The building of the future opened yesterday. Cross-cutting, cutting-edge, the OpenGrounds Studio cut no corners but rather ribbons with a nod to tradition at what its website describes as "the historic Corner building" where it is located. It is sleek, it is fashionable, with a contemporary interior and outlook. And what does it do? It does anything we want it to - serving as a digital lab, an academic playground - and yesterday it hosted black ties drinking, talking, adjusting themselves using the monitors stationed along the white, Kubrickian hall.
The OpenGrounds Studio is above all celebrated as a new space - as if space were something to be created - for interdisciplinary collaboration. The room can be reserved, allowing practitioners to use the facility and start projects. The revolutionary tables can transform into, among other things, a table. And we presume the chairs are movable.
In the Jeffersonian, First Amendment spirit, "Brainstorming visitors can jot ideas on walls covered in writeable paint," according to UVa Today. Students, academics and community members will talk, run games and simulations, and do projects at this studio, which can be compared to a grown-up day care too easily.
This locale may have open doors but could prove inaccessible for the typical student. The modern trend of open-source collaboration goes against the modern trend of specialization. Moreover, while in theory people can contribute corroboratively to the OpenGrounds Studio, the building blocks of knowledge are still learned in front of books or screens, alone, before they are collected together. The studio faces the same challenges of finding an audience as does any other, and this white, transparent spot on the Corner will need to find its identity between a pub for intellectual graffiti and a stiff faculty lounge. Yet while we have reservations, there is room left for a party of optimism.
"At the University of Virginia, like many other institutions, interdisciplinary collaboration often leads to the formation of a permanent Center for the Study of Something." This is good stuff from Inside Higher Ed. But most centers or institutes are organizational tools and not actual structures. The OpenGrounds Studio is just one aspect of the larger OpenGrounds vision which also has a digital presence. As a standalone act, OpenGrounds has a cloudy mission with up-in-the-air rhetoric. But having no objectives is part of the project's emergent, free spirited culture. If taken as part and parcel of the University's larger campaign for an education across disciplines and mediums, this is a promising development.
The best answer to an either/or question is both, and the University has responded to the competing digital landscape by adopting its best features, such as streamed lectures and enhanced communication, to our physical environment on Grounds. For all plans emulating the Internet, such as OpenGrounds or the return of Look Hoos Talking, there will be some borrowed rhetoric and derivative ideas about innovation. The University, however, is right to invest in such plans before it's too late, while it still has credentials, infrastructure and our support.
Read More
EDITORIAL: U.Va. Health lets fear trump its mission to do no harm
By Editorial Board | 11 hours agoIt is high time to resist these authoritative and dangerous actions before there are no federal avenues left for resistance.
CARTER: U.Va. Health owes clarity to transplant patients
By Nathaniel Carter | 3 days agoUnfortunately, this negative press is fully the fault of U.Va. Health — it failed to address significant stakeholder concerns when crafting its justification.
EDITORIAL: Upholding medical amnesty is a collective effort
By Editorial Board | 4 days agoUniversity leadership, Greek life organizations and students themselves must recommit to the safety provided by an effective and knowledgeable use of medical amnesty.
