Friday, April 12, 2013

Elevators in an Educational Environment


Next Elevator: 18 minutes
Architect and School Administrator discuss plans for a new building after an earthquake has compromised the current school building...

Adminstrator: We have 4,800 students and we need about 50 classrooms.
Architect: And you only have a 900 square-meter building site. You’re talking about a 20-storey building.
Administrator: We’ll need two or three elevators.
Architect: With all due respect, you’re looking at elevator waiting times of five minutes or more. Disruptions to classes will be major. I suggest at least eight elevators. But in such a small tower, half of it will be elevators.
Administrator: Couldn’t we use escalators?
Architect: Then there’ll be no classrooms. The whole building will be taken up with escalators.

___________
Voice-over
Schools buildings on a downtown campus on limited space are tricky to design.
There’s a temptation to construct a tower block for economic reasons.
But a school is not a company office where people enter in the morning, with movements during the lunch hour and then an exit in the late afternoon.
A school has class changes every hour or so.
Fewer elevators mean long waiting lines, lateness increasing, maybe absenteeism occurring.
Architecture influences behavior.
...

2 comments:

Mercedes said...

Hi! Excellent post again! ¿Have you seen www.portaldecolonia.com.uy?

Barry Natusch said...

Thank you. Yes I have seen the portaldecolonia. Slideshow captures the spirit. Is that a '52 Studebaker?