Renae Mantooth, PhD and research lead for education at HKS; and Jeff Larsen, principal and regional practice director of education at HKS, discuss how evolving student expectations and needs have led to a rethink on the way we design university accommodation

As higher education enrolment rates climb, an urgent need for quality student housing is pervasive on college campuses.

Along with the demand for more on-campus units and beds, learnings from the pandemic have caused universities to understand and prioritise the student experience differently.

HKS education designers have created student housing environments on campuses large and small, resulting in more than 58,000 beds across the United States in an evolving higher education development landscape.

Beyond simply delivering housing units, our teams conduct extensive pre-design and post-occupancy research and engagement efforts to create design solutions that provide what students really want, and need, in their living environments.

To help us align with university partners on how to center the student experience and positive outcomes throughout the design process, our team has developed coalition research and a framework that comprises 12 student needs.

Basic, but vital

Three of the most-foundational student needs we have identified are privacy, socialisation, and comfort.

These needs might seem basic in nature, but designers must intentionally create diverse spaces to fulfill these needs and contribute to each student’s wellbeing and sense of belonging.

Our team implements design strategies that range in scale from the individual unit to the larger campus plan, so students can thrive personally and academically in their entire living and learning

By balancing efficiency and affordability with an elevated student experience in our design approach, we seek to create built environment solutions that support students’ varied and overlapping needs including — but certainly not limited to — privacy, socialization, and comfort.

Options for privacy

Every student arrives on campus with a different perspective on privacy.

Some may come from households where they were the only child, or where they had their own room; while others may come from larger families where they shared bedrooms or lived with intergenerational relatives.

And these prior living environments shape students’ expectations for privacy in their on-campus housing.

Today’s student housing is increasingly designed with apartment and suite arrangements which provide students with more privacy and personal space than traditional residence hall models that feature shared bedrooms and common bathrooms and lounges on every floor.

Universities and designers have adapted to meet the evolving needs and desires of today’s college students, understanding that providing more privacy in these intimate spaces can be better for students’ holistic wellbeing.

However, shared rooms inherently enable socialisation and can lead to many benefits, including decreased isolation and higher retention rates.

For these reasons, we work with universities to balance their offerings.

Through our design research, we’ve learned that privacy isn’t something that can, or should, be limited to the design of bedrooms and bathrooms.

Providing many options for how, and where, students can retreat within the larger campus goes a long way in enhancing their wellbeing, too.

‘Zoom’ rooms

One design strategy our teams have implemented to support privacy in projects such as UC San Diego Theatre District Living and Learning Neighborhood (TDLLN) are ‘Zoom’ rooms.

Online and hybrid learning hasn’t gone away since the COVID-19 pandemic eased, even though many classes are face-to-face for on-campus students.

Students often collaborate with others or connect with professors remotely, and having private spaces in housing buildings for them to do so provides options for virtual, private connections.

At UC Davis’ Shasta and Yosemite Halls, which include a variety of small and mid-size lounge and study areas, our design research revealed that students are using the exterior bridges connecting each building to make private phone calls.

The bridges are conveniently located down the hall from student rooms, and many students said they often stopped on the bridge to finish conversations before returning to the space they share with their roommate.

This example demonstrates that privacy is something students want, and need, and that it can be found in unexpected places.

However, the notion of ‘right-sizing’ these shared spaces for increased utilisation is key.

As we learned in our post-occupancy study, the mere presence of a glass door can signal territoriality, limiting the number of students who use a shared space. 

Socialisation

While on-campus living is, by nature, a social experience, meaningful social relationships often take time, effort, and energy for students to develop.

Students have different approaches, expectations, and needs when it comes to making friends. Some move far from home for school and may not know anyone on campus, while others attend a school close to home, where they are more likely to know many fellow classmates.

It’s important for us to tend to varying degrees of social relationships, so we meet all the diverse needs of socialisation – including those that happen online, one on one, or in a group setting.

A student’s potential social relationships include those with roommates, floormates, others in their building, or other on-campus residences, and with the entire campus community at large.

And the design of student housing can help foster students’ abilities to forge and maintain bonds with others in ways that work for them.

We’ve learned that it’s important to provide spaces and furnishings that support different modes of gathering.

Common rooms and lounges are a tried-and-true type of space in student housing buildings, but one or two areas intended for many different concurrent activities don’t always provide the right options from a socialisation (or studying) standpoint.

Similarly, a student bedroom with only a desk, chair, and bed can’t fully support certain social activities like playing a board game or watching a movie together.

Every floor or wing on a student housing floor makes up a community comprised of residents supported by one resident assistant or advisor.

The floor community is an extension of the more-intimate roommate community, and we have learned the importance of expanding those scales of social networks and supporting them through design.

On a current student housing project in Florida, our design connects pairs of floors with one stairwell and shared amenities.

This design strategy gives students the option to engage with a bigger social network, in addition to the suitemate and floor community. Providing more connections, while still maintaining the smaller, more-intimate aspects of a floor community provides a range of opportunities for socialisation for students who may want different things in their housing environment.

We have also been strategic about fostering social interactions among students who might not encounter one another daily.

At TDLLN, we applied a concept of ‘functional inconvenience’, where students gather in a central location for key amenities that they infrequently utilise, such as laundry and fitness facilities and a community kitchen.

The intent is to design shared spaces at different scales and for different modes of interactivity that enhance students’ sense of belonging within their greater community.

Providing choice

Comfort is foundational in any living environment — our holistic wellbeing is enhanced when we feel comfortable and at ease in the places where we live.

Just like with privacy and socialisation, comfort is a need that looks and feels different for every student living on campus.

Some students enjoy living environments that are open, where they can easily be surrounded by others and circulate to different spaces, while others gravitate toward more-private spaces where they can retreat.

In today’s student housing, students and their families can often select from a range of options for suite and room arrangements, making choices based on comfort levels and affordability.

Design strategies that support choices for comfort can be applied throughout student housing and campus environments, not just in bedrooms and suites.

Our research has shown that providing choice and agency in a student housing environment contributes to student comfort.

By designing spaces and incorporating features that provide comfort for students regardless of their activity, whether it be studying, socializing, or relaxing, we provide more places where students can freely and comfortably live their lives.

Even things as simple as self-operated thermostat and lighting controls can go a long way toward enhancing comfort.

Through planning discussions with school officials and student engagement efforts for a major housing project at UT San Antonio, we learned it is important for us to provide UTSA students with choice, to contribute to their overall comfort.

The design includes a variety of unit options that expand the university’s housing portfolio and balance affordability with creating a dynamic, comfortable community for students.

The building’s circulation is designed with single-loaded corridors so neighbors across the hall can’t see into each other’s rooms. This strategy was an intentional move to provide students with that next level of comfort in their living space.

The project also features permeable transition zones between the outdoors and shared amenities on the ground floor that offer a variety of sensory experiences and supply students with options for respite, socialisation, and climatic control.

With flexible lounge seating and varied furniture options throughout, students can customise their shared environments for comfort.

Preparing for the future

Successful student housing design prepares young people for different living situations as they continue through their academic life.

While learning to advocate for personal needs is a part of the developmental experience of on-campus living, students who have a built environment that supports them can spend more time focusing on learning and building relationships than seeking places that fulfil their needs.