offer built-in
connections – students live with
others who share a particular interest
and take the same set of related
academic courses. Faculty advisors
live on site, further strengthening and
supporting the thematic interests that
link the students. Discussing Miami
University’s long-range housing plan,
Olson highlights the key role that
common space plays in the LLCs.
Both the newly constructed residence
halls and those undergoing renovation
will feature common space in a
variety of sizes to accommodate and
encourage different types of activities.
Multipurpose rooms can change
function based on the hall’s theme. For
example, in the “Celebrate the Arts”
community, a multipurpose room could
hold areas for sculpture or photography.

Common space in residence halls
may be multipurpose, mixed-use, or
designed to accommodate specific
activities. From practice or seminar
rooms to dirty project rooms to
kitchens, a range of programmed
common spaces now appear
throughout residence halls. These areas
allow students to take part in certain
activities and engage with others who
share similar interests.

Common space extends beyond the
walls of the residence hall to include
outdoor space, which can be shaped
by buildings and landscape features.
Buildings create larger courtyards,
within which trees, shrubs, and other
vegetation define more intimately
scaled spaces. Newbern indicates that
such a strategy activates the outdoor
space associated with Vanderbilt
University’s new residence halls.
Because the temperate Nashville
climate permits a high degree of
porosity between the buildings’
ground level spaces and the courtyards
they shape, so these residence halls
maintain a strong connection between
interior and exterior spaces.

Building on the idea of shared
interests, some college and university
housing officials intentionally group

Grassy courtyards, outside
classrooms, skateboard rail jams – a
range of outdoor common spaces

type/activity:
Multipurpose,
Programmed, and
exterior space

50

tAlking stick

populate college and university
campuses. At Miami University,
administrators have consciously
planned for outdoor gathering spaces
adjacent to the residence halls. These
include a barbeque area with a grill
and benches, a shared green space
for impromptu athletic games, and a
patio that connects two nearby halls. As
expected, such outside spaces support
the LLC themes. For the “Celebrate the
Arts” community, the patio can serve
as an outdoor performance venue,
offering a place for creative displays to
engage neighboring LLCs.

doN’t forget the
BathrooMs!
Contemporary discussions of residence
halls often focus on common space
as a social condenser, a place that
encourages student interactions. Yet
when it comes to common bathroom
and showering facilities, the emphasis
is on privacy, which in turn facilitates
inclusivity.
When planning bathroom facilities
for new and renovated residence
halls, designers no longer rely on the
group bathroom arrangement that
characterized traditional residence
halls. They now compartmentalize
toilet and shower fixtures. True
partitions – walls and doors for the
toilets, and doors or curtained-off
changing areas for the showers – set
the fixtures apart, preserving users’
privacy. These gender-inclusive facilities
also reflect the notion of inclusivity that
colleges and universities embrace. And
unlike single-occupancy restrooms,
compartmentalized bathroom spaces
permit simultaneous use of the shower
and the toilet by different students. The
compartmentalized bathroom works
in all types of housing configurations,
from doubles and open or closed suites
to apartments.
Compartmentalized fixtures
require more square footage than their
grouped counterparts, but the extra
cost is an acceptable sacrifice to ensure
Talking Stick - July/August 2013

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