Why should we ignore the hub of campus - the cafeteria? Some tips to a clean roomy canteen
Every university has that one magical spot that draws students. They flock there either to eat, or to hurriedly scrape together an assignment, or just to “hang out”. Of course, the cafeteria! Nobody can deny that the cafeteria (referred to as the “canteen” by the fuddy-duddies) receives more attention and footfall than any other place on cam¬pus. Why, then, do we choose to pay so lit¬tle attention to it?
Let’s face facts; most colleges have canteens that are small, dark, dingy, and all-round unhy¬gienic. There are legendary tales of students finding creepy-crawlies in their rajma-chawals. Not having learnt from older universities, there seem to be few new institutions that have realised the impact that a clean cafeteria makes on the universi¬ty’s image. Be it the starving students, or the equally fam¬ished faculty, everybody needs to eat.
Food For Thought
The first thing that one associates with a cafeteria is food. If you were once a college student, you’d remem¬ber the cheap canteen fare. And, how the company you were with, more than made up for the lacklustre taste. Is Gen Y happy with mediocrity, though?
“Making-do” seems to be a thing of the past. Nowa¬days, good, old (in every sense of the word), cheap food is blasé. A college campus isn’t a proper campus without, at the very least, a Nescafe stall.
Sure, students and faculty alike can’t resist the oily dosas or samosas and the overly-sweet, milky cups of tea, but is the health-conscious Gen-Y, used to lattes and lettuce, going to stay silent long over chaats and pakoras?
With the influx of bigger brands than Nescafe, the availability of quality food is now no longer out of reach. However, if we keep in mind the targeted audi¬ence, we might just notice a contradiction of sorts. While wanting to be healthy is all well and good, who can resist unhealthy food at the end of the day? The charm of a canteen is that it is affordable and that it remains affordable for all who pass through that outdoor classroom. Says Chandni Gupta, an ex-student of Delhi University, “The canteen was where we spent our time. We were perpetually on a tight budget. The hanging out area had to be affordable.”
Every university has that one magical spot that draws students. They flock there either to eat, or to hurriedly scrape together an assignment, or just to “hang out”. Of course, the cafeteria! Nobody can deny that the cafeteria (referred to as the “canteen” by the fuddy-duddies) receives more attention and footfall than any other place on cam¬pus. Why, then, do we choose to pay so lit¬tle attention to it?
Let’s face facts; most colleges have canteens that are small, dark, dingy, and all-round unhy¬gienic. There are legendary tales of students finding creepy-crawlies in their rajma-chawals. Not having learnt from older universities, there seem to be few new institutions that have realised the impact that a clean cafeteria makes on the universi¬ty’s image. Be it the starving students, or the equally fam¬ished faculty, everybody needs to eat.
Food For Thought
The first thing that one associates with a cafeteria is food. If you were once a college student, you’d remem¬ber the cheap canteen fare. And, how the company you were with, more than made up for the lacklustre taste. Is Gen Y happy with mediocrity, though?
“Making-do” seems to be a thing of the past. Nowa¬days, good, old (in every sense of the word), cheap food is blasé. A college campus isn’t a proper campus without, at the very least, a Nescafe stall.
Sure, students and faculty alike can’t resist the oily dosas or samosas and the overly-sweet, milky cups of tea, but is the health-conscious Gen-Y, used to lattes and lettuce, going to stay silent long over chaats and pakoras?
With the influx of bigger brands than Nescafe, the availability of quality food is now no longer out of reach. However, if we keep in mind the targeted audi¬ence, we might just notice a contradiction of sorts. While wanting to be healthy is all well and good, who can resist unhealthy food at the end of the day? The charm of a canteen is that it is affordable and that it remains affordable for all who pass through that outdoor classroom. Says Chandni Gupta, an ex-student of Delhi University, “The canteen was where we spent our time. We were perpetually on a tight budget. The hanging out area had to be affordable.”
Every university has that one magical spot that draws students. They flock there either to eat, or to hurriedly scrape together an assignment, or just to “hang out”. Of course, the cafeteria! Nobody can deny that the cafeteria (referred to as the “canteen” by the fuddy-duddies) receives more attention and footfall than any other place on cam¬pus. Why, then, do we choose to pay so lit¬tle attention to it?
Let’s face facts; most colleges have canteens that are small, dark, dingy, and all-round unhy¬gienic. There are legendary tales of students finding creepy-crawlies in their rajma-chawals. Not having learnt from older universities, there seem to be few new institutions that have realised the impact that a clean cafeteria makes on the universi¬ty’s image. Be it the starving students, or the equally fam¬ished faculty, everybody needs to eat.
