University of East London

UEL's new Docklands Library and Learning Centre has all the drama a new student visiting the University could wish for. It is bright, spacious and futuristic, with nothing of the institutionalism likely to suggest that learning is either hard work or boring. It is open-plan in a big way with open-plan floors linked to an open-plan atrium. Besides a 400-seater auditorium space, which backs into the main volume and is separately accessible off the main entrance and the necessary toilets and services areas, the building started life (at the direction of its then chancellor), with few enclosed spaces - and its natural ventilation systems have been designed to suit.

The building comprises approx 5500sqm of mainly open-plan space, and it can attract up to 5,000 users a day. It is used by a wide cross section of students from business graduates, to social scientists to architects, and caters for students from diverse backgrounds with variable ability. It is busy, lively and very popular, but to what extent it can cope with the kinds of pressure being put on it, is still to be proved. Some modifications have already been made; others undoubtedly would be taking place if the environmental control system of the building allowed it.

Entered at the ground floor via a relatively small space, a row of access control gates leads almost directly to the field of open access computer clusters known as the "Trading Floor" (a slightly confusing term, given that the building is shared by the Business School, but that this facility does not strictly belong to it; the name nevertheless captures the vibrant, independent and market-oriented ethos of the centre).

Two floors with overlooking balconies rise up on either side. To one side (under the balcony of the first floor) are rows of 'bench' system desks for group work. To the other are open-plan teaching spaces - not just informal groups for seminar discussion, but rows of seats facing a smart board set immediately beside and back to back with similar rows of seats facing fixed and equally spaced smart boards. The arrangement is new and daring to say the least.

Further up the building on the floors fringed with balconies overlooking the atrium the space is slightly more conventional in so far as there is a mix of book stacks and different types of workstations. Here the space probably works at its best with all the connectivity to the atrium and the Thames outside but with a reasonable amount of internal sub-division to give places to hide within or behind or beside. The "structure" comes in the form of half-height circular 'pods' or 'pens' as they are called, used either for informal seminars, individual working or specialist functions like a graphics editing suite. The remaining space has either workstations or informal seating. To one side there is a help desk signalling "Skillzone" (learning support) with staff seated in open-plan space immediately adjacent. The result on the whole is a successful social and group study space. On another floor the library staff are similarly set behind a reception desk in the general open-plan. If accessibility and overlap was what was intended then UEL has it in fine measure. Having all or most of the staff in one place is considered excellent, with respect to increased efficiency, communication and quality of services, but this is being balanced on the other hand by a working environment which is proving difficult (see paragraph below), possibly because of the building's popularity, and certainly more at some times of the day and year than others, but sufficiently to raise questions about the success of its general configuration.

User reaction has been very positive, measured in terms of numbers entering the library, and official feedback, but there have nevertheless been some serious issues. Noise was reported as being a problem on the ground floor and in those parts of the balcony where workspaces overlooked the atrium. It was particularly a problem at lunchtime and when students were arriving or leaving the building where the outdoor feel of the place made them think they could freely shout to each other. Thereafter the juxtaposition of the "Trading Floor" with the open-plan teaching spaces was proving sufficiently unworkable that although some staff like the buzz of learning, others were wary of using them and that take up is currently slow. It was considered just possible for a tutor to be heard by his or her group of students, but the distraction of what was occurring 'next door' or of other students inadvertently wandering through a "class" made concentration difficult, especially for less motivated students. What benefit might have been had from trying to break down the feel of an old style classroom appeared to have been forfeited by the loss of quality in formal teaching. There was a particular irony in this in that technology (in the form of smart boards), far from liberating the teaching/learning process had frozen the traditional 'talk and chalk' relationship by creating fixtures usable only in a classroom mode, albeit with seductive "bells and whistles". On the plus side the openness of these classrooms makes them popular as an open access facility outside of timetabled teaching hours.

A much more successful arrangement was found for Adam Smith College in Kirkcaldy where the same notion of 'open-plan' classrooms was combined with glass partition walls, a careful corridor system which avoided students ever having to walk through another classroom space and where the juxtaposition of other types of teaching space allowed rapid switching from one kind of teaching more to another. What the UEL 'classroom' experiment usefully illustrated however was the essential difference in space use terms of traditional didactic teaching and modern seminar teaching and group learning, which, besides being effective in a pedagogical sense, were also much better suited to open-plan.

The extreme open-plan of UEL was also proving of mixed success with regard to temperature control. The open-plan of the building, including the atrium, is fundamental to the pattern of air movement and for the ventilation system to work properly it is necessary in addition to open windows at ground level. Because of problems with security this latter requirement was not happening and, while some places were pleasant enough to work in, others were proving too hot, even on relatively mild days, and others again stuffy or draughty. The reaction to this and to the problem of noise had been to start to enclose some spaces but, if anything, this was exacerbating the situation. A solution being considered was to remove the classroom functions to buildings better suited to this type of operation, a logical enough step, but highlighting all the same the effect of a building arrangement dependent on a centrally-operated, uniformly-managed environmental control system. An interesting comparison with UEL is Caledonian University's Saltire Centre which, while it appears to work on the principle of one large atrium space, is nevertheless separated into floors and thereafter zoned from noisy to quiet.

UEL illustrates various other interesting experiments in new types of learning. Like several other institutions it offers 24-hour access, which has proved popular with students. Being fully open-plan it is however difficult to zone, and this means that more of the building has to be lit and patrolled than is strictly necessary. This philosophy of accessibility is combined with a liberal approach to drinking, if not eating, with the latter being found very difficult to control. A comparison here with Loughborough is interesting. At UEL facilities management (and therefore cleaning) is organised on a campus wide basis, making it difficult to provide individual building solutions. This contrasts with Loughborough where the food and drink situation could be successfully managed rather than unsuccessfully prevented. UEL library staff would prefer to have more control over the area, but as it is not solely a library building this is not possible at the moment.

There was also an interesting comparison with the number of library staff available to run the building (16 daytime staff FTEs for 8,000 students on campus - compared with 150 for 12,000 students cited elsewhere), suggesting that an economy coming out of the adoption of open-plan had been sought, where the emphasis on self-directed learning called if anything for an increase in on-the-spot student support. As a consequence, they are now investing in new technology to enhance an increasing self-service culture.

The building is more heavily used than found in most places. While architects and graphics students had their own studio facilities elsewhere they were successfully colonising part of the Library in addition, and using it as a place for putting together project work. This meant even more lively 'group work' than other students, heavy use of photocopiers and printers and the misuse of work surfaces designed purely for study which, even after a brief year, were scored with cuts and sticky glue. While the Library management were rapidly stepping back from a policy of no signs and minimal policing, this type of free-for-all access and usage was proving difficult to control, and management are seeking new ways of both responding to the legitimate demands of AVA students whilst also maintaining control of the workspace.

Very successful however, had been the transition to the new building where radical changes in operation may have been expected to draw a negative response from staff. Here, thanks to considerable time and effort put into consultative groups and working parties, not only had there been a positive response to the move, but two different organisations with two rather different cultures had been successfully merged together, possibly because of the excitement of the new building and the new project.

Overall the building provides a wide range of learning spaces for a diverse community. To do this within a single building while maintaining a sense of accessibility and connectivity is not easy. The University has taken some risks in so doing and is to be congratulated on achieving a noteworthy building. It will be very interesting to see how it matures in the years to come.

This Open Plan Case Study originates from the 2007 JISC-commissioned study into the Design and Management of Technology-Rich Learning and Teaching Spaces in Further and Higher Education in the UK by Les Watson, Hugh Anderson (Principal, haa design) and Katherine Strachan (Architect, haa design).