From: cbenson@cs.strath.ac.uk (Calum F Benson CS90)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Room numbering (was: Floor numbering)
Date: 1 Oct 92 10:50:33 GMT
Organization: Comp. Sci. Dept., Strathclyde Univ., Glasgow, Scotland.

In article <1992Sep30.175054.18705@engage.pko.dec.com> moroney@ramblr.enet.dec.com writes:
>Regarding floor numbering, this is what you experience if you are in the
>building complex I work in (Digital "Mill" in Maynard, MA):
>
>You enter a building by its main entrance.  You are now on the 4th floor. You
>go down one flight of steps, now you are on the third flooor. You go through a
>bridge to another building.  You are now on the sixth floor.  From here you can
>go down to the third floor and go outside, or go to the second floor and go
>outside, or go to the first floor and go outside, all to ground level.
>
>In addition the whole place is built like a ratmaze, all visitors get lost
>quite easily.
>
>-Mike
 
	This sounds not unlike the Royal College building here at Strathclyde.
The main entrance hall admittedly has a couple of doors onto the 1st (not
ground) floor, these are obscured by a grandiose stone staircase which
sweeps you majestically up on to the second floor, no questions asked. (You do
have to move your feet, though, it's not an escalator). The 'other' main
entrance takes you in in the fourth floor, except that it's really the entrance
for another building which it's stuck onto, so if you're not careful you
can end up on the first floor of another building altogether at this point.
There is also a lift (elevator to you) at this juncture, which doesn't actually
tell you whether it has been numbered according to the Royal College building's
floors or that of the James Weir building, onto which it is glued at this point.
Since it is positioned next to the Royal College staircase you would think it
used Royal College floor numbers; sadly, this is not the case.
	 Oh, yes, and there's an entrance which takes you in at the
third floor, too.

	What makes the Royal College unique is its incredible layout. No two
floors are the same, for starters.  Staircases fly off in all directions,
and you'd swear there isn't a corresponding one on the floor above/below.
Rooms are cunningly hidden down murky side corridors, and doors which you
think have rooms turn out to have more corridors behind them. Then there is the
superb numbering system. Each room number is of the form Rf.nn, where f is the
floor number and nn the room number. But naturally, placing rooms with 
contiguous numbers adjacent to each other would be far too easy, so all the
odd-numbered rooms go on the east side of the building and all the even ones
on the west! Are you supposed to take a compass in with you, or something?
Then, of course, there is at least one room which takes up two floors, so that
it has entrances on both the third and fourth floors.

	I would LOVE to see the architect's plans - assuming there were any.

+---------------------------------------------+---------------------------+
|"When John Major announced that devolution   |       CALUM BENSON	  |
| for Scotland would mean divorcing two great | 4TH YEAR COMPUTER SCIENCE |
| nations, Scots everywhere were left asking  | University of Strathclyde |
| which other great nation he meant."	      |    Glasgow, Scotland      |
+---------------------------------------------+---------------------------+
|	cbenson@uk.ac.strath.cs AND cadx609@uk.ac.strath.ccsun	  	  |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,alt.alien.visitors,talk.rumors