Food For Thought
The first thing that one associates with a cafeteria is food. If you were once a college student, you’d remem¬ber the cheap canteen fare. And, how the company you were with, more than made up for the lacklustre taste. Is Gen Y happy with mediocrity, though?
“Making-do” seems to be a thing of the past. Nowa¬days, good, old (in every sense of the word), cheap food is blasé. A college campus isn’t a proper campus without, at the very least, a Nescafe stall.
Sure, students and faculty alike can’t resist the oily dosas or samosas and the overly-sweet, milky cups of tea, but is the health-conscious Gen-Y, used to lattes and lettuce, going to stay silent long over chaats and pakoras?
With the influx of bigger brands than Nescafe, the availability of quality food is now no longer out of reach. However, if we keep in mind the targeted audi¬ence, we might just notice a contradiction of sorts. While wanting to be healthy is all well and good, who can resist unhealthy food at the end of the day? The charm of a canteen is that it is affordable and that it remains affordable for all who pass through that outdoor classroom. Says Chandni Gupta, an ex-student of Delhi University, “The canteen was where we spent our time. We were perpetually on a tight budget. The hanging out area had to be affordable.”
Every university has that one magical spot that draws students. They flock there either to eat, or to hurriedly scrape together an assignment, or just to “hang out”. Of course, the cafeteria! Nobody can deny that the cafeteria (referred to as the “canteen” by the fuddy-duddies) receives more attention and footfall than any other place on campus. Why, then, do we choose to pay so little attention to it?
Let’s face facts; most colleges have canteens that are small, dark, dingy, and all-round unhygienic. There are legendary tales of students finding creepy-crawlies in their rajma-chawals. Not having learnt from older universities, there seem to be few new institutions that have realised the impact that a clean cafeteria makes on the university’s image. Be it the starving students, or the equally famished faculty, everybody needs to eat.
Food For Thought
The first thing that one associates with a cafeteria is food. If you were once a college student, you’d remember the cheap canteen fare. And, how the company you were with, more than made up for the lacklustre taste. Is Gen Y happy with mediocrity, though?
“Making-do” seems to be a thing of the past. Nowadays, good, old (in every sense of the word), cheap food is blasé. A college campus isn’t a proper campus without, at the very least, a Nescafe stall.
Sure, students and faculty alike can’t resist the oily dosas or samosas and the overly-sweet, milky cups of tea, but is the health-conscious Gen-Y, used to lattes and lettuce, going to stay silent long over chaats and pakoras?
With the influx of bigger brands than Nescafe, the availability of quality food is now no longer out of reach. However, if we keep in mind the targeted audience, we might just notice a contradiction of sorts. While wanting to be healthy is all well and good, who can resist unhealthy food at the end of the day? The charm of a canteen is that it is affordable and that it remains affordable for all who pass through that outdoor classroom. Says Chandni Gupta, an ex-student of Delhi University, “The canteen was where we spent our time. We were perpetually on a tight budget. The hanging out area had to be affordable.”
Nobody doubts that college cafés have perhaps one of the tastiest foods. In fact, for non-veggie lovers, the Delhi School of Economics (DSE) canteen is famed for having the best mutton dosas in Delhi. What does, however, make waves is the cleanliness and hygiene factors, or lack thereof, that come in to play.
Hygienically Helpless
Hygiene is a major issue when it comes to college canteens. While some, like the Dehradun Institute of Technology, are run like restaurants—professionally and are kept spic and span—others seem to think that cleanliness comes not only after godliness, but after a long list of other things, including profits.
The food is not only unsanitised, but often is also unhealthy. In today’s world of x-boxes and PS3s, obesity among the youth is a concern. Coupled with the risk of infectious diseases, students and fac¬ulty alike, run a high risk of becoming seriously ill after eating at the canteen.
A common problem is often the staff who man the place—and, who are at their best untrained and unwilling to learn. Students in some DU colleges complain that their canteen staff washes hands as infrequently as possible. Even the utensils are unclean.
Insects roam freely, and are sometimes treated like pets (trust students to turn a foul thing, funny). It is not just the gov¬ernment universities that are deemed to be unhygienic, often even private colleg¬es leave a lot to be desired.
