FIELD WORK: CCC Space

If someone were to wish for a taste the essential Columbia College space, they should be sent to the building at 623 S Wabash. This place is home to the Art & Design community and also most essential liberal arts classes. Aside from more specific majors, this place is where much of the heart of Columbia takes place. Not only does it have a few large lecture and gathering spaces, but it contains many galleries and workspaces unique to the school.

Some would argue that to find the life of the school, it’s in the students and their choice of gathering. For this building, it’s important to consider the people outside before stepping in. Columbia has a large population of smokers, and they congregate outside this building before and after class, and especially during the designated break times. They can be seen from the street any day of the week and any time of day. These people, with their Chrome bags and skinny jeans, often carrying portfolio cases and a coffee mug, represent the life of the school. Sometimes they chat about their upcoming critique or complain about their heavy workload. Others sit alone and tend to keep to themselves.

This alone says so much about the school. People attend to further their careers and are enrolled for themselves. It’s definitely a collaborative effort, but most make it solely on their own. But once they’ve entered the inside, they can get the full experience when they see people working hands-on in the woodshop. The visitor isn’t given the full effect unless they visit every floor, including the ninth floor computer lab and see the exciting things people are working with on their computers. This building encapsulates the life and heart of Columbia.

If not the other location, one could see the more freelanced side of the institution, and what people do in their free time at the 916 S Wabash building.  The fourth floor loft is a large room that has a lounge space with many couches and many rows of chairs set up in front of a screen. This is where the outside life happens. Posting here for an hour, one can see people in their respective habitats. One student is passed out on the loungy couch, backpack still on with a black hoodie over his head. He’ll be there for a while. A meeting is about to start and people are starting to gather at the other end of the room, probably an extra-curricular. Someone in a distant cubicle is playing music of an acoustic variety.

This is where a bit more of the culture comes alive at Columbia. Seeing people in their down-time is one of the more raw pieces of the sentiment of the school, some meeting to snack between classes or to arrange a special conversation. There is great significance in the love of art bringing people together not for any academic sake, but for friendship’s sake, which this school has succeeded in doing. Somewhere, the founder of the school must be proud.

(The essential CCC.)