What Esports Can Teach Us About Campus Design

As higher education rethinks its physical footprint, the opportunity isn’t always to build more—it may be to make better use of what already exists. Derek Sola, Design Principal at JCJ Architecture, discusses how adaptive reuse, hospitality, flexibility, and intentional placemaking can transform campus spaces for today’s learners. Using UMass Lowell’s esports arena as a case study, he explores how an underused space became a flexible environment for competition, learning, broadcasting, collaboration, and community—and why the most successful educational spaces may be those that blur the boundaries between the digital and physical worlds.