This is the question I asked myself several times today as I wandered through the SFU Burnaby campus. I think I went through several buildings, but the all looked the same. They WERE all the same. They were all the same 1960s, Cold War, we're expecting a nuclear bomb to explode overhead at any time now, concrete bomb-shelter bunkers.
Someone kindly pointed out a triangle on the wall inside one building that specified N. There are apparently also E, S, and W. Compass points! I thought it was a warning of some chemicals being stored, although I couldn't remember which chemical N was.
And all of the floor tiles were coming loose. And all the displayed art was monochromatic. And I only saw 2 places to get coffee, and they were from the same company (not Starbucks, oddly).
And the millions of stairs!! This campus is openly hostile to people with handicaps who can't do stairs.
Oh how I longed for my old UofA campus. Where you could give people directions by saying “It's the red brick building” or “It's the building with the ornate pillars” or “It's the building that looks like a turtle” or “It's the big yellow building”. You didn't get lost in a sea of gray concrete and stairs at the UofA, every building has it's own character and charm. (And it helps if you're stumbling home after a few drinks to know where you are by the different buildings. Yep, my place is just a few more steps, around the corner from the blue building... so much easier.)
The SFU Burnaby campus is used by a lot of science fiction TV and Movie shows. Those futuristic places where everyone wears gray, no one wears any colour, and even the most far flung places in the universe have millions of damned STAIRS!
I've heard people will either love or hate the SFU Burnaby campus, no neutral positions are taken. I will go with the latter position.
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I'll agree that SFU is made up of a lot of grey concrete, but speaking as someone who attended school there for 3 years, the thing I liked best about it was that there was lots of open air spaces that still managed to be covered from the rain. So you could be outside, and get lots of spectacular views, but you didn't have to get wet to do so. And since it rains 9 months of the year here, I'm counting that as one good thing SFU managed to do.
But I will agree about all the stairs. There are a whole lot of stairs and the elevators aren't always easily found, particularly by someone new to the campus.
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