The Best Business School Campuses

SCHOOLS HOLD SURPLUS SPACE TO ACCOMMODATE FUTURE GROWTH

The surrounding neighborhoods also add a certain ambiance to the programs. Kole compares the family feel of Hyde Park to New York City’s Upper West Side, a throwback of family-owned specialty shops, bookstores, eateries, and bakeries – a corridor that only recently accepted its first mini Target. On 59th Street, just a street down from Booth, many students gravitate to Doc Films, a film society that runs the Max Palevsky Cinema that plays classic films and rare documentaries. The area is also home to the Robie House, a U.S. historic landmark and embodiment of Franklin Lloyd Wright’s Prairie School architecture.

In contrast, UCLA is urban and the seat of West Los Angeles, just a five mile drive from Wilshire Boulevard and the Pacific Ocean. “We’re spoiled here,” admits Weiler. “We’re surrounded by Bel-Air to the north, Brentwood on one side and Beverly Hills on the other side, with Westwood to our south, four of the most high rent residential districts in the country. Our border to the north is Sunset Boulevard – but after that it is $10-$20 million dollar homes. Westwood is a hub of shopping, restaurants and activities that has the feel of a college town. There is literally a three mile loop around campus and UCLA is completely contained in that.”

Perhaps one reason why Booth and Anderson MBAs rave about the facilities is that neither school is content to rest on its laurels. Both take infrastructure – and the social and learning atmosphere it creates – very seriously. Guthrie, for one, is always on the lookout for keeping appearances current and student-friendly. “As the buildings age,” he says, “we have been very dedicated in keeping all the student spaces fresh-looking, whether it is replacing carpets or adapting to student needs like adding a lactation room and a non-gender bathroom.”

At the same time, Kole adds, the school maintains surplus space to accommodate future programming needs. For example, the school recently allocated additional space for the Rustandy Center for Social Innovation, to accommodate increasing interest in the social sector and issues related to equality and access. The increasing popularity of the Kilts Center (Marketing) and the CFO Forum has also required further investments in space.

HARPER CENTER DESIGN STANDS THE TEST OF TIME

Anderson is facing similar demands – and following Booth’s blueprint. The program plans to move departments like student affairs, career services, and admissions into the new Marion Anderson Hall – which affords the opportunity to backfill spaces for their growing centers. “We always seem to be adding more centers and larger components to them,” Jesek Carman confesses.  “We want to make room for new programs so we can capture what is in the marketplace that has not been addressed. It is going to provide an opportunity to update our current complex as best we can and make opportunities for future students.”

In other words, the Anderson campus, like business in general, is constantly re-inventing itself to re-engineer the student experience based on market changes, best practices, and student demands. “Our current complex was built in 1995,” Jesek Carman adds. “The architect had a different business culture in mind when they built the complex. There were a lot of tiny rooms, walls and sectional parts of the facility. In recent years, we’ve been consistently tearing down walls, making more open and collaborative spaces, and a lot of this has been drive by students in terms of what they need and how they function.”

In the process, Anderson is revamping the current complex, adding glass and removing brick, to offer a consistent look that augments the school’s bucolic charm. In the end, buildings serve people. That is the genius behind the Harper Center, says Kole, who believes the strategy behind the building’s layout only grows more cogent after 14 years.

“The team that designed the internal space really understood the life of the student,” she asserts. “The ability to flow through the school in different roles during the day – working by yourself, collaborating with others, being in the classroom, grabbing an expresso – that can all happen so easy in this space.”

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