Design Issues
A canteen is a space where diverse and varied people from different back¬grounds come together to express equal¬ly diverse and varied views on subjects. It is a common space for everyone—thus, there is no reason to make such an important platform flimsy.
If, when designing a campus one knows and keeps in mind that the cafete¬ria is where people are going to be spending most of their time, it raises the question as to why more attention is not paid to its design, construction and all-round development.
These are the days when academe is considered a convivial refuge from the corporate world, a place where scholars have ample time to debate ideas over lunch and drinks.
Shouldn’t the cafeteria be given prime importance, then? Corporate houses have learnt fast and cafeterias there are now relaxed, open spaces. Says Vikrant Sharma, Director, Spaceframes Design Studio who designed the cafeteria for an IT Park in Gurgaon, “the cafeteria should be a living space. In a corporate office, people are expected to come, grab their coffee and leave. In colleges, people are expected to hang around there all day.”
Nobody doubts that college cafés have perhaps one of the tastiest foods. In fact, for non-veggie lovers, the Delhi School of Economics (DSE) canteen is famed for having the best mutton dosas in Delhi. What does, however, make waves is the cleanliness and hygiene factors, or lack thereof, that come in to play.
Hygienically Helpless
Hygiene is a major issue when it comes to college canteens. While some, like the Dehradun Institute of Technology, are run like restaurants—professionally and are kept spic and span—others seem to think that cleanliness comes not only after godliness, but after a long list of other things, including profits.
The food is not only unsanitised, but often is also unhealthy. In today’s world of x-boxes and PS3s, obesity among the youth is a concern. Coupled with the risk of infectious diseases, students and faculty alike, run a high risk of becoming seriously ill after eating at the canteen.
A common problem is often the staff who man the place—and, who are at their best untrained and unwilling to learn. Students in some DU colleges complain that their canteen staff washes hands as infrequently as possible. Even the utensils are unclean.
Insects roam freely, and are sometimes treated like pets (trust students to turn a foul thing, funny). It is not just the government universities that are deemed to be unhygienic, often even private colleges leave a lot to be desired.
Design Issues
A canteen is a space where diverse and varied people from different backgrounds come together to express equally diverse and varied views on subjects. It is a common space for everyone—thus, there is no reason to make such an important platform flimsy.
If, when designing a campus one knows and keeps in mind that the cafeteria is where people are going to be spending most of their time, it raises the question as to why more attention is not paid to its design, construction and all-round development.
These are the days when academe is considered a convivial refuge from the corporate world, a place where scholars have ample time to debate ideas over lunch and drinks.
Shouldn’t the cafeteria be given prime importance, then? Corporate houses have learnt fast and cafeterias there are now relaxed, open spaces. Says Vikrant Sharma, Director, Spaceframes Design Studio who designed the cafeteria for an IT Park in Gurgaon, “the cafeteria should be a living space. In a corporate office, people are expected to come, grab their coffee and leave. In colleges, people are expected to hang around there all day.”
There are several very important points that one should keep in mind when designing the cafeteria.
Location & accessibility: The cafeteria should be well-accessible from all parts of the university. Students will not want to be running from one end of a campus to another for one samosa.
Lighting: Natural lighting is always best. Not only does it save on electricity, it makes the cafeteria a brighter and more appealing space.
Infrastructure: This is an important and often over-looked part of cafeteria design. Chairs should be movable and not fixed, in order to pre-empt the hordes of students that often like to sit together. Booths are another option; however there should never be too many as they crowd up a room along with the fact that they are slightly more difficult to clean and maintain. For uni¬versities that serve both vegetarian as well as non-vegetarian food, the coun-ters should not only be separate, but ideally, in separate corners.
Case In Point—Castro
A canteen no longer has to be either utilitarian or luxurious—it can be both.
Take the Castro Café of Jamia Millia Islamia for instance. Here is a canteen (or fancily-called, café) that has been re-designed to suit both aesthetic and utili¬tarian needs.
The café’s architect, Martand Khosla, of the Romy Khosla Design Studios, explains, “We were lucky that a Vice Chancellor (Najeeb Jung) with a broad¬er vision asked us to re-think the whole concept for a student’s cafeteria, because the existing one they had was an awful space.”
Indeed, from that “awful space”, Jamia has come a long way. It’s now an exam¬ple of what can be done “right”—with adequate lighting (natural and artificial); enough space to sit students, teachers and visitors; and infrastructure (separate wash spaces for students and kitchen staff for example), it is a great space to relax, breathe and catch up.
