This rendering of the John Hancock Student Village at Boston University exemplifies the village atmosphere many students seek when choosing a college. BU’s Student Village incorporates residences, retail, dining, entertainment and recreation facilities.
College dormitories are no longer just places to sleep. In fact, they’re not even dormitories anymore. Today’s students and parents demand more for their money, and universities, competing desperately for top students, are giving it to them. Today’s student residence halls feature single bedrooms, technology suites, classrooms, team rooms, video lounges, and laundry and fitness rooms.
It isn’t all about serving up a sumptuous menu of amenities, however. Universities also simply want to maximize the number of students living on campus. Students who live on campus tend to have more positive college experiences, making them more likely to donate money to their alma mater as alumni. College towns also want students to live on campus because it reduces disruptive student behavior in residential neighborhoods and frees up rental housing for local residents. And students’ parents prefer that their children live on campus to protect them from crime, keep them out of trouble and provide them with a richer college experience.
This richer college experience is nurtured not only through creation of luxurious accommodations but also through the integration of these accommodations into “villages” that incorporate student residences, retail, dining, entertainment, and recreation. Having all of these components in one place accomplishes a number of goals: It increases the value of the campus experience, encouraging upper-class students to remain on campus; it promotes the education of the whole student – mind, body and spirit; and it nurtures a feeling of connectivity to a community, a feeling that, once planted, will stay with each student/alum for a lifetime.
Boston University’s John Hancock Student Village exemplifies this new planning model. The 10-acre site is planned to accommodate 2,300 student beds developed over three phases of construction. The first phase, completed in 2000, provided 817 beds, a retail store, and a café; the second phase, to be completed in 2009, will add 962 beds, with remaining beds provided in a future third phase.
Of course, residences and retail alone do not a village make. The development also includes the university’s Fitness and Recreation Center, completed in 2005 and serving 5,000 to 7,000 students per day; the 6,200-seat Agganis Arena, home of the school’s hockey team, also completed in 2005; and a theater.
The Student Village has truly become the heart of the BU campus, and the Fitness and Recreation Center and Agganis Arena are in no small part responsible. Not only do these facilities fill clear needs for Student Village residents and the entire community, but they are also beautiful, state-of-the-art facilities in which people look forward to spending their time. Thousands of students, faculty and staff make use of the Fitness and Recreation Center each day, and events at Agganis Arena draw the university community and the community at large.
By all measures, the Student Village has been an unqualified success. Rooms in its residence halls are the first to be snapped up by students, with all of them claimed within hours of the start of the university’s annual housing lottery. While many factors contribute to the success of a university, the continued upward trend in high school applications each year is evidence that Boston University is perceived as able to deliver on its promise of a vibrant and exciting university life. The 37,964 high school students who applied to Boston University this year represent a 12.1 percent increase over last year, and the Student Village undoubtedly plays a part in this level of interest.
East Hall, a new student residence being built at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, is aiming at similar objectives. Comprising 232 beds configured primarily in four-person apartments, the facility is designed to attract upperclass students back to the campus. Located at the east side of the campus adjacent to Founders Hall, an existing student residence with a recently renovated restaurant, the new building, which offers a fitness room, project rooms for teams of students, laundry, and residential life offices, will create a village atmosphere by sharing these amenities with Founders Hall residents. A landscaped, 40-foot-wide “Arts Walk” that connects the center of campus with the city of Worcester’s arts district will further support the active connection between the residence halls and the overall village dynamic.
East Hall also reflects the institution’s commitment to sustainable design as well as students’ increasing interest in this area. The building incorporates a “green roof” and other sustainable features that will enable it to utilize energy at levels 35 percent less than those required by current building codes. The university is seeking Silver LEED certification for the project.
Larger Impact
When designing a student village development, it is crucial to consider the impact the student village will have upon the larger urban fabric. Planners must take care to ensure that the student village does not overwhelm adjacent neighborhoods. The scarcity of land and the high level of demands placed upon it can easily result in buildings of a scale that significantly exceeds that of a typical residential neighborhood.
Sometimes a site can be identified that is not across the street from private residential housing. This was the case with the John Hancock Student Village. The community was supportive of the relatively large-scale development when they saw that it would not negatively impact them.
Projects such as WPI’s East Hall, however, that are adjacent to structures such as private residences, churches and the like, must be designed in a way that responds to the scale of the adjacent neighborhood. East Hall was kept to a maximum of five floors and the mass of the building was pulled as close to the university side of the property as possible in order to present a reasonable scale to the neighborhood. Listening closely to the needs of neighbors and responding as much as possible to meet those needs allowed the approvals to be obtained in the shortest time possible.
Universities expanding their on-campus student residence capacity are finding the student-village model to be an extremely efficient and synergistic way for them to achieve their recruitment, retention, and development goals in the 21st century. By combining multiple building types and functions in one human-centered development, the student village creates an integrated, enriching environment in which students can effectively pursue the work of their college years: academic achievement, social development, and discovery of direction and purpose.
