Students studying, socializing, and spending time in Virginia Tech’s new state-of-the-art Creativity and Innovation District (CID) will take part in a novel study that uses remote sensing, multi-method data collection, and geographical theory to understand how a space becomes a place.
The project, led by Associate Professor Tim Baird in the College of Natural Resources and Environment’s (CNRE) Department of Geography, is funded by a $350,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Over three years, the study will allow researchers to observe human-building interactions inside the ground floor of the CID to determine how spaces become places filled with meaning, community, and culture.
Baird is a human-environment geographer who has studied how humans interact with their resources and surroundings in the East African savanna. After moving into the CID with his family as the living-learning community faculty principal in 2021, he recognized that an exciting new indoor savanna awaited exploration.
“The spectacular new CID building, which serves as the setting for our project, is a house right now — and it’s slowly becoming a home,” he said. “We’re interested in how this transformation works and how it’s disrupted along the way. If we can figure out how ‘place,’ this magical thing, is made and lost, we can design better buildings and nudge people more effectively into community within important spaces.”
The project expands the scope of geographic research to building interiors, where Americans spend approximately 87 percent of their lives. According to Baird, the study is one of the first to integrate ethnographic, quantitative, social, and sensor-based spatial methods to examine how indoor space is used. To ensure a holistic approach, a multidisciplinary team of faculty from CNRE was enlisted; the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design; the College of Science; the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences; and the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology.
“I’m thrilled to be part of this multidisciplinary team where we will combine our expertise on theories from our own fields, such as geography and environment-behavior studies, and capitalize on multiple ways of approaching complex problems,” said Elif Tural, an associate professor of interior design who is a co-principal investigator on the project. “We hope our findings will inform the architecture and design of future campus buildings that support occupants’ physical, psychological, and social well-being.”
The six-story CID, completed in 2021 to serve as a hub of interdisciplinary innovation, has earned awards for its student-centric design from the Design-Build Institute of America and Interface Student Housing. Within its 232,000 square feet, the building houses 600 residents, three living-learning communities, and multiple spaces meant to encourage collaboration and creativity, including lounges, classrooms, art studios, a performance hall, a maker space, and a library. To Baird, who lives and works with students year-round in the CID, the building offers the ideal smart and connected living-learning laboratory for exploring human-space interaction.
“We build these spectacular spaces, this whiz-bang building, and the question is: Is it worth it? Does all the ‘designeyness’ matter? Is it nudging us towards our values of community, inspiration, creativity, and innovation?” Baird asked. “In a building like this, we’re constantly trying to build culture, despite the annual disruptions of summer breaks and routine turnover. So, our study is about the cycles of culture-building throughout different types of spaces amidst disruption. Sorting through different types of data can be deeply insightful.”
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