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An equity-minded campus building is planned with the people who can be excluded by conventional design, not merely for an assumed “typical” full-time, able-bodied student. The practical method is to broaden who helps make decisions, observe how people actually reach and use facilities, remove unequal circulation and amenities, and make interpretation and participation accessible in more than one way. Three projects described in a March 9, 2020 article from HGA Insights and Building Design + Construction show how that approach can shape programming, renovation and visitor experience.
What an equity lens changes in campus planning
Traditional campus planning often centers on an able-bodied, college-age student from the majority culture who attends full time. That model can miss students who commute, work, have caregiving duties, use mobility or sensory aids, belong to underrepresented groups, or encounter a building through a different cultural and social experience. A building communicates welcome through practical details: who can enter without a detour, who can find a room, whose team receives comparable amenities, and whether a visitor can understand the place through more than one sense.
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Equity is therefore a planning and design method, not a decorative theme. It asks whose experience is represented in the brief, who is absent from meetings, what assumptions are built into circulation and scheduling, and how a facility can support participation across groups. Disability-rights advocates express the principle as “Nothing about us without us.” The phrase is not a substitute for a process, but it is a useful test: people affected by a decision should have a meaningful role before the decision is fixed.
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The HGA article, “Designing campus buildings through an equity lens” (March 9, 2020), reports three different applications. At the University of Virginia (UVA), students helped investigate an aging activities building and shape options for a flexible hub. At Cornell, a boathouse redesign addressed unequal access and locker-room provision for men’s and women’s rowing teams. At the Wharton Esherick Museum, a custom touch model made a historic building itself available to visitors with limited vision while adding another interpretive layer for everyone.
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Begin with people, not a predetermined room list
Map the full community of users
Start by listing everyone who reaches, operates, studies in, performs in, competes in or visits the building. Include student organizations, part-time and commuting students, visitors, event attendees, facilities staff, security, custodial teams, coaches, museum educators and people who use mobility, hearing or vision supports. Then ask which groups are missing from the formal committee and which users may be difficult to reach through ordinary surveys or student-government channels.
Visible representatives are not automatically representative. A committee can be composed of capable people and still overlook a club that meets after hours, a team that uses a secondary entrance, or a visitor who experiences an exhibit through touch rather than sight. Outreach should therefore combine invitations through established groups with direct recruitment of people whose use patterns are less visible.
Observe activity as it occurs
Interviews reveal intentions; observation reveals workarounds. Watch where people queue, pause, avoid, take shortcuts, carry equipment, search for signs or ask for help. Record the route from transit stops and parking to the actual destination, not just the route shown on a plan. Note time-of-day differences, event surges and conflicts between simultaneous activities.
Digital spatial mapping can make these observations discussable. Map movement, gathering, bottlenecks and unused areas, then bring the maps back to users for correction. A map is evidence to examine with participants, not a replacement for their explanations.
Invite people to shape options early
Dialogue and ideation work best before the brief and budget have hardened. Ask participants to describe desired activities, barriers and trade-offs, then test several program arrangements rather than asking for approval of one finished scheme. Record which ideas were adopted, deferred or rejected and why. That record makes the process legible to people who invested time in it.
UVA: participation can change the program itself
UVA’s Student Activities Building (SAB) was aging and supported student-led arts and cultural activities. In a feasibility study, students, architects and ethnographic researchers observed activity in and around the SAB and nearby facilities, using digital spatial mapping to understand how the building functioned. More than 200 students took part over four months. Their input fed two ideation workshops and design options for a more flexible hub serving student groups, meetings and events.
The important result was not a single room size or furniture choice. The process exposed a governance problem: the student committee needed to expand, and the work needed greater transparency to represent building users more fully. Students helped bring additional voices into programming and design. In other words, representation and transparency were themselves design decisions.
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- Set a participation target for breadth, not just attendance. Track which types of users are represented and actively recruit missing perspectives.
