The room that I found is the Multi-Purpose Studio 2062 in Art&Architecture building. and Art & Architecture building is located in North campus in front of Pierpont commons--if you want to major in Art and Architecture, or maybe if you are already Art and Architecture major, this building and Bans&Nobles inside it, (and Panda express for me) would look familiar to you because you have to buy class materials here. The official address is 2000 Bonisteel. It is created by Swanson Associates in 1974.  

     I took Drawing 1 spring course in this room because it is my prerequisite for my Art minor. This room is, as you see, for art students, especially for practical hand-made drawing, not for the class using Photoshop programs or illustrator. This room is not only pretty small but also includes lots of art materials such as easels, blackboard, portfolio storage, etc…, therefore it is good for small group lecture. 

     This room actually does not have “a door” but curtains-like shower curtain. I do not know why all the Art studios does not have a solid (?) doors and ceilings( no ceiling and connected to studios next door and sometimes we can hear what they say). When you enter into this room, there is a white projection screen , computer, and small blackboard with wheels. This is just like other basic class rooms. 

However, if you see the left side of it, there are storages for portfolios and class materials. This is for the students who cannot carry their materials to their home because it is usually too heavy.

On the right side, you can see the windows with black blinds which help to see screen clearly. 

On the Back side, there is a scary pin-up board which students need to pin-up after they’ve done with their project, and to ready to accept critics. 

I really like this industry-like ceiling with naked pipes, fans and outlets—outlets? Yes these are outlets in the air. You can charge your Macbook or i-phone anywhere by pulling one of outlets and plug the cord. 

And… you can see beautiful trees, sky, bus stops, Pierpont commons, library, and north clock tower as well. I sometimes looked through window when my creativity does not work and be inspired by the peaceful nature. 

In the middle of the class, this room used the space by separating students’ table and tables for objects (and sometimes models). Students’ tables are surrounding the object table so that they can observe and describe at any place and any orientation. 

E. Conrad Diao

Arch 212, Understanding Architecture

9/28/15

Response 1

DAAS Gallery, Mason Hall

This space is not a classroom in the traditional sense; it is an art gallery located on the first floor of Mason Hall. I think that a classroom can be defined as a space where people are meant to learn, and an an art gallery certainly fits that bill. There are other rooms in the same hallway which are being used as academic classrooms, suggesting that this small gallery was not the use the space was designed for. The type of education this “classroom” is facilitates is certainly different from a lecture hall or even a room for seminars. There are no desks, no chairs, and no screens -- just a warmly lit room with art hung on all four walls. The space is very small and it’s odd location in Mason Hall minimizes foot traffic, making for a very calm environment. The type of learning this space provokes is highly individual; no teacher will tell you what to learn (there aren’t even other gallery-goers to fight with for a good view), some might say the art speaks for itself.

The room is fairly simple; four walls, three of which are plain white sheetrock, the fourth, which faces the hallway, is curved and mostly glass. The exterior wall of the hallway is glass as well, allowing for natural light to enter the gallery. The back wall (not pictured) is also curved, giving the space a very soft feeling. The room is lit with warm lights, and the wooden floor and curved walls make for a very cozy art gallery -- an unusual association of space and quality. The gallery is tucked out of the way; I only found it by roaming around the building looking for curious spaces. The white light and white walls of the hallway contrast well with the warm lighting and palette of the room, making it really seem like an artistic escape in the very institutional and sterile Mason Hall.

Nursing School Simulation Room F

The room I chose for this assignment was in the new nursing school on Kingsely St. in the Kerrytown area. The building was designed by the architecture firm RDG Planning and Designing. This company has done a lot of work in Iowa and Nebraska for colleges, and this is their first building in Michigan. I had to search for an interesting room in the building because I initially went to the upstairs of the building where there were only study spaces. I finally discovered the basement where there were a treasure trove of "classrooms." This is one of the "classrooms" (what they call simulation rooms) in the basement. It is an exact replica of a hospital suite with an observing area for the instructor. The room has all the medical equipment necessary to learn about hospice care. There is a screen that the student can receive data on and machines that allow them to care for the patient accordingly.

The class room is typically just for one student and one teacher, whom are separated by the mirrored glass. I would imagine that this room is usually used for testing students to measure their proficiency. It is probably used for larger group lectures and demonstrations as well, but the nice lady who showed me in made it seem like it was going to be used for a test. There was a dummy patient laying in the bed with a neck brace and a terrifying smile. There were some charts on the computer for the patient and some more information on another screen behind the computer. I believe these screens were controlled by the instructor's to test the student's knowledge of various ailments.

The instructor's room had two computers in it with, what seemed like, fairly advanced software that allowed the instructor to change the diagnostics of the patient. The mirrored wall is very reminiscent of a prison interrogation room or something, but I think for this educational practice it makes sense. There are multiple seats in the observation room that are perhaps for a larger examination with multiple proctors or professors. Both rooms were beige, and fairly simple in design. They both had a drop ceiling and had plastic baseboard. The whole vibe of the rooms is institutional, which works for both the education and hospital setting.

