Places for Healing - A New Residence at CBC
Places for Healing
By Andrea Ykema
What good can a mere building do for the soul?
While Columbia would agree that it is not cinder blocks and plumbing that encourage and uplift a person, the school would affirm that buildings establish a conduit for growth that would otherwise not exist.
Buildings at Columbia promote community. They are spaces designed for the specific purpose of facilitating and cultivating relationships. The Teaching Centre, The Student Centre, and the Columbia Resource Centre pulse with students, professors, administration and staff during the week. Conversation buzzes from the walls and one can nearly see the creation of new ideas and relationships happening around them.
In Columbia Place, students come together and the emptiness of the gym vanishes. The Columbia Hall Women’s Residence is much the same way – cinder block rooms and sensible furniture become the frame for many powerful interactions.
The role that buildings play in Columbia’s pursuit of a community of learning is integral. We inhabit the campus; professors inhabit their offices, we all inhabit the classrooms, cafeteria, and chapel. Students deeply inhabit the residence in which they live.
At this year’s Annual General Meeting, Columbia’s new residence project was a large topic of conversation. The artist’s rendering describes a beautiful, four-story building that will house both senior students and all resident men. This new residence building is an echo of the other buildings on campus – a place designed to facilitate and cultivate relationship in a profound way.
Currently, the men’s dorm is located at a nearby, off-campus apartment complex. Senior housing is similarly separate from the main campus. With the construction of a new residence building, students that are currently scattered would be brought together. Columbia students would be drawn into a physical community that would reach from eating together in the cafeteria throughout the day, to passing time in the lounges in the Student Centre.
Fourth year student Tatjana Panuhno was asked to speak to the guests at the AGM. Tatjana moved to Canada from Latvia and was affected deeply by her experience in residence. Her troubled background caused fear and anxiety to grow inside of her rather than confidence and a sense of rest. Columbia offered her a home that she had not felt before. “I got to know what it means to experience God’s unconditional love,” Tatjana recalled. “He led me here to experience what true family means.” For Tatjana, it was imperative to be able to develop her own personhood while remaining accepted by those around her. For others, true family could mean something much different.
Tatjana’s experience was stimulated by her ability to live alongside friends and mentors in a real, physical way. Her story is an excellent example of why spaces at Columbia are important. Within rooms that are empty and without meaning, hallowed encounters occur. Souls are nurtured and healing is created. The new residence project will offer more of these profound opportunities for Columbia students both now and for years to come.
