Sharing spaces – getting student accommodation right
David Campbell, Managing Director of Alumno, explains how strategically developed purpose-built student accommodation can make a valuable contribution to urban life, ranging from supporting vital education establishments and providing the right study, living and social environments for their students, to local regeneration, restoration, economic growth and improving the fabric of communities.
Social housing, affordable housing and key-worker housing are all forms of tenure geared towards helping people take their first steps and establish a roof over their heads. But more than this, at their best, they also foster an invaluable sense of community, identity and place. To develop student housing successfully, it should be viewed in much the same way and context.
Student accommodation is often a young person’s first experience of a home away from their immediate family and familiar surroundings. This is reason enough to ensure it’s designed in a way that provides residents with both their own private space, but also encourages and promotes wider engagement and socialising with their peers. After all, most students will tend to choose an education establishment far away from family and friends. This makes meeting and getting to know new people as quickly as possible key to settling successfully into student life.
Of course, this also means providing the right balance between a welcoming accommodation environment allowing both study and socialising with a focus on the enhanced student experience. This is vitally important to education establishments. Not just for playing a key role in creating a happy and successful intake, but also in attracting the best students in an increasingly competitive education landscape. Purpose-built student accommodation (PSBA) can also reduce any potential friction with local communities, bringing renewed vigour and vitality to an area, and delivering on many placemaking objectives, something that’s also of critical importance to universities and colleges.
Benchmarks of placemaking
One of the biggest issues directed at growing student populations, which impacts local authorities, is the reduction in the available pool of rented accommodation to wider residents and citizens. PBSA helps to remedy this situation by freeing up traditional properties. This can reduce the burden on mainstream housing, and amplify the positive aspects students can bring – the cultural rebirth and economic regeneration of our urban landscapes that young people drive, particularly the re-invigoration of inner cities and town centres.
To realise this potential fully, PBSA projects must be benchmarks of placemaking, and drive new ideas and methods to ensure the sympathetic development of cities. They must complement existing architecture, using local materials where possible. They must reflect an area’s culture heritage and backstory, drawing in the local community and enabling students to integrate positively. Both parties can then coexist, successfully sharing spaces. Meanwhile, students will feel more at home with their environs, which can lead to them to put down roots and live and work in the cities where they have studied, adding real long-term social and economic value and benefits.
Community hub
Achieving this demands making the time and effort to fully understand your location and to talk to people on the ground at the start of every project – from the community, council and education establishments. Listening closely to what they have to say. Discovering what’s important to them. Gaining an understanding of the area socially, culturally, historically and economically to distil its identity. Every area’s uniqueness should be reflected in its PBSA developments. This may sound an obvious approach, but it can very easily get missed and lost if the narrative and ambition of a project is not clearly set out from the start.
It’s not just about providing facilities for residents, but also creating a space and a hub for the community. As well as well-appointed rooms, study and social areas are key, such as communal spaces, gyms, cinema rooms and roof terraces, to get students to mix informally. But it’s equally important to add value to the local area and economy through incorporating resources such as great open spaces and well designed and flexible studios and office facilities for local artists, creatives and businesses alike. Some of the very best examples of student housing also deliver community shops, cafés, meeting halls, creches and educational facilities. This is the essence of true placemaking and in that regard student housing has been a leader in driving this agenda, turning brownfield and transitional zones into new vibrant neighbourhoods.
Blurring lines
The outdoor space around the building is just as important as the interior. It should be well designed and welcoming through carefully crafted with enhanced landscaping. Using local artists to create works relating to the local heritage of the location, from sculptures to poems etched into the building’s external fabric, helps to establish identity, while also supporting the arts community of the area and improving the local environment.
These themes can also be extended through the interior, giving residents a vital sense of place, helping them feel part of a city, instead of an outsider. All of which importantly blurs the lines between students and the local community, maximising integration and creating developments that are bespoke and add a unique value to modern urban life.
David Campbell is Managing Director of award-winning PBSA specialists Alumno, which he founded in 2006. He has a Master’s Degree in Housing and Urban Design.
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