State of the Union

Has any American college not yet built a new student union? If so, it is probably interviewing architects at this moment. All across the country, from Bowdoin to Pomona, colleges are scrambling to renovate, expand, or replace aging student unions, with their battered billiard tables and subterranean TV lounges. The student union craze is upon us, and not even the stormy economy seems able to slow its eager advance.

The modern student union is a versatile breed. It might be a sprawling creation, lik the $75-million, 330,000 square-foot leviathan at the UMass at Boston http://www.umb.edu/campuscenter/ . Or a restrained and subtle affair, like the taut, 50,000 square-foot-building at Sweet Briar College, which cost only about $14-million http://www.dining.sbc.edu/p-index.html . But large or small, it is certain to contain a multistory atrium, cafe seating, and the obligatory food court.

History
This is not the first time that a new building type has spread from campus to campus. After the Civil War came a great wave of memorial auditioriums, built to honor fallen classmates. The 1920s clamored for football stadiums. Thse earlier booms were prompted by sweeping changes in the nature of student life and alumni identity. Our era-for better or worse- has embraced the student union. It speaks of our time...

Today
The essence of the modern student union is to be a recruiting instrument, a fact that pardons its many infelicities: its self-consciousness, its nervous unctuousness, its relentless transparency. It its character is shaped by the world of commerical architecture, that is because it is itself an advertisement. It is the principal highlight of the standard college tour, along with the fitness center. And it communicates exceptionally well. Directors of admissions note that a quick meal in the student center conveys more information about life at a college, and with more credibility, than the lengthiest formal presentation. There the visitor can observe at a glance how students act and interact, how they dress, their relative stress level, and how they relate to their professors.

The Modern Student Center
The modern student union also expresses startling changes in the nature of student life. Since the American campus was wired for computers, a process essentially completed a decade or so ago, studying is no longer a private affair of reading and typing, which involved prolonged and quiet concentration. Studying has become more intermittent, more gregarious, and more mobile. As workstations and terminals have been dispersed across the campus, the clear hierarchy between public and private spaces has dissolved. That, too, is written across the eloquent face of the modern student union - hospitable, industrious, and somewhat prone to insomnia. Smith College's new campus center is a splendid example of the type, a sinuous viaduct with glazed walls and skylight along its meandering spine http://www.smith.edu/campuscenter/ . It is not so much a building as a roofed-over street. "Imaginedd as an en-route passage through the campus, the building is defined by various interconnecting paths that challenge the boundary between inside and outside," says a description on Smith's Web site.

Student-Designed
If the student center increasingly caters to consumers, then consumers have shaped them return. No academic building has ever been subjected to as much student involvement. Students have played crucial roles on building committees, as is apparent on the large number of Web sites devoted to student-center projects. Some campus cents can even be said to be student-designed, to the extent that their functions were democratically chosen. Smith college, for example, surveyed students about what services the campus center should offer. The highest vote-getter was an ATM machine, far outstripping the bookstore, convenience store, and performance space that were the closest contenders.

The Future
The student-center building boom, at a conservative estimate, has already consumed several billion dollars. More will be spent in the coming years, recession or no recession, for those brash buildings have become indispensable. They bring to the staid campus all that is vital about commercial architecture: its energy, newness, and wide-awake readiness to face the demands of the present. But they bring, alas, the weaknesses of commercial architecture as well - superficiality, flimsiness, and a very limited shelf life. In their very swagger is a cringing insecurity, which is foreign to the plodding and deliberate way that campuses used to grow. The new student cente is a lovely object, and it speaks with unerring honesty about the college today.

http://www.chronicle.come/article/Forget-Classrooms-How-Big-/35303