LIMITED SOCIAL SPACES IN NAFA

Background Problems

There are a lot of social space hanging around everywhere we go; Cafe, library, restaurant, even school or office. All of that place are considered as social space that are placed near us. However, there are some specific place that only got small social spaces. One of the place is in school. There are some social spaces that we said to be relative small like hang out places. Some of the students might as well protest about the social spaces that is very small and cramped like the canteen, lounge, corridors, library, or even the classroom or gymnasium. Because of this problems, my group thinking to take this topic which is limited social spaces in school, where we want to make it specifically, which is in our own college, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. 

Research Intent

From this research, we want to reach some points where we want to know more about this:

- We want to see other students, visitors, and others perspective other than us three,

- We want to  know how important is social spaces to people,

- We want to know which is the best solution to overcome this problem.

Brainstorming our Problems

This is how we brainstorm our ideas:

We thought of some of the social spaces in NAFA which is quite limited. There are canteen, sports field, landscape, rest area, and  others. We also think of some possibilities on why does NAFA did not make more of social space or only make it in a small space. We thought of the problems like because NAFA did not have much sponsor who give money to the school, or it did not have enough space to build, or even it did not have much money to build this. We just think of something possible and write it up.

Emphaty

For this section, we tried to be a person who affected by this problems and see from their perspective, which is called a persona. We divided ourselves into three different persona, a teacher, a student, and a visitor. I act as a student who affected by this problems. I complained about the limited space for doing our school works which is very cramped and not really convenient. Sometimes the corridor it self are very noisy and you can not even focus on your own work. There is a library but sometimes, you need to do some works with our groups which is sometimes quite noisy because we need to talk to each other. 

Case Studies

Social spaces in school, universities, or colleges may become an issue in 

today’s news. With lack of it, then many of the student, teachers, even visitors 

will complain and the reputation of a school will go down because of this 

factor. 

There is one college located in United Kingdom that have some social spaces 

that pleases the students there, called St. Aidan College. They got 4 places 

that are known for the specialty that they got there. 

First, they got The Junior Common Room (JCR) social area where they can 

play things and chill out there. They equipped a billiard tables there and also 

some sofas for the student to hang there. They also provide table tennis, Wii, 

Playstation there. It was created for the reason to make the students relax 

after their class or for the students to discuss their work there and practice 

things for their class. 

Second, they provide TV Lounge near JCR for people there to enjoy their 

relaxing time. 

Third, they make a bar that was made by JCR committee. It serves the 

student on the evening for them to socialize with their colleagues there. It 

provides dart areas and board games to fill the atmosphere in the evening. 

This bar was made for the reason to how the students learn on how the 

business run and demonstrate it into a real life. 

Last but not least, they got outdoor spaces where people there can enjoy their 

outdoor activities that are perfect on summer season. Some of the student 

also do BBQ there and do football there for them to relax their mind and soul. 

From what we can see, they provide a lot of spaces for the students, 

teachers, or visitors there to enjoy their time there. As for the reason in my 

point of view, they have a lot of land to build all of those things. Without a 

huge land, they would not have built them in their college. 

101 Solutions

So this is 101 solutions that we do in class with my groups. There are some logical solutions that we think of and also some are illogical and crazy ideas. We think of something like making a bridge across campuses, make a floating campus, make a double story canteen, enlarging the student lounge, make a underground connector from campuses, and others. 

5 Best Ideas

Here is the five best ideas that we think of. The first one is making a sit inside a wall where it makes the spaces where it usually filled with chairs are now gone and changed into the sits inside the walls. It save spaces and also makes the building and wall more promising. The second is to make a ladder inside a wall where the ladder itself can be made as a sitting or even table. So we no need to put many tables and sittings or even benches on the corridor which can be changed into this. But because it is an open concept, it has no privacy if people needs some privacy to do works or hang out. The third is to make a double story canteen where the canteen it self enlarged and more students will feel more convenient but it will makes the school looks cramped. The forth one is to enlarging the student lounge by using the outer space. It enlarge the student lounge and makes the student feel more relaxed and nice inside, but it also makes the school looks cramped. The last but not least is to make a bridge across one building to another building. However, it took a lot of money and time to do this kind of project.

Finalization

This is our finalized idea sketches and also the building.

So this is our sketches that we do for our final idea. We make a bridge just opposite the old bridge which is just above the open air canteen in wing b. It is a short bridge where it only attached on the building without making a hole in it. This bridge was designed for another canteen and also another lounge. This idea we get it from combining our best five ideas, which is double storied canteen, enlarging the student lounge, and also bridge across one building to another. There are two ways to go inside and out from this bridge. One way is we make two elevators on the bridge it self made by glass. The other one is we make a pathway from the new bridge to the old bridge. The bridge it self we make it with transparent glass wall, ceiling, and flooring. It was designed by us like that because we do not want to block the sunlight to come through to the first floor. we think this is a convenient idea because it did not really consume many space to build this. Below is our sketches by digital drawing.

A2 Board

This is our a2 board that we did. We put a brief introduction of our problems, followed by our process on making our finalize idea, and the last is our final idea with the sketches and a bit of explanation.