When the EDU team visited the cam¬pus, what popped out right away were the clean lines that defined the structure. The café sits snug, right next to the arts gallery, and compliments it perfectly— installation art, eccentric and quirky at best, adds to the space’s charm.
Inside, it is clean, spacious and roomy, with fixed tables and stools made of sturdiest stones and wood, arranged in rows on opposite sides of the long space. The table tops have been kept large enough to accommodate exercise cop¬ies, books, laptops and, who knows, an occasional student?
There are several very important points that one should keep in mind when designing the cafeteria.
Location & accessibility: The cafeteria should be well-accessible from all parts of the university. Students will not want to be running from one end of a campus to another for one samosa.
Lighting: Natural lighting is always best. Not only does it save on electricity, it makes the cafeteria a brighter and more appealing space.
Infrastructure: This is an important and often over-looked part of cafeteria design. Chairs should be movable and not fixed, in order to pre-empt the hordes of students that often like to sit together. Booths are another option; however there should never be too many as they crowd up a room along with the fact that they are slightly more difficult to clean and maintain. For uni¬versities that serve both vegetarian as well as non-vegetarian food, the coun-ters should not only be separate, but ideally, in separate corners.
Case In Point—Castro
A canteen no longer has to be either utilitarian or luxurious—it can be both.
Take the Castro Café of Jamia Millia Islamia for instance. Here is a canteen (or fancily-called, café) that has been re-designed to suit both aesthetic and utili¬tarian needs.
The café’s architect, Martand Khosla, of the Romy Khosla Design Studios, explains, “We were lucky that a Vice Chancellor (Najeeb Jung) with a broad¬er vision asked us to re-think the whole concept for a student’s cafeteria, because the existing one they had was an awful space.”
Indeed, from that “awful space”, Jamia has come a long way. It’s now an exam¬ple of what can be done “right”—with adequate lighting (natural and artificial); enough space to sit students, teachers and visitors; and infrastructure (separate wash spaces for students and kitchen staff for example), it is a great space to relax, breathe and catch up.
When the EDU team visited the cam¬pus, what popped out right away were the clean lines that defined the structure. The café sits snug, right next to the arts gallery, and compliments it perfectly— installation art, eccentric and quirky at best, adds to the space’s charm.
Inside, it is clean, spacious and roomy, with fixed tables and stools made of sturdiest stones and wood, arranged in rows on opposite sides of the long space. The table tops have been kept large enough to accommodate exercise cop¬ies, books, laptops and, who knows, an occasional student?
There are several very important points that one should keep in mind when designing the cafeteria.
Location & accessibility: The cafeteria should be well-accessible from all parts of the university. Students will not want to be running from one end of a campus to another for one samosa.
Lighting: Natural lighting is always best. Not only does it save on electricity, it makes the cafeteria a brighter and more appealing space.
Infrastructure: This is an important and often over-looked part of cafeteria design. Chairs should be movable and not fixed, in order to pre-empt the hordes of students that often like to sit together. Booths are another option; however there should never be too many as they crowd up a room along with the fact that they are slightly more difficult to clean and maintain. For universities that serve both vegetarian as well as non-vegetarian food, the counters should not only be separate, but ideally, in separate corners.
Case In Point—Castro
A canteen no longer has to be either utilitarian or luxurious—it can be both.
Take the Castro Café of Jamia Millia Islamia for instance. Here is a canteen (or fancily-called, café) that has been re-designed to suit both aesthetic and utilitarian needs.
The café’s architect, Martand Khosla, of the Romy Khosla Design Studios, explains, “We were lucky that a Vice Chancellor (Najeeb Jung) with a broader vision asked us to re-think the whole concept for a student’s cafeteria, because the existing one they had was an awful space.”
Indeed, from that “awful space”, Jamia has come a long way. It’s now an example of what can be done “right”—with adequate lighting (natural and artificial); enough space to sit students, teachers and visitors; and infrastructure (separate wash spaces for students and kitchen staff for example), it is a great space to relax, breathe and catch up.
When the EDU team visited the campus, what popped out right away were the clean lines that defined the structure. The café sits snug, right next to the arts gallery, and compliments it perfectly— installation art, eccentric and quirky at best, adds to the space’s charm.
Inside, it is clean, spacious and roomy, with fixed tables and stools made of sturdiest stones and wood, arranged in rows on opposite sides of the long space. The table tops have been kept large enough to accommodate exercise copies, books, laptops and, who knows, an occasional student?
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