Program Distilling 20 Years of Architectural Data Guides Design of New Residence Hall at University of Cincinnati

Marian Spencer Hall at the University of Cincinnati was designed using 20 years of data about the size, orientation, and distribution of various spaces in 20 residence halls. The upshot: Residence halls are not just places for students to sleep. They can set the tone for their ability to study, socialize, and engage with the campus community that will be their home for years. How well the facility achieves that balance can help determine a student’s academic success.

“For years, we tracked all of our residence hall data in a spreadsheet, but what could we do with it?” recalls Zachary Zettler, principal and Higher Education Market director at GBBN Architects of Cincinnati. 

GBBN’s health care group had dealt with a similar issue by taking its data and codifying it with Microsoft’s Power BI. “Somebody internally here said, ‘Well, we could apply a similar filtering system for the Power BI,’ so we created a separate file that imported all that data,” says Zettler. “The information collected data on our residence halls for the past 20 years—roughly 5,000 beds and 20 student housing projects—and we looked at how we could use that data.” 

There’s an App for That

A series of virtual slide adjusters on GBBN’s HomeBase app lets planners see what movement of various parameters would do to the building’s design, speeding up some basic decisions by narrowing the parameters right away, such as the room type, total cost, and common space allocation. 

The right answer will depend on the students who will occupy the building. 

“For freshmen, you want to give them very little space inside their room, because you want them to get out and meet other people. You want them to build a sense of community and find friends, so that’s the small end of the spectrum,” says Zettler. 

Graduate students, on the other hand, have different needs. “They may have a family, or they may be spending a lot of time in a research lab, so their units are more apartment-style,” he says. 

For the $48 million, 328-bed Marian Spencer Hall, the third building in a complex of three recently completed towers, the university wanted something in between, according to Zettler, so the rooms could be used by whichever group had greater need.

These junior suites were “a Jack-and-Jill setup with two students on each side and a bathroom in the middle,” says Carl Dieso, the university’s assistant vice president for housing and campus services.

Housing demand is unusually high at the University of Cincinnati. The 200-plus-year-old university is a proponent of cooperative education, a system in which students alternate between work experiences and classroom work. “That means most of our students are coming and going every semester, so our population changes every semester,” explains Dieso. “It also means most of them are there for up to six years for their course of study, as they move back and forth.” 

On-campus housing capacity has tripled in the past decade, but even though the university plans to house 8,490 students in the fall of 2024, it still has another 5,000 students who would also like to live on campus. “We can’t build residence halls fast enough,” says Dieso.

Common Space and Uncommon Outcomes

Common space was another category GBBN programmed in the HomeBase app. Despite the pressure to accommodate more students on campus, the university resisted pressure to eliminate common space.

“We try to allocate a certain percentage,” says Zettler. “There is kind of a sweet spot between 4% and 12%.

“Every floor has a lounge. They are all sized the same and they all have the same views, but we use furniture and technology to provide choice for the sudents,” says Zettler. “We know from independent research that if students have choices, they are more likely to engage with the space. If they engage with the space, they are more likely to feel connected and have a sense of belonging to the larger community.

“We have a strong belief that common space is the most valuable space to create community within a residence hall,” says Zettler, which in turn improves educational outcomes. He cites a 2021 report by the Chronicle of Higher Education that found that 97% of first-year students who felt valued said they intended to return the following year, while only 89% of students who did not feel valued said they planned to come back.

The quality of the building leads to better outcomes in other ways, as well. “Our staff got better because the buildings were better. Our resident assistant pool became more robust, because people wanted to be part of the program. That was the farthest thing from our mind as we were doing this, but what a lovely outcome to find,” says Dieso.

At Marian Spencer, they set up enough common space to accommodate as many as 23% of the residents at one time.

However, although the square footage of each of the common spaces is the same, GBBN offered the university five different basic models, of which the administration ultimately opted for three. The two most popular were “be spaces”—places for solitary study and quiet socializing—and study rooms designed for groups. The building has a dining hall on the first floor, which serves as another a communal space.

Even where the rooms are located can play a big role in their success, says Zettler. “You want the communal spaces to be on this sunny side, or the side with the view of the most active part of campus. In a “be” space, you probably want it to be looking out toward a quiet quad or wooded area. You have to really think about all of those aspects and how you can support the activities that are going to happen in those spaces.”

In addition to providing the architects with a new way to visualize their knowledge, the app has increased GBBN’s appetite for data, leading them to begin conducting post-occupancy surveys about how residents are actually using the space. For common spaces, for instance, this data is enabling them to see how often spaces are being used and whether they are being used in the way initially envisioned.

One of the team’s biggest surprises was the popularity of the laundry room. 

“It’s already loud there, so people were going there to hang out and see their friends,” says Zettler. Thinking it over now, he says “maybe we should have made the laundry room just a little big bigger and allowed that to be a bigger louder space for those extroverts who want to see everybody. I think that’s a lesson learned.”

But the app can’t decide everything. Some design choices don’t come down to numbers quite as easily. For example, in a quiet study area, “you want to make sure that you’ve got furniture that’s comfortable because you may be there for a long time,” explains Zettler. “You want to make sure that you’ve got good acoustics, and lighting that is handled in a way that is quiet versus in a more lively room.”

The Other Killer App

Dieso insists that better residential buildings create value for the institution. In fact, he talks about housing as a crucial tool for retaining students. “When any other area is stumbling, we just get them into housing. We know if we can get our arms around them, we know our housing program is strong, and we know our facilities are the right types of facilities,” he says. “To know that I have a shot at keeping 94% of our students from fall to spring because they’re in our program, it is worth every dollar we spent on it.” 

By Bennett Voyles