AGGIE VILLAGE WINS: 2017 IIDA RMC BESTawards
07 October 2017
Another excellent win for Colorado State University! We congratulate CSU Housing and Apartment Life, the project team, and our interior design collaborator, Styleworks. Aggie Village received an Award of Merit from the IIDA RMC BESTawards in the Learn:Educational category.
In our submission, we stated “Aggie Village seeks to aide independence and self-reliance for undergraduate students. Designed as a community, three buildings each provide lounges, classrooms, flex spaces and a total of 451 furnished apartments and community spaces for chill-time, socializing and making friends for life. The finished spaces offer living spaces that verge on a “grown up” apartment, encouraging gained independence and building upon classroom learning with personal development."
The 4240 team worked closely with CSU to develop an overall vision and programmatic goals for diverse student success. By seamlessly integrating a place-making concept, we were able to derive inspiration and innovation from contemporary student learning patterns. Through consciously activating the “in-between” spaces in common spaces, robust learning patterns emerged that challenged traditional linear patterns. A mix of large and small, formal and informal spaces set up an “intellectual marketplace” of sorts where creative thinking is valued and purposeful. Current research indicates that the majority of student learners like to have options, even while pen and paper is still the preferred tool.Flexible, multi-purpose spaces were designed to adapt to the needs of a diverse range of users from student residents to faculty; conference attendees to campus visitors. All of this was stitched together with circulation spaces that are programmed as in-formal meeting / interaction zones that set up the opportunity for intellectual collisions, as well as independent thinking.