Columbia College is the country's largest and most diverse private arts and communications college. Located in downtown Chicago, with an enrollment of nearly 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students, Columbia is committed to providing a comprehensive and innovative education in the visual, performing, media, and communication arts.

From Columbia's peer institutions, Rickes Associates (RA) collected and compared information on 20 key data elements, including space per student, demographics, faculty office size, instructional space, and individual studio spaces. This information, in turn, was used to describe and quantify the College's future space needs and adjacency/affinity requirements.

RA also identified current and emerging national trends in campus center planning to help inform the decision-making process. This included the view of campus centers as learning centers, the "town square" concept, clustering of student organizations, and reflecting a sense of institutional history. The anticipated impact of "millennial students" was noted, including the potential influence on space needs and organization. (2005)