A new building for Carleton’s Sprott School of Business is only a dream for now, but architecture and business students presented their visions Dec. 11-13 for an innovative site that would see the school combined with a hotel.
In a new course that put together architecture master’s students with business undergraduates, students spent the fall semester creating complete plans for a new Sprott home.
The school is currently housed in Dunton Tower. According to assistant business professor Troy Anderson the project was inspired by “the misery of being in that building.”
The proposals are just classwork and not intended to be built. Currently the university has no solid plan or funding in place for a new business building, dean of the Sprott School of Business Jerry Tomberlin said.
He said they are hoping to change that soon and the student presentations are an opportunity to create buzz around the idea.
“There’s no identity associated with the school,” Tomberlin said of the current location.
While he did note that views are great, that’s about all that could be said for the school’s current home. Dunton Tower’s elevators are unreliable and there are few spaces for open meetings, which Tomberlin said presents problems.
“You don’t come to that building unless you need to. The vast majority of the students would never go there except maybe to see a prof,” he said.
Students in the course were asked to consider two possible sites: one on campus beside Bronson Avenue, and the other on Albert Island on the Ottawa River.
Students were given a laundry list of needs, from social spaces and breakout rooms, to offices. Half the students were to include a plan for an attached commercial hotel.
[slideshow gallery_id=”5″]The hotel would offer a new source of income for the university, a place for executives undergoing Sprott training to stay, and might allow entrepreneurial students to get hands-on experience.
Tomberlin said the possibilities for partnerships extend beyond the private, with a possible link to Algonquin College’s hospitality program.
“It has to also be Sprott, it has to be a university. But I would not shy away from this as a great hotel, and a great training facility,” he said.
First-year master’s of architecture student Tim Stanley said he liked the format of the course, and said working with a business student was like working with any other client.
The idea for the course came from Anderson.
“I’ve always found that anything cross-disciplinary adds something to an exercise,” he said.
Despite Carleton administration’s enthusiasm for interdisciplinary studies, he said it was difficult to organize.
In the end the course was supported by a grant from the Carleton Innovation Fund. Anderson said he would consider running a similar course again if the resources were available.
“It’s something we’d like to do again because we’re really encouraged by what happened here,” he said.
