A criticism often levelled at Trinity is that it has too often failed to manage its space-starved campus efficiently. It’s an argument, one presumes, that will only gain traction amid a student accommodation crisis whose severity seems to worsen by the day.
With the above in mind, it was encouraging to see this week that College is developing new student accommodation on Pearse St, as part of the ongoing construction of the Trinity Business School.
The new accommodation, which in the past housed offices, will provide beds for 36 students, and seems likely to be finished alongside the Business School at some point this year.
While 36 beds is perhaps not a huge number given the sheer scale of Trinity’s accommodation crisis, it points to a principle that can serve College as it tussles with the problem: every little helps.
Projects such as the Printing House Square, which will house 250 students, are of course vitally important to Trinity’s accommodation strategy, but smaller initiatives such as that at Pearse St demonstrate the value of actions large and small in dealing with any problem.
The ongoing refurbishment of the Arts Block – as part of which three seating pods were installed this week – is another instance of College using space creatively.
The question, however, that follows, is whether College should be putting more effort into refurbishing old offices such as those on Pearse St. Trinity has been notoriously slow to modernise its on-campus buildings, and it does not require a stretch of the imagination to suggest that there is more it could be doing. Everyone in College knows that there exist on campus unoccupied or inefficiently used buildings, and it certainly seems a viable strategy to turn some of these into rooms for students.
It behooves College to use any and every tool at its disposal to help create accommodation or better use its space for its students, and it can do so by ensuring buildings are being used as efficiently as possible. Admittedly, this approach, relatively small-scale and localised, will not solve Dublin’s housing crisis by itself. It is, however, a start.
