Our new spaces—the Skiles 302 Laptop Classroom, the Communication Center, and the Hall Building—influence the way we think and act. The intersections of philosophy, process, people, and practice are enormously important to the ways in which rhetoric, process, multimodality, and collaboration work in our program. The following fifteen generalizable actions sync with the design and planning criteria the University of Georgia’s School Design and Planning Laboratory developed in 1997 and serve as a manifesto that we hope supports other programs as they create and renovate spaces.

Philosophy

1. Clarify your program’s philosophy and express it in a public mission statement.
2. Articulate ways in which specific aspects of the space, furniture, equipment, and technology help instantiate your program’s mission.
3. Remember that your loyalty is to your program. You’re the voice and defender of your program in defining and shaping space. And remember that other people are defenders of their programs; they do not oppose you (as an individual); rather they just have professional responsibilities and priorities for which they have to answer.
4. Decide what is critical, nice to have, negotiable, and easy to let go—and use that information strategically.

Process

5. Learn how the process works at your institutions for new construction and for renovation (on this issue, please also see Davis and also Knight, this volume).
6. Get a seat at the table for designing and planning the space, observing the construction, and creating the punch lists (the list of contractor activities to be completed).
7. Take advantage of opportunities to test new concepts in pilot spaces if at all possible, for as long as possible. Develop a critical eye in reviewing these pilot projects and generalizing to the new spaces.
8. Get your own hardhat. Wear it when you visit the site so you can learn how the space is being developed.
9. Take pictures to document the process of construction or renovation.

People

10. Make friends and allies in space planning and facilities management, in architecture, in instructional technology, in construction, and in landscape design. Keep your own colleagues and administrators regularly informed about the project, showing them blueprints, drawings, and photos to help make the complexity of the project accessible. Share information with colleagues to help them understand that your involvement and recommendations are based, in part, on best practices used at other institutions and advances in disciplinary thinking about the ways that space affects engagement, attitude, performance, and curriculum.
11. Create a broad-based advisory or consulting committee for the project and involve this committee as active advisers to your decision making.

Practice

12. Anticipate learning about things that were never part of your degree in rhetoric and composition—and being able to understand and talk about them. Some of the things you will need to know? Stakeholders. Approval processes. Email trails. Timetables. Inspections. Negotiation. Decision makers. Record keeping. Ergonomics. Safety. Security. ADA. Mold. Termites. Asbestos. Drainage. Gray water. Sustainable landscaping. Irrigation. Mechanical systems. LEED. Drawings. Blueprints. Architects. Contractors. Vendors. Project managers. Power relationships. Cost cutting. Political trade offs. Furniture. Equipment. Lighting. Wiring. Punch lists. Workarounds. Etc.[7]
13. Be cautious about the relevance of your prior knowledge. What you think you know about construction and renovation (from, for example, residential projects) may not apply to commercial projects.
14. Be patient with yourself when you plan something that works differently than you anticipated. Be flexible.
15. Anticipate the unexpected—with the building site, the schedule, the plans, the people.

Articulating disciplinary philosophies, defining programmatic processes, describing the needs of people, and explaining critical practices all provide information that lets us characterize physical spaces that are integral to our pedagogy and research. Such reflection is valuable whether a program is creating a single room or an entire building. The goal should be to design learning spaces to help our students best accomplish course and programmatic outcomes.

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