Story

The Glyndwr University Media Center and Student Housing project blends the master planning of an urban edge with a mixed-use media center and a 500 student housing project. The housing component is the core of the project and a study on the mediation between public and private space. The interaction of student, professor, and facilitator, is imperative to the educational environment and as such the public spaces garner the greatest emphasis within this project.  The forms of the structures are based on a mix of four-storey and six-storey massings, alternating along the site as required to allow for full sun in the open gathering areas.  The structures include the common areas for each of the housing blocks, consisting of recreation and communal spaces, group dining, exercise, and flexible rooms for activities that are found necessary as the school year progresses.  These communal areas are envisioned as a buffer from the public program into the more private spaces, identified as the residential units themselves.  Units contain shared areas for the eight students assigned to a residential unit, and contain kitchen, living, laundry, storage and exterior balconies.  This private program leads to the intimate areas, that of the bedrooms themselves, occupied by the individual student. 

The media|student center promotes the core activity for the campus, and frames the view into the housing zone.  The structure is set against the street edge,adhering to an urban activation for future campus planning.  This urban planning scenario lends to a vibrancy within the campus and administers a sense of place for the students. The total size of the project is 160,520 square feet.