- Publish a decision trail. After workshops, show how observations changed the program, what remains unresolved and who owns the next decision.
- Test flexibility against real schedules. A hub for groups, meetings and events must be examined during ordinary use and peak activity, including changeovers between activities.
- Keep the committee revisable. If observation reveals users who were not represented, add them rather than treating the original membership as fixed.
Cornell: equity can be a circulation and amenities problem
Cornell’s rowing program used Collyer Boathouse and the adjacent Robison Boathouse. The HGA account reports that women had to reach Collyer’s training room through an exterior stairwell or by passing through the men’s locker room. It also reports that the women’s locker rooms were one-third the size of the men’s, while the women’s crew had tripled since the 1970s. These conditions combined unequal route choice, privacy concerns and a mismatch between space and participation.
The redesign added a two-story extension to Collyer. It provided separate locker rooms for the three teams, made the first floor an entrance lobby and gathering space, and upgraded and expanded the second-floor training room for equal access. Robison was repurposed for equipment storage. The reported result put the men’s and women’s teams on equal footing and made the waterfront facility more visible to the wider campus.
Audit the entire journey, not only the destination
A room labeled “accessible” is not enough if one group reaches it by a back route, through another team’s changing area or via a longer, less safe path. For each user group, document the journey from arrival to activity: entrance, check-in, changing or preparation, vertical circulation, training or teaching space, toilets, storage and exit. Compare privacy, distance, visibility, convenience and quality, not merely square metres.
Growth matters too. Cornell’s reported increase in the women’s crew since the 1970s shows why historic allocations should be tested against current participation. A space that was proportionate decades ago may now constrain a program. When two groups share a facility, compare the condition and location of their amenities as well as their nominal area.
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The Wharton Esherick Museum’s Touch Tour allows visitors to touch the wood-crafted artwork. HGA created a touch model of the museum’s home and studio so visitors with limited vision could experience the building itself. The model was a custom, site-specific project rather than a named product or general purchasing recommendation.
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This example broadens the meaning of access. The intervention responds to a specific sensory barrier, yet it can also give sighted visitors a different way to understand the building’s form and making. A solution developed with one group can create shared value when it is integrated into interpretation instead of isolated as an accommodation.
Questions for sensory-inclusive interpretation
- What parts of the building are essential to understand, and can they be represented through touch, sound, spoken description or a physical model?
- Can visitors choose an interpretive route without being singled out or separated from companions?
- Are handling rules, staff support and the condition of tactile elements clear and consistent?
- Does the alternative experience explain the building’s material, scale and spatial relationships rather than merely labeling objects?
A repeatable equity-planning workflow
- Define the decision and its users. State what is being planned—new construction, renovation, relocation or a program change—and list every group affected by access, scheduling, cost or representation.
- Find missing voices. Compare the formal project team with actual users. Use student organizations, disability and cultural groups, athletic teams, visitor programs and operations staff to reach people who are not usually in planning meetings.
- Observe and map current conditions. Follow real routes, record activity at different times and map bottlenecks, detours, gathering points and inaccessible or uncomfortable transitions.
- Hold structured dialogue. Ask participants to identify barriers, valued activities and unacceptable trade-offs. Use drawings, maps or simple models so people can respond to concrete possibilities.
- Generate multiple program options. Test alternatives for entrances, circulation, room sharing, storage, changing areas, event setup and interpretation. Keep the options understandable enough for non-specialists to compare.
- Publish what changed. Return a plain-language summary showing which observations influenced the brief, which ideas require more study and why some requests cannot be met within the current scope.
- Check journeys and parity. Compare each group’s route, privacy, visibility, amenity quality, scheduling access and ability to participate without special permission or an avoidable detour.
- Prototype and revisit. Use temporary layouts, mock-ups, sample signage or a trial event where possible. Invite the same range of users back to identify problems before construction or final fit-out.
