I analyzed the Hill College House across three length scales. My goals were to limit my observations to things I could observe directly, and to make my analysis interesting.
10^2 meters: The 10^2 meter scale encompasses the entire college house. I estimate Hill to be about 100 meters long, 30 meters wide, and 20 meters tall. Hill is a rectangle; with rooms all around the perimeter and a large open space in the middle. There are two entrances on one end of the building (one on top of the other), and a fence extends around the building. Hill is shaped very similarly to a shoebox.
Hill’s structure is simple and utilitarian. It’s function is to, basically, store people, and its rectangular shape allows many uniform rooms to exist within it. Additionally, it’s rectangular shape and lack of height (it’s much longer than it is tall) gives it stability. The fence, and only one entrance/exit, improves security by making it harder to get into.
1 meter: The 1 meter scale is about the width of the corridors in Hill, and the rooms are about 2 meters by 3 meters, and 2 meters tall. The rooms are arranged on the perimeter of the building, so all the rooms have a window. I can compare this to a honeycomb; Hill makes use of all its surface area (except the roof) by having rooms that repeat without wasted space (due to their rectangular structure), just like the hexagonal honeycomb cells repeat without any wasted space.
The middle of Hill is composed of a dining hall and a large open space, 4 stories tall. This open space is aesthetic, and necessary for every room to have an outside window. I estimate that there are 300 rooms in Hill.
10^-2 meter: At this length scale, I wanted to analyze a structure more interesting than the bricks of the building. I decided to analyze the structures enabling information and electrical energy to be distributed throughout Hill College House.
I can’t observe most of these structures, because they are within the walls. However, I can observe the endpoints of these structures. Electrical energy reaches each of the rooms in electrical sockets; pairs of holes in the wall about 2 mm by 30 mm wide, in which two pronged plugs are plugged. Information is transmitted in a similar way; plugs in the walls of each room have sockets for telephone lines and wired internet, which can be plugged into telephones and computers, which allow the information to be displayed as sound and pictures. Additionally, Hill has wireless internet; with my laptop computer, I can access the same internet that the internet socket has, without cords. Wireless internet is transmitted from wireless routers; boxes with antennas that are in some rooms. These routers are in turn connected to wired internet.
I can make some assumptions about the structure of the information and power distribution structures in Hill. Because there aren’t 1000 (my estimate of the number of electrical, internet, and telephone sockets in Hill) wires coming into Hill, I can assume that telephone lines, internet, and power lines enter Hill with a small number of wires, and then branch out into all of the rooms. This is similar to the nerve network of human body, which also transmits information.
This structure is suited to one of Hill’s functions; the taking in information, synthesizing it, and then transmitting it again. For example, in BE we research online, write blogs, and then post them again online. This is enabled by the information network at Hill and the other college houses.
