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.

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