City campus: Study environments exploring urban connection through place identity features in central Gothenburg

Abstract

Higher education students are traditionally in a transition between late adolecent and young adult. This is a time in life of big changes; students move to new towns, get their first own apartment and the campus often becomes their main dwelling area. Many campuses are complexes focused to a certain part of the town they are located and all aspects of the education are done there. This means students risk getting isolated from the rest of the town, in many cases the city centres, resulting in a lack of sense of belonging to the community the university is supposed to support. Other campuses are serving smaller faculties and lack a varied study environment suitable for different learning styles. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the design of a small scale, deconstructed, city campus can create a meaningful relationship between students and their location by exploring concepts of identity and awareness of an urban place; and provide sustainable and varied study spaces that function as a support to existing campuses in the local context. To gain a comprehensive understanding for the design this study will explore the theory of the concept of place identity, the contemporary discourse on educational environment, learning styles and different types of learning spaces. It will also explore how the concept of phenomena can be used to merge the educational environment and the identity of place to create meaningful encounters for students. A city campus concept is formed by first analyzing a site’s different qualities in its surrounding urban context; and its place identity features. Secondly by exploring spatial qualities of learning spaces, the way they relate to different learning styles, in model studies. The site qualities, the place identity features and learning spaces are then merged and analyzed in explorative model studies. The city campus design is formed by designing both indoor and outdoor spaces. The design is developed in a public space in Gothenburg, from Bastionsplatsen along the moat to Drottningtorget. However, the goal with the design concept is to explore ideas with a generic application regarding educational