How can physical spaces engage students in learning? That is the key question that drove the design for the new home under construction for the American University of Central Asia (AUCA).

Students and faculty are seen not as settlers of space, but as community living off the dense abundance of space and technology resources. As such conventional space boundaries between classrooms and libraries, faculty and students, instruction and conversation are purposely broken and blurred to spawn learning that is meant to be interdisciplinary, invitational and intergenerational.

Today’s students equipped with mobile information gathering and sharing devices are like modern nomads in a learning landscape that knows no borders. Wherever students can gather and intersect is a place of learning. A university became a community place to instill learning as a life style.

The AUCA campus case study is a big project taking on some big ideas about learning spaces.