Education Design Philosophy - A Case Study

Designing for school environments is constantly changing to keep up with the rapid pace of change in our kids’ lives. Many jobs that currently exist, that we were trained for in school, won’t exist by the time the current generation of school kids graduates, and lots of the jobs they will have don’t currently exist.

So, the spaces we design need to be super-flexible and adaptable so they can change with the students and teachers (learning facilitators) and be easily reconfigured to new ways of learning.

However, a ‘flexible’ space doesn’t mean all walls are removable or every space has to be able to facilitate every function, but it does mean that in each learning ‘hub’ there are many different spaces (some specific like a wet or making zone, and some generic like a learning commons or a general learning area).

It also means we need new furniture and acoustic devices to cater for project-based learning from individual or one-on-one tasks, to collaborative/shared learning, small group learning, team-teacher facilitated tasks and large group presentations or discussions. 

A great example of this philosophy is a recent renovation of an old-fashioned science lab which was converted into a STEM area (by Greenway Architects).

The single-room lab was dark and closed-in, with all benches facing the demonstration bench, with separate store rooms with no connection to the rest of the school, and was really only suitable for teaching a limited number of subjects (i.e physics).

The new design allows for true Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics learning by providing an extremely flexible floor plan, using a variety of loose furniture types, and linking the main space with a new break-out ‘Inventing’ space in the former corridor, a new ‘Think Tank’ for small group work, all with great line-of-sight for supervision.

In the 21st century design the specialist chemical-resistant island benches are kept to the sides of the main room to allow for multiple configurations of the mobile workbenches to be setup, to cater for student directed project-based learning. This is supported by engaging display spaces for in-construction and complete projects.

Teaching for the twenty first century?