Jan
26
UO Jaqua building is fascinating.
January 26, 2010 |
(Left Photo from KVAL) (Right Photo from OregonLive)
This morning I took a tour of the new UO Athlete Learning Services building. Or whatever the official title of the Jaqua building is.
This building. How do I put it. Creates a fair share of controversy on our campus. OregonLive, UO Matters , Register Guard
One of my student employees is a leader in the “facebook group” effort to open the building to non-athletic students.
Another student admires the architectural details in the building, especially the lighting features.
Humor can be found in that searching for “John Jaqua” images on the internet reveals images of the Taj Mahal.
Anyways, I got a private tour of it today. It was a nice in depth behind the scenes look at how things worked, what purposes it had, how glass and wall were used as writing surfaces, how TV’s were inset at printing stations with long term planning, how printers and labs were built without wired networking!?!?!?, and how the glass in the bathroom was etched with an artistic form rumored to be Phil’s wife.
What I came away with… It’s pretty, its eccentric, and its a decent use of technology. And they clearly had limited advise from anyone with a technological background when designing and planning the building.
Images to remember:
The TV above is located in one of their study rooms. The wall is glass, as is the frame around the TV. The entire wall is a writing surface, allowing tutors to write notes and document whatever they are presenting on their laptop. Apparently also, the students occasionally mistake the TV for a writing surface.
The above image also shows the challenges with the blinds. You can’t manually control the blinds in the rooms. So the glare from the glass exterior shows up on everything in the building.
One of the things highlighted in the controversy of this building are it’s laptops. As demonstrated below, they are laser engraved with a bunch of O’s forming the larger “O” symbol of Oregon. This image is from the Engraver’s flickr gallery.
In my behind the scenes tour, I got to see the closet of “spares”. A pool of 50 is actively being used for daily checkout. A large pool are used by students for “term long” checkout. And the IT department has a few extras they have not yet put into use. They are 100% ready to go, but … this was quite the visual, shelving COVERED with laptops!
There is a staff lounge on the North East corner of the second floor. It looks out over the lawn, and the new basketball arena. It contains two bathrooms, a 52″ LCD TV, comfortable seating, a table, personnel lockers, and a kitchen. I mean, a beautiful appliance filled kitchen. Oh, and the bathrooms? Oh yeah, they have showers in them. Beautiful dark tiled showers. I’m pretty certain the staff lounge has convinced me to find a way to get hired in this building.
IT staff wise, I’m informed the building has 1.5FTE. They have two people! And 550 MacBook Pro’s, in addition to the 50 iMacs in the dedicated labs, and the 50-100 iMacs scattered around the building in offices and advising spaces. 1.5 FTE, running nearly 700 computers. Somethings wrong with that ratio. So yeah, when the job comes up, I’ll be there.
FYI, the best images of the Jaqua building are available from someone’s flickr gallery here