Creating Communities with Modules: An Adaptable Architecture for Stanford’s Undergraduate Neighborhoods

Today, with metropolitan areas across the nation facing dire housing shortages, the need to re-examine our built environment is more pressing than ever. At Stanford University, one of the largest private landowners in America’s most expensive real-estate market, reconsidering housing options for the university’s students, staff, and faculty is particularly urgent. Stanford has recently begun to address this problem, as evidenced by the impending opening of new residences for graduate students in 2020. However, much more needs to be done to ensure high-quality, affordable living for all Stanford affiliates. Moreover, the university’s plans to expand the number of students it admits and to construct new facilities in the coming decades, as indicated by the formation of long-range planning committees and the 2040 Campus Masterplan, further exacerbates this challenge.

With 97 percent of undergraduates living on campus in university-owned housing, due in large part to high rent in the surrounding Bay Area, Stanford must not only provide a greater quantity of living units, but must also ensure that they are thoughtfully designed so as to realize the full potential of the college residential experience. This project examines Stanford’s undergraduate housing system as it stands today and seeks to identify the most essential elements of student residences. Exploring how the physical spaces students occupy shapes the communities formed within them, this project proposes a conceptual design for a new residential neighborhood for a maximum of 700 undergraduate students that can accommodate and nurture the formation of diverse communities.

Studying the history of Stanford’s campus and the current undergraduate residential system sheds light on the need to reform specific aspects of the physical and programmatic structures that define campus housing today. Sections I and II delineate a brief history of Stanford’s campus architecture, and contextualize the difficulties Stanford undergraduates face today with regards to their campus residences. By understanding what students seek in their residential experiences, we can identify the shortcomings of both the existing housing stock and the policies that determine housing assignments. Section III introduces Stanford’s response to this current structure: the assembly of the ResX Task Force, a group of Stanford affiliates who were charged with investigating the existing campus housing and providing a set of recommendations for future changes. Although it must undergo multiple rounds of revision and feedback that consider the varied residential experiences of Stanford’s diverse student body prior to its implementation, the task force’s solution puts forth the concept of new residential “neighborhoods.” At its core, this neighborhoods plan ensures greater continuity of communities over students’ typically four year trajectory, which will guide future construction and growth of campus housing. By distilling the most critical elements of student dorms into modules, Section V proposes the use of modular architecture as a practical system of designing such neighborhoods to provide students with all necessary resources and amenities, while emphasizing the formations of various communities. Sections VI and VII present a specific design on the Searsville site, which is one of the locations Stanford intends to convert into undergraduate housing, as indicated by the university’s 2040 Campus Masterplan.