Photo: Munger Hall at UC Santa Barbara. The exterior windows will primarily face the common areas, not the dorm rooms.
Universities throughout the United States face severe student housing shortages. To solve this problem, administrators are scrambling to find affordable and timely solutions. Some solutions are controversial — such as the ‘Dormzilla’ project at the University of California at Santa Barbara — while others use steel framing to save time and money.
Student Housing Market On the Rise
According to the National Multifamily Housing Council, the student housing market across the U.S. is expected to expand 0.8% from 8.5 million to 9.2 million beds by 2031.
- About 448,000 beds will come from undergraduate student enrollment at public four-year universities
- An additional 112,000 beds will be added to graduate student housing complexes at public universities
- Private universities will add 96,000 bed to their graduate housing complexes
- Public two‐year universities will add 79,000 beds
UCSB’s ‘Dormzilla’ to Feature Prefabricated Pods
The state of California is seeing the largest bulk of student housing demand, with a 16,000-person-long waitlist for available space in dormitory facilities. The University of California at Santa Barbara has received much attention recently for a proposed solution to the student housing crisis — the construction of Munger Hall, nicknamed “Dormzilla” by the Santa Barbara Independent.
The problem: 94% of the bedrooms at Munger Hall have no windows, and the project’s largest backer, philanthropist Charles Munger of Berkshire Hathaway, has stipulated that the design can’t be changed.
The windowless bedrooms share a common area and two bathrooms.
The 97-year-old Munger is contributing $200 million to the 11-story, 1.68 million-square-foot structure, which will house 4,500 students in suites with single-occupancy bedrooms.
According to The Current, the UC Santa Barbara student paper, the construction process is considered revolutionary for this type of project.
- The modular residential units will be prefabricated and installed on the building foundation at a pace of about 25 pods per week
- An entire residential floor of the building will require only 20 working days of construction
Traditional construction typically requires builders on-site for an extended length of time, says The Current. Thus, the cost savings realized at Munger Hall are expected to be significant. The state-of-the-art, modular construction method used could become a model for universities around the country.
Monger Hall is expected to open for occupancy in fall 2025.
Steel Framing Saves Universities Time and Money
The University of North Texas
Cold-formed steel framing (CFS) helped The University of North Texas add 598 beds on campus in just 14 months and meet a critical deadline: the arrival of students for the new school year. Victory Hall, a 163,415-square-foot dormitory, used load-bearing CFS to shave 25% off the construction time.
Sheridan College
The Trafalgar campus of Sheridan College’s new student residence features load-bearing CFS installed on concrete foundations poured prior to winter.
Set in Oakville, on Lake Ontario just west of Toronto, the Trafalgar Campus of Sheridan College is home to 7,500 students. In late 2012, the college began construction of a student residence. The project ran through a tough Canadian winter.
Sheridan College’s student residence features load-bearing cold-formed steel installed on concrete foundations poured before winter began. Hollow-core concrete served as a flooring substructure.
“It cooled down in December, and we got snow,” says Brock Martin, President, Magest Building Systems Ltd., Stratford, Ontario, whose company installed the load-bearing CFS framing on the project. “But, we were able to maintain our schedule in -10 to -20 degrees Celsius [14 to -4 degrees F] for three months.”
By pouring the structure’s foundations in the fall and using CFS framing over the winter, Sheridan College and its public-private partner, Campus Living Centres, saved money — likely hundreds of thousands of dollars in carrying costs, Martin says.
California Polytechnic State University
Poly Canyon Village is the largest CFS load-bearing framing project in California and the most sizable student housing complex ever undertaken by an American university in a single construction project. Spanning 30 acres at the base of the picturesque Poly Canyon, the project comprises nine buildings, each with a four or five story CFS structure on a slab foundation or over a podium. The complex provides housing for nearly 2,700 additional students at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo.
Student Housing Post Pandemic
The American Council on Education estimates that the coronavirus pandemic will result in a $120 billion loss in revenue to U.S. colleges and universities. The University of California system alone has cited nearly $2.2 billion worth of losses have occurred between March 2020 and August 2020.
However, this loss in revenue is expected to have little effect on plans for student housing construction projects.
“The student housing industry has proven it will once again rebound quite strongly as we come out of the backside of the pandemic,” says Greg Blais, president of RISE, a real estate company based in Valdosta, Georgia. “The future of on-campus student housing will remain solid, if for no other reason than schools are recognizing the deficiencies within their inventory.”
Blais adds: “While no one knows when the impacts of COVID on society will end, we have to remember that students are social by nature.”
Article cited from BuildSteel.org