Design Critique Part II: The House Itself

I really like my residence. Innis is one of the newer buildings, very well maintained and with lots of resources. The people here are all really helpful and I get along with them very well. I especially appreciate being able to eat whatever I want (or am capable of cooking), whenever I want. The suite style is also a nice balance between having a private space in the form of my own room and being in close quarters with a small group of people sharing a common sub-space—there’s a real sense of “home” rather than just some room where I sleep and study during the semester. Architecturally though, I can’t really figure out what whoever designed the building was thinking.

I’ll start with the outside in. The building is symmetrically structured in a U-shape cradling a quad with green space. There are four floors where everything in the building is connected (like most buildings), then three additional floors on the two wings (legs of the “U”) that are mutually inaccessible—“towers” of sorts. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the building isn’t 100% symmetrical (of course, that’s a little too much to ask to begin with), so there are resources located in one side that is not present in the other: on the sixth floor of the south wing is situated the music room and on the sixth floor of the north wing is the exercise room. For instance, if I were to be at the tip of the north wing on the sixth floor and wanting to use the piano, I would need to walk downstairs to the fourth floor, walk across to the other side and walk back upstairs to the sixth floor. In addition, the middle section (the bottom of the “U”) houses the lobby area on the first floor, so that suites in one wing of the first floor have to go out the main doors, cross the lobby and key themselves in the main doors again to get to the other side. Obviously, this seems terribly inefficient. The only thing to which I could possibly attribute this design decision is aesthetics, and even that’s a bit of a stretch as it doesn’t “look better” enough to offset the inconvenience. (In fact, can the desire for aesthetics really ever trump the need for practicality except in maybe the fashion industry?) It could be an interesting design because it is uncommon, but there seems little if anything gained in return: maybe it’s because I’m short, but I can’t really see the top that well anyway—I doubt anyone really cares enough to look—and there’s no great need for a pretty building as it’s a university residence anyway.

Similarly, the arch in the entranceway was a real source of annoyance, although for that I doubt it extended further than our suite. There’s a big concrete arch about two stories high around the main entrance leading from St. George Street into the lobby. From what my fellow engineer suitemates and I could see, it’s not serving any real structural function, and we were confused as to why it is there as it isn’t very pretty since it’s literally just a big hunk of concrete and metal. I guess we wouldn’t really have noticed its existence either way (again, I doubt anyone really does), except that our suite was the one situated directly above the entrance on the second floor. Because the archway is situated behind a slight overhang—reasonable design decision considering the intercom system and the weather conditions in Toronto—it quite noticeably reduced the area of our living room area and I’m pretty sure ours was in fact the smallest in the residence. One of my suitemates was in Engineering Science Year 2, and there wasn’t enough room for her to work on her AER201 project (she was the electromech member, to top it all off), let alone for the rest of us to have a place to sit half the time.

Speaking of the common room, a quick aside: the “coffee tables” in the common room are of a height that make them hard to use in any context. It’s not high enough to use while sitting on the couches or any chair for that matter, but not low enough to use as a lap table or to work on while sitting on the floor—kneeling seems to be the only position close enough (and probably only for people of a certain height range and/or body part ratios) but it’s not terribly comfortable and murderous for your knees. The only real surface we have to eat on is the somewhat narrow kitchen counter and this table, and while the former is at a height closer to the optimal (given the other furniture provided to us in the suite) it’s usually pretty crowded due to its being used for cooking. Needless to say, holding a steaming bowl of noodles on your lap while bending over to try and eat is not very fun.

Adjacent to the common area, or an extension of it, is the kitchen. I don’t believe this is the case for all suites, but I would venture to say the large majority of them share the following problem: the fridge is situated in such a way that it pretty much cuts off access to a) some cupboards up high (not terribly important, they’re small and there’s a decent amount of other ones) and more importantly b) about half the counter space around the sink. The kitchen isn’t that big to begin with, and four or five people could crowd even a normal-sized kitchen. (Especially for me—being short—reaching around things is really awkward.) There are also more cupboards above the stove hood (how do you reach around that?) and elsewhere, which I don’t think anyone except the tallest few could reach.

Similar inconsistencies exist in bedroom/bathroom shapes and the distribution/layout thereof. We just moved into our new summer suite, and my suitemate physically cannot place her bookshelf flush with the wall because the one available corner juts in (maybe it’s plumbing?) and there’s not enough room on the other walls.

In summary, all I can say is: WHY?