Business students at the Ted Rogers School of Management are still waiting for the revamping of the quiet study zone.
The $30,000 project was slated to be completed and ready for use by the start of the fall 2014 semester, according to the Ryerson Commerce Society (RCS) website. The Ryersonian reported last September that construction had been delayed after the proposed plans exceeded the budget.
Now, a “downscaled and revised” plan has been finalized, and progress is slowly underway, spearheaded by Monica Polo, the design centre resource specialist at the school of interior design.
“We had some financial challenges because there were so many requirements with regards to sound attenuation in that space,” said Polo, who worked closely with fourth-year interior design students Thy Nguyen and Alessandra Isola. “We are now … providing the business school with options so they can pick and choose what they can pay for in this fiscal year as well as the next fiscal year. (This way,) they can straddle both financing years so (that) we can actually do the project.”
Polo said the study space redesign, which was originally announced in October 2013, follows a “Canadiana” theme, and features new millwork and felt-based lounge seating. An image proposal and the approved plan can be seen below.
“(There’s) kind of an embedded threshold or archway on both sides of the hallway,” she said. “Slowly, as we get to the next fiscal year, we will be able to buy the tables and the adjacent chairs to go with that.”
Polo also said that the development of the Student Learning Centre didn’t affect this project.
“It was more about internal costs and trying to figure out what we wanted to do first,” she said.
Construction will take place on the hallways around the TRS 1-067 auditorium on the second floor of the building, which are already used as a study space.
Rita Lingner, the facilities and special projects manager of the Ted Rogers School of Management, said that one of the challenges was working with an unconventional floor plan.
“The main challenge was working with a relatively small, odd-shaped public hallway and actually create a space that worked,” she said.
The team consulted a committee of about 12 students, which chose the final designs. Lingner hopes that it will meet the needs of students.
“I think in a building of this size, and in particularly of the population, that (it needs) a place to go and just have a quiet moment to yourself,” she said.
Calvin was a copy editor at The Ryersonian in 2015. He was also an editorial intern at Canadian Geographic magazine.