- Assign continuing ownership. Name the people responsible for updating wayfinding, programming, visitor interpretation and user feedback after opening. Equity is not complete when the drawings are issued.
Design checks by phase of the user experience
Arrival and entry
Can a first-time visitor identify the public entrance, understand where to go and enter without a secondary route that signals lesser status? Check routes from transit, parking and adjacent buildings. Include event conditions, when crowds, deliveries and queues can change the experience.
Circulation and orientation
Compare routes for distance, surface, slope, vertical movement, privacy and visibility. A technically compliant route can still be confusing or socially uncomfortable. Make destinations, team areas and gathering spaces legible through consistent signs and landmarks, then test the system with people who have different sensory and mobility needs.
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Rooms, amenities and storage
Assess who receives the best light, equipment access, changing provision, toilets, seating and storage. Compare the quality and location of amenities between groups, not only their total area. Include the equipment and setup needs of student organizations, performers, athletes, staff and visitors.
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Programming and time
Ask who can use the building at the times it is open and who bears the burden of booking, escorting or setting up. Flexible rooms are valuable only when policies, staffing and furniture allow different groups to use them. Document changeovers and simultaneous activities, as the UVA case did around an activities hub.
Interpretation and participation
For museums, galleries and public-facing campus buildings, provide more than a visual narrative. Consider tactile models, spoken description and guided experiences when they help people understand the building or collection. Design these elements as part of the main visitor experience, following the Wharton Esherick Museum example, rather than as an afterthought.
Use comparisons carefully
The three cases address different problems, so they are not competing design options. Their value is diagnostic:
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Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minute| Project | Primary equity challenge | Reported response | Transferable lesson |
|---|---|---|---|
| University of Virginia Student Activities Building | Student participation and flexible use | Observation and digital spatial mapping with more than 200 students over four months; two ideation workshops; options for a flexible student hub | Broaden representation and make programming decisions transparent |
| Cornell boathouses | Unequal circulation, locker-room size and training access | Two-story addition, separate locker rooms for three teams, first-floor lobby and gathering space, expanded second-floor training room, Robison repurposed for storage | Audit complete journeys and compare amenities as participation changes |
| Wharton Esherick Museum | Visitors with limited vision experiencing the building | Custom touch model of the home and studio integrated with the Touch Tour | Design sensory access into interpretation and look for shared benefits |
What the cases do—and do not—prove
These are reported project examples, not a comparative study. The HGA article does not provide post-occupancy evaluations, population-level outcome measures or evidence that one intervention performs better than another. The figures are specific to the cases: more than 200 UVA students over four months; women’s locker rooms at Cornell described as one-third the size of men’s; and a women’s crew reported to have tripled since the 1970s. They should not be generalized to other campuses without local observation.
A campus can still evaluate its own work rigorously. Before intervention, record the barriers users identify, route and amenity differences, participation patterns and the decisions made in response. After opening, repeat the observations, invite the same groups to review the experience and publish what changed. This creates an accountable learning cycle without claiming outcomes that have not been measured.
Questions to put to a project team
- Whose routine use is well documented, and whose is assumed?
- Which users are missing from the committee, and how will they be reached?
- Where does any group take a longer, less private or less dignified route?
- Are amenities comparable in quality, location and convenience, not just in area?
- How will visitors understand the building if they cannot rely on sight?
- What evidence will show whether the completed facility works as intended?
Conclusion: equity is a continuing design practice
Designing a campus building through an equity lens means treating participation, circulation, amenities and interpretation as connected decisions. UVA demonstrates why the planning group and the decision trail must remain open. Cornell shows that an inequity can be embedded in a route, locker allocation or training-room arrangement even when everyone is nominally in the same facility. The Wharton Esherick Museum shows how a sensory-access intervention can deepen the experience for a wider audience. Taken together, the cases point to a practical standard: listen early, observe real use, compare journeys, disclose decisions and return to users before and after the building opens.
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