No aspect of campuses is unaffected. The geography and everyday experience of education, modes of teaching and learning, the position of learners, and the structure of research are shifting in line with three main trends shaping the campus of tomorrow: connectivity, urban identity and socioeconomic awareness, and social responsibility. Campuses must rise to these challenges and find their footing in a context of stiffer international competition between higher education institutions.

Digital technology is changing how and where we learn, how research is conducted and even the cognitive profile of students. Campuses must now be connected and provide new methods of learning: distance education, supervision systems for the creation of smart campuses and dedicated to research. Support the rise of online and distance learning. Equipment and materials must be designed for multi-site learning. Application solutions coupled with physical devices within the facilities (microphones, cameras, etc.) can be used to facilitate exchanges between teachers and remote students. Campuses also produce audiovisual content and this entails setting up digital network infrastructure.

Workspaces and living spaces must be conducive to digital learning and be more flexible and modular: removable partition systems, rolling furniture, etc. They may also offer hidden furniture systems as well as multiple connectors. The shift to distance learning also concerns students' living spaces, in particular their accommodations. Student residences are set to become full-fledged components of campuses and will need very high-speed Internet access and integrated work spaces. Put an administrative system in place for each smart campus Central management of the campus requires the installation of a single administrative system to connect all campus services.

For example: connection of the site with information from real-time transportation systems to facilitate travel, connection of the facilities to manage occupancy or make them accessible to different individuals belonging to the general public, overseeing electrical consumption of buildings, predictive maintenance of the premises and equipment, etc. Design digital campuses made for collaborative and multi-site research Researchers need facilities to work in private as well as facilities to work together. Some campuses even design their facilities so as to bring researchers into contact with one another. Collaborative research also means that researchers travel a lot and thus that campuses need facilities to host them temporarily (such as serviced offices, etc.).

Reference: The Luminy Campus at Aix-Marseille University Bouygues Bâtiment Sud-Est and Scau, an architecture firm working with Marciano Architecture, won the 2017 Luminy Campus public-private partnership contract to renovate two large teaching and research buildings (while they were in use) and refit the Hexagon building. The aim? The aim was to turn the Hexagon into an environment conducive to interactions among undergraduate, graduate and PhD students, researchers, lecturers and businesses. Designed as a functional and spacious area, the Hexagon's central patio will abound with informal and modular spaces.


