The students have influenced the Schome Park Beta build in an indirect way. Attention has been paid to what worked in the past and what didn’t, what we haven’t done but would like to do, and certainly responds to some very specific ideas that we’ve seen mentioned by students in the forum. What we didn’t do was ask “what would you like us to build?” Given that the original Schome Park (now Schome Park Alpha) is completely open to student development in this phase, they can already build whatever they and the community would like, and we’d much prefer they had that opportunity to work as a team and to contribute to the community space in that way, than us simply to do it for them.

As such this build consciously delivers a concept the community didn’t choose, but nevertheless delivers on the objectives set out above, welcomes the addition and evolution of the space by the entire community, and may inspire something crazy and challenging on Schome Park Alpha.

The response has been very pleasing thankfully. The most contentious issue has actually been the glass dome which you like. For me the inclusion of this was hanging in the balance for a long time. On the one hand it completes and indeed is essential to the island concept, but on the other it has a direct impact on the usability of the space. That said it does create a tangibly different feel to the environment, and from that perspective certainly delivers the feeling I was after.

Are students in it live? How many students? If live, what have their reactions been, have they asked to engage in the fabric-level build process? How are you managing their requests to influence design in an on-going manner?

I really like the ‘glass dome’ – was this purely aethetic or partly as a means of controlling the vertical aspect of the island (given that the ability to fly means students could theoretically travel/build very high up).

I’ll drop you a mail and catch up with you offline.