Buildings

The general atmosphere of every University is influenced by its buildings. If they are large and have high roofs then they demand respect and if they are small or the place looks like a house, then it is much harder to gain respect.

However, there are certain critical points that define an educational establishment and differentiate it from say a commercial company and these will be reviewed in the following sections.

The general organization of Universities almost always contains gardens with grass where students can relax their eyes and rest from a full day of concentration on reading books. Campuses that are not in the middle of towns, go out of their way to boast of the beauty of their grounds. In town campuses, struggle to compete but find a problem in this because of the high cost of land, so they attempt to locate at least one part of the campus next to a park or green area if that is at all possible. The cause for this is that eyes get tired from continually reading text, left to right and top to bottom, so the muscles need to rest and for some unknown reason, they rest with looking at nature and most of all when looking at running water, as in a waterfall, or lake.

In addition to this, the buildings should me accessible to students even if they require them to walk from one to another. Pathways have to be easy to walk on, not full of rocks, stones and hurdles. They are either just sand between grass on either end, or red brick, depending on the location and are usually drawn clearly for the whole campus with zebra crossings clearly shown where the pathway crosses any of the roads.

Parkings are also well cared for in most campuses that exist in areas that do not offer good quality transport, and these may vary in the level of service they offer. Most Universties ask students to pay a nominal fee to be able to use the University's on grounds parking versus those who do not have to pay for parking because they use the free bus service.

If the buildings are distant from each other, then within campus or inter campus transport has to be provided possibly for a fee. Since we have a reserved society, it is evident that girls and boys are not likely to like sharing a minivan provided for transport causing most boys to prefer walking rather than crowd the girls. One simple and cheap option is to offer a Tram service, which is basically a small car or jeep that pulls the other cars behind it. Each car has an entry point on the sides with doors and this means that boys can use some of the cars while girls use the others.

The main purpose of an educational building is to house classes, labs whenever necessary and instructor offices. The building is intended for the use of instructors, lab technicians and students so the main idea is to make these buildings full of light and to give a sense of safety to all those using these buildings as if it were a second home to them.

However, these buildings are usually accustomed to heavy traffic so the materials used to cover the ground should be heavy duty materials and not something like tiles that will crack during the first or second year of use. The building should also be the type that preserves energy rather than wastes it because it exists in the midst of educated people who care about energy and pollution. Colors used in the building should be tasteful, light shades or those that keep a person awake like light shades of yellow or peach for classrooms, and light blue for rest areas. The construction itself should be solid and any cantelever use well calculated to last for years because the weights on that projection are not huge causing a shorter lifespan of the projection.

The corridors should be wide, well lit, and should have security cameras at various critical locations to aid in detecting any theives if anything is stolen from any of the labs. Doors should be at several locations but not so many as to turn the place into a heaven for theives.

The dean's office and the ones for the chairmen of the various department have to be equipped with a main room, secretaries offices and a meeting room with all of these well lit and with some sort of view. There should be directions throughout the whole building for these offices from any enterance a guest may use.

Offices should have wide windows that allow enough light into offices while providing curtains to cover them if direct sunlight hits them. They may be large enough to hold two faculty members or small enough for one depending on what the faculty members prefer.

Corridors leading to the offices should be wide, not narrow with the ground covered with carpet and ceilings in materials that absorb sound plus being equipped with cameras to watch all those who pass through the corridors as an added measure of safety to all those who use the corridors and/or offices.

The mailbox area should be close to the entrance used by the staff of that department and the photocopy area should be in an isolated room that has at least one heavy duty machine (I saw this size in the UK) and another ordinary size machine plus a large shredder and a table to organize one's papers.

Staff members should have kitchen facilities per department close to their rest area which contains comfortable seating and preferably a view. Kitchens should be stocked with basic items like coffee, tea, sugar, and the rest area equipped with a small stereo that can be used to play classical music.

Classes should have the boards placed in a location at the center of the room, and these boards must have trays for the pens and/or erase. Additional teaching aids include a personal computer, preferably a normal sized one to make it harder to steal from the classrooms with the processor fitted to the table. A datashow projector could be suspended from the ceilings of the classrooms to project the slides shown on the PC in the room. These datashows can be turned on and off using remote controls that are kept by instructors and/or the chairman's office.

Student chairs should allow for both right and left handed students and should also have a tray below the chairs to carry student books and bags.

The building should also contain student rest areas for both girls and boys with more comfortable chairs as they are likely to spend at least 8 hours a day at that campus. These can be left open to the main corridor to classes with cameras on the corridors leading to the area and in the area to ensure that it is not abused.

Prayer areas for girls and boys have to be designated for every group of buildings with a rest area close to it such that the rest area for girls is right next to where they pray with lounge chairs, etc.

Laboratories have to be equipped with high quality materials and in the case of personal computers, they must be of a good brand that is unlikely to break down in the middle of student work. The laboratories must be equipped with sufficient network connections and electricity provisions for the number of PCs placed in them. No wires should be visible to students to avoid accidents and all computer access has to be through accounts that allow students to change their passwords because giving them tough passwords to remember is like telling them to not care much for that account. The network itself must be closed such that even if they bring a PC they cannot connect to the Internet account until they have logged in.

Directions of classes must also be clearly written at the entrance of each corridor of classes along with information if any rest areas exist there.

Class distances should be calculated to allow students to change classes in the allotted time so for example if it is 10 minutes than the maximum distance between classes should have a shortcut that allows a student to cross it in ten minutes.