EMS Duderstadt Studios

     The space I chose to examine this week is the Electronic Music Studios (EMS) of North Campus. There are a total of five EMS classrooms located in the heart of The Duderstadt Center. Formally known as the Media Union, the “Dude” is home to the Art, Architecture and Engineering Library. The facility also houses computer clusters, galleries, audio + video editing labs and even a virtual reality visualizer space. 

     The EMS spaces are built such that function precedes form. The spaces are cramped and quite dull. Standard florescent bulbs illuminate the room . Three out of the five are equipped with a multi-bulb lamb which employs a much softer bulb temperature. The fact still remains that no bulb combination can make up for the complete lack of windows. The studios are essentially hollowed out of the internal passageway leading to the main library. 

Even though the studios are not aesthetically engaging, the physical hardware and recording gear is what makes the space powerful. All studios are equipped with Apple Mac Pro Towers that can run any number of large-scale rendering softwares simultaneously. The computers are also frequently updated and kept running at their fastest possible speed. This means the computers run some of the most powerful softwares in the world.

     When it’s all said and done, the spaces need to facilitate effortless connectivity from the user to the machines. The studios feature desks that run the length and width of the room. Whether an individual is recording audio or editing video, they are able to spread out and be comfortable. The virtual space is equally spacious. Every studio features duel cinematic resolution monitors for beautiful work flow.

   

     What makes these spaces worth talking about is that they transcend the basic classroom archetype. They are too small to have a typical size class however professors still teach in them. The spaces facilitate collaboration and work flow yet they are cut off from the surrounding Duderstadt center. The physical aesthetic is noticeably dated however the internal competent are advanced and extremely current. EMS of the Duderstadt simply get the job done. The space is designed to sit in the background and let the work that is being produced take for forefront of attention. 

West Engineering Room 210

I decided to write my post about a rom int  West Engineering. Room 210 is a small class space in the corner of West Engineering, Right above the Arch.
This building was complete in 1909 and ordered to be build be the regents of the University. It was commissioned by them and designed my architects George Mason, and Albert Kahn of Detroit. ( Mason also built the Grand Hotel  and other notably famous buildings around the state of Michigan.
The room is small and quaint. Normally the classrooms around campus are composed of cinderblock and drywall which adds to their impersonal and cold aesthetic, whereas Room 210 is much older and is decorated with a deeply colored wood paneling around the walls. This dark wood surrounds the table and chairs of the room, giving the student a closed off and surrounded feeling. Unlike that of other, more generic rooms across the campus, this room, because of the wood paneling, feels much more homey and personal.  A fireplace and a small closet for coats affirm this same idea while also acting as reminders of when this room as first under construction, and the change in learning styles that has followed in the last 106 years.
This room holds about twenty to thirty people; It is an ideal spot of a discussion section. The chairs surround a massive table that add to the soft feel of the room, by opening up the room for a "round table" like discussion.
Windows face the Diag, bringing in natural lighting as well as opening up the classroom to the rest of the campus. One watches the students pass through arch directly underneath and can feel the energy of the students. This sense of movement in contrast to the architecture of the room only accentuates its aesthetic, with its very closed of and personal feeling.
There is light in the classroom that is artificial but this is very unnoticeable

and blends into the room quite well.

1201 Chemistry Building

Picture #1

Picture #2

Picture #3

Picture #4

 To find an unusual building, I tried to get to some classroom of science building, but for most of them, only authorized people are allowed to enter. After long journey in the campus, I found a chemistry conference room which is 1201 in the Chemistry Building. The Chemistry Building was originally designed by A. J. Jordan in 1856, and there were some additional works in 1909 by Smith, Hinchman and Grylls, and Willard Dow Lab added to the Chemistry Building in 1989 by Harley Ellington Pierce Yee.

 The room seems to be capable of about 30 person in it, but through the arrangement of desks and chairs—there are three desks capable of 4 to 6 persons and 4 to 6 chairs around each desk—I think about 10 to 15 persons might be in the room for few small group discussion sessions. However, there are many chairs that are stacked in a corner—shown in Picture #4—so the number of people in the discussion might be flexible. The only thing which can be called somehow technological device is a projection device in the room—also in the Picture #4. The room does not achieve enough sunlight because of only a few windows—as Picture #1 and #2 shows—and some trees at the outside of the windows. For this reason, this room has plenty of artificial lights in it; there are four lines of fluorescent lights feeling up the ceiling. This place has soft and live mood in it, and I think one of the reason is that the room is not in square or rectangle shape but is in unique shape of figure, and it also has a diagonal line as the Picture #1 shows in its right side. In addition, the irregularly arranged desks and chairs add more live mood. Since the room has three board—two white board and a black board—the room was designed especially for discussion session for few separated groups, and the blue sink in Picture #3 explains that it is specialized chemistry session.

