By Shirley Dugdale, Roger Torino, and Elliot Felix

• A Learning Landscape approach to master planning takes into account the entire environment that learners experience, from instructional to informal learning places, from physical to virtual.
• Compared with traditional campus space allocations, the clustering of functions into “hubs” can create multiuse spaces that encourage synergies between activities, enable more effective use of space, and bring groups together.
• Hubs are envisioned as collaborative centers with enabling technology that are bookable on demand to support the more distributed mobile work patterns of all types of learning communities, and to foster interaction and innovation.

This case study describes concepts for three types of learning spaces that grew out of a Learning Landscape planning process. The process was part of a master plan study for the three campuses of the University at Buffalo. It involved research into user needs and aspirations about future pedagogy, development of learning space strategy, campus-scale planning principles, and concepts for exemplary spaces.

The three space concepts described here address the needs of different sets of constituents: the Teaching Hub with experimental spaces combined with support, Learning Corridors to enrich the student realm, and the Faculty Hub as a destination for interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars and researchers. These are some of the space concepts and strategies which are currently being applied during the refinement of the draft master plan.

View the Case Study PDF (9 MB)

© 2009 Shirley Dugdale, Roger Torino, and Elliot Felix. The text of this article is licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 license.

Shirley Dugdale

Director, Learning Environments 

DEGW North America LLC 

Elliot Felix

Associate Director 

DEGW North America LLC 

Roger Torino

Strategy Consultant 

DEGW 

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