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Considered one of the first and largest university-level makerspace programs in the country, the Bernard M. Gordon Learning Factory on Penn State University’s main campus in State College, Pa., has operated in its original building for more than 30 years with only minimal facility renovations. It will soon relocate to 103,000 sf in one of two new state-of-the-art academic engineering buildings under construction on the campus, a move that the Learning Factory program director says will help the program continue to compete with the growing number of makerspaces being established throughout the academic marketplace. The Learning Factory, which pairs students with more than 100 industry sponsors each year, is scheduled to begin prototyping several classes in the new facility in January 2023, with full occupancy targeted for that summer.

Among all the questions about the post-COVID workplace, a common realization is taking hold: Organizations must be especially mindful of employee needs in their return-to-office planning. The pandemic upended not just the professional but also the personal side of workers’ lives. One of the things that distinguishes this new era is the much larger role empathy and understanding will play in the design process, says John Campbell, president of the architecture firm FCA. The new workplace will feature a variety of recalibrated space types that are more purposeful, employee driven, and less unitized. 

The 14-story Heart Institute, completed in 2020 at the University of South Florida (USF), is the culmination of years of planning with an emphasis on integrating best practices from previous construction and renovation projects. The result is a “facilitative environment that provides for collaboration between researchers and research disciplines,” says Robert W. Engelman, associate vice president of research and innovation and professor of pediatrics, pathology, and cell biology at USF.

Collecting “big data” is always a good first step for benchmarking, but the data will benefit facility design only if there is an equally strong system for applying it to make informed decisions. Using a variety of technology tools, Flad Architects of Madison, Wis., has developed what they call a data warehouse, a central place where everyone within their firm can store and evaluate data to use when benchmarking space metrics across all projects in all sectors. Both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods are used to conduct space utilization studies including new sensor technologies that provide a high level of accuracy.

You had a few of those big lecture classes in college—rows of students sitting in tiers, facing an instructor with an overhead projector or maybe a PowerPoint presentation. But recent studies show that students learn better and achieve more when they actively engage in their learning rather than passively listen to a lecture. Higher ed students will likely continue to spend about half their time in lecture halls or large-format classrooms designed for 75, 150, or even 250 people, so universities need to adapt these spaces with improved audiovisual systems and more room per student.