Jason's Bio

Hello! My name is Jason Sell. I am a Sophomore student here. Currently I am a pre-admit to the Architecture School, and I am also majoring in Linguistics. I enjoy languages, playing soccer, reading , and many other things. I am from Milan, Michigan, which is a small town twenty minutes south of Ann Arbor. Right now I am in The Michigan Educational Theatre Company, and I am in a Rude Mechanicals production of the play, "Tribes."  This class interests me because I have always been interested in Art, and Architecture, I think is a nice mix of the structural aspects of math and engineering and art.

Im excited to be a part of this class and get to know everyone!

Classroom 3733

This room is classroom 3373 in the School of Kinesiology inside of the CCRB, Central Campus Recreation Building. This building, up on the hill was constructed in 1976. I chose this building because of its vast usage throughout the university. Thousands of students come in and out of this building every week. Coming back to the classroom, this is a small classroom meant to fit about 20 students. This makes for a more intimate setting between the teacher and the students. Due to its size, the courses that are taught in this room are more specific than a general education course. They are classes geared toward kinesiology students, which is a small sector of the university. There is a whiteboard and a projector; both used to explain material taught in class. This makes sense because Kinesiology is the study of movement; specifically, human movement. Therefore, I can see the professors drawing diagrams of the human body on the white boards to explain how each movement occurs and the forces applied on the body and the earth when doing the specific movements. All of the tables are long and horizontal, which face a podium, where the teacher teaches, whom faces back at the students. The tables also increase with height, making sure that every individual in the classroom can see the teacher. I am assuming that this classroom calls for more of a lecture class, where the teacher is communicating information to the students, and each individual student communicates back to the teacher. I don’t think this classroom calls for a collaborative environment where the students interact with each other because if this were the case, I would think that there would be a more circular pattern that the seats would make. Finally, there is bright light that comes into the room, both from the windows that overlook a street and from artificial light that beams from the ceiling. I would assume that these classes call for a great amount of attention, where the material is difficult and needs to be learned by the teacher. The light reinforces that sharp attention needed. All of these assumptions may indeed be false, but overall this is what I perceived in this classroom.

The University of Michigan offers the unique opportunity to participate in a residential living/learning program, where one lives in a dorm with a focus on a certain subject area or belief system.  The Lloyd Hall Scholars Program (LHSP) is a program designed for students interested in pursing their passion for writing and visual/performing arts. I had an interesting experience with this program; I lived in Alice Lloyd Hall my freshman year (the dorm where this program is housed), but I was not a member of LHSP. I lived on the same floor as all the students in the program, but I found myself excluded from the program’s benefits. I was surrounded by incredibly talented dancers, writers, actors and artists, while I found myself struggling to draw a proportional Economics graph or writing the thesis to my Political Science paper.       

            The LHSP students have to fulfill certain requirements to remain in the program and dorm. One of these requirements was to take a class in Alice Lloyd hall. There were many options for students (creative writing, film, ceramics, dance), but the class that always stood out to me was a drawing and painting class that two of my best friends took second semester freshman year. Every Tuesday and Thursday at 6pm, they would take the elevator down four flights to the beautiful Lloyd art studio. I would watch through the glass window as 20 students, sitting on high metal stools, would create beautiful works of art every week on their 27x30 easel, and I would imagine the life of a LHSP student. Whether they were figure drawing from a live model or painting a scenic view, the LHSP students were always learning new ways to stretch their imagination and think outside the box. The rows of acrylic paints, the bins of pastels, and the walls covered in student’s work juxtaposed the brown floor and tables. Although the art studio was an artificially lit room is in the basement of a dorm, there was always a creative energy that circulated within those four walls and also emanated throughout the entire dorm. I wish I could have been a part of the learning and creativity that occurred in the Lloyd art studio, but instead I watched as an outsider and did my calculus homework.

 The room I found and chose is the Multipurpose Room of Couzens Hall. Couzens Hall is located on the east side of the hill, along side Alice Lloyd Hall, Mosher-Jordan Hall, Stockwell Hall, and the Central Campus Recreational Building. The building was renovated with the designs created by David Battle.

Couzens Hall houses Health Sciences Scholar Program students, so when the Multipurpose Room is being used as a classroom, the room is used for lectures for the Health Sciences Scholar Program.

The Multipurpose room holds a maximum of 300 auditorium seated chairs and 220 seated chairs when there are tables that the chairs are seated around.

Something that the room included was a basic floor plan of the room of the room set up as the maximum chairs and tables to show the maximum amount of space that could be taken up, however even on the floor plan with the "maximum" amount of tables and chairs that the room could hold, the floor plan shows a section of the room where there is just space with nothing in it where, ideally, more chairs and tables could go if someone wanted to use the absolute amount of space in the room.
The room itself is very spacious with a higher ceiling than most traditional classrooms, so to have an included floor plan of what the "maximum" amount of chairs and tables with a remaining generous amount of available space reinforces the architect's purpose of the room to keep it very spacious.  

When lectures are going on in the room, the room is most likely set up as an "auditorium" seating arrangement facing either the wall opposite from the entrance or facing the windows where projection screens are available if needed.