The north common room reopened on Monday after a semester-long renovation, trading its rows of worn sofas for a mix of open seating, group tables and six bookable study pods.
The redesign came directly from a survey the student council ran last year, in which the most common complaints about the old room were noise, a shortage of power outlets and “nowhere to work with a group without annoying everyone else.” The pods answer the last of those: each seats four, closes with a glass door, and can be booked in one-hour blocks through the student portal.
What changed
- Six enclosed study pods, bookable up to a week ahead
- Power outlets at every seat — the old room had eleven in total
- A quiet corner with high-backed chairs facing the windows
- Better lighting, chosen in an open vote between three options
“We put three lighting samples in the corridor for a week and let people vote with stickers,” said facilities liaison Petra Kovacs. “The warmest option won by a mile, which surprised the architects and nobody else.”
In its first week, the pods were fully booked between noon and 4 p.m. most days. The council will review booking rules at the end of term — including whether the current one-booking-per-day limit should stay.
The south common room remains unchanged this year; a decision on renovating it depends on the budget round in the spring.
The budget, itemised
The council published the renovation’s full cost breakdown alongside the reopening — a first, and a deliberate one after criticism of opaque spending on the sports hall scoreboard two years ago. The pods were the largest single item, followed by electrical work for the outlets; the furniture came in under estimate after the supplier’s student-project discount. “Every figure is on the noticeboard,” Kovacs said. “If people are going to argue about spending, they should at least argue about the real numbers.”
One casualty of the redesign has its defenders: the enormous orange sofa, a fixture of unknown age, was retired after an inspection described its structural condition as “aspirational.” It was given a small farewell notice on the door, which accumulated signatures.
