Design Solutions for the Building of the "Design" BA Programme

Annual changes affect everyone’s life and this year they affected everyone who studies at 123 Nab. Kanala Griboyedova. Did you notice what has changed since last year? Compare your answers with our responts' ones.

Every year (or not every, but the educational programme “Political Science and World Politics” was so lucky), we can observe some changes in the buildings of the St. Petersburg branch of the Higher School of Economics - mostly, it is just redecoration or new furniture, but by 2018/2019 academic year 123 Naberezhnaya Kanala Griboyedova has changed almost beyond recognition. Below you can see what changes the students of the corpus noticed and how they reacted to them.

Student 1: I remember being guided by scaffolding last year to find a university building, and then, when they were removed, I passed by several times (laughs).

Student 2: Last year, at least at the beginning, we did not have a library - if necessary, we had to go to the neighboring building on Soyuza Pechatnikov street or to Kantemirovskaya... The people from our educational programme were so furious when we received a mail with a survey on assessment of the quality of repairs in the building, where the question "How do you evaluate the library in your building?" or something like that was asked. We did not know how to answer because how anybody could give an answer if the library was under repair? Now everything is much better, yes, repairs are still under way, but everything is fine in the main part of the building, and the library is finally open (smiling).

Student 3: I am here for the first year, so I cannot compare with last year, but I like what is at the moment - brick walls in the corridors and some auditoriums look very modern, like in lofts. Especially I like the way the walls are painted in the library and in the hall of the second floor, where the "Granola".

Student 4: I really like the new furniture on the third floor, especially the white-orange armchair, if this design is correctly called the armchair, but I am, obviously, not alone, since it is almost impossible to occupy it. There is always someone there sitting with notebook or reading.

Student 5: Now this building looks like a museum of modern art, seriously, just look at this sculpture ... the statue ... I don’t know how to call it (shows the little man with the inscription "HSE ART AND DESIGN SCHOOL"), and these paintings are everywhere ... no, they are, of course, cool, but I am a political scientist, can I have anything related to this?

The students also noted the improvement in the quality of food and service and the pleasant prices in the canteen. Many students like the idea of glass doors, however, a couple of drawbacks were identified: the possibility to use only two stairs from all the existing ones, the lack of physical training in the very building and the inconvenient location of working toilets. However, the majority of the students responded to the survey placed the corpus on the Nab. Kanala Griboyedova second after the building on Kantemirovskaya for the quality of repairs and other characteristics.

Text by
Anastasia Yurko