Sometimes they don't pay attention to how much time it takes to travel from one end of the building to the other. In shopping malls they certainly do: you definitely have to walk 1/2-kilometer to get to the nearest escalator in order to expose, you, the customer, to as many of the shops as possible. However my first attempt at university was very rushed and draining partly because the building were so far apart, and one in particular was like a maze of foyers, elevators and stairwells. I was consistently late for one of my math classes, and that's the truth. That wasn't the reason I flunked but it is something I remember disliking. The only positive effect it had was that very few students took smoking breaks since they didn't even have time to light up.