The Loft Redesign

Those of you who attended Personal Statements Friday night received a free copy of Ambidextrous, our Design magazine, and a letter from Banny, David, and myself outlining some of the changes we are making for next year. One of the most ambitious is a complete tear-down and redesign of the Loft. We plan to rebuild it as a modern studio space in time for the opening of the new Design Building in the Fall of this year. Our idea is to make the space more flexible and easy to reconfigure, featuring updated technology and connectivity, and set up so that we can prototype new ways of working together. Other than those general guidelines we are open to new design ideas.

The Loft is an important element of the Design experience at Stanford and we are very aware that we a messing with one of the crown jewels of the grad program. The Loft was certainly "home base" for my Master's year- I probably spent more nights in the Loft than I did in my apartment. I imagine many of you did as well and you have a lot of feelings about the place. We’d love your ideas on this subject, particularly if you work in a great design space (or know of one) that we can come see. We will be prototyping some of our ideas (of course) as the year progresses and we are open to a radical re-thinking of the space. We look forward to a lively discussion about your ideas.