Part 1: Context and Masterplanning

• • What is the future role of a campus, what physical estate is needed, what future needs will define it?
• • How might universities relate to their neighbouring communities?
• • What processes can be followed to create an estate vision?

Part 2: Spaces

• • How can pedagogical aims be defined adequately to influence spatial requirements?
• • What emerging spatial typologies are resulting from new requirements?
• • How can spaces be more flexible, support greater demand, and improve outcomes?

Part 3: Briefing, Design and Construction

• • Can changes in the briefing process help clients define their requirements better?
• • When should sustainability targets be set?
• • Does continuity in engagement improve outcomes?

Part 4: Value and Performance

• • How should projects be valued?
• • How can feedback be sought?
• • What lessons can be learned?

Each part of the book is introduced by those with university experience, with reflections on the topic by a Pro Vice Chancellor, a research academic, a Professor of Physics and a Director of Estates, bringing experience from Australia, Scandinavia, Switzerland and the UK.

This client view is an important feature of the book – a focus on how spaces work in use and about how good briefing, excellence in design and responsive operation can deliver exceptional results that improve educational practice and research outcomes, raising the profile of the university.

In a period when the ever-developing use of IT is changing learning and teaching methodologies, it is important to understand how the physical estate can provide opportunities to enhance online resources and communication. This can be in IT-enabled settings or in complementary spaces that offer a different type of environment where human and physical interaction is facilitated through comfort, character and atmosphere. The need for characterful and flexible space is therefore as pressing as ever. The character of the university estate has a direct impact on student and staff admissions and retention; how the estate provides environments that enable successful IT integration into teaching and learning practice, alongside complementary functions, will define the next ten years of university development.

This book describes how emerging changes to traditional teaching spaces could meet future needs, and asks if the university estate’s current focus on social learning needs to change further in the future. The imperative to provide maximum benefit through the use of minimal environmental and financial resources demands a focus on long-term value and performance. There is an increasing need for universities to offer robust, attractive and comfortable settings for as yet undefined uses, alongside very particular functions: for learning and ideas exchange through project and team endeavour. There needs to be debate both on how these spaces are arranged and connected – public to private, inclusive to exclusive – and on social, staff and educational organisation within universities to re-establish a synergy between buildings, technology and the university community.

It is human interaction that the physical university offers, and those with the best facilities and character to retain their staff and encourage interaction and the exchange of ideas will be the most successful.