Contract furnishings provider, Hightower received multiple awards at NeoCon 2021, including IIDA's 'Best Small Showroom' (under 4,000 sf) and 'Best of Competition' for its newly designed Chicago showroom.
Humanscale welcomes Elizabeth Margles to its Marketing Division in the role of Chief Marketing Officer. Margles comes to Humanscale with twenty years of experience in design, fashion and retail and a background in public relations and advertising.
The exclusive relationship with Kontrol's BioCloud® Technology will provide real-time detection of airborne pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 to help make workplaces safer as organizations return to the office.
Fortunately there is now a growing understanding of how buildings shape learning, for good and ill. Studies have found that lousy test results are associated with classrooms that are noisy, hot, poorly ventilated and full of artificial light. As a result, there has been a new focus on good, imaginative design for schools.
The only thing constant is change. There is no exception to this rule when it comes to higher education. Technology, curriculum, student demographics, student expectations, campus policies and procedures — all of these are constantly evolving to respond to the challenges and needs of the time.
Not every student learns the same way. So let’s make classroom environments flexible and purposeful.
The physical space is a deeply impactful tool for fostering connections between students, teachers, and the larger world of learning. A space that encourages movement accelerates learning and inspires passion in students.
Colleges and universities face escalating challenges to recruit and retain students, as well as meet the progressively sophisticated sensibilities of administrators, faculty, and staff. As the workplace of the future continues to change, we are experiencing a shift in priorities that shines more focus on the personal and workplace needs of collegiate faculty.
Last year, we ran a blog series on Reimagining Learning in which our team defined six learning behaviors—acquire, experience, collaborate, reflect, master, and convey—and identified how physical space can support them. As companies are increasingly looking for people who can do things like communicate clearly, solve complex challenges, lead teams and define strategic direction, a growing number of learners are turning to any resource where they can learn these skills quickly, effectively and in sync with their busy lives. Thus far these skills have been taught in-person, but today many online resources are successfully teaching them in an entirely digital environment.
As an example, Northwestern University is running a course series called Organizational Leadership via Coursera that equips leaders to “lead in an ever-changing business environment.” The curriculum centers on developing skills that are not only critical for leaders at all levels of organizations but for any professional growing in his or her career – skills like storytelling, communicating, vision definition, conflict resolution, persuasion, design thinking, ideation and team management.
Via gensleron.com
The traditional structures of work and education were forged in the fires of the Industrial Revolution. They shared many characteristics. They were rigid, hierarchical and based on a patriarchal approach to achieving their aims. In education, this manifested itself in the traditional didactic form that was, until recently, seen as the ideal model, based on teachers, tutors and lecturers imparting knowledge and learning to their pupils and students as part of an agreed curriculum and to an approved timetable. How well this process turned out was checked with periodic testing. For some time now, people have been questioning this structure and, with it, the design of learning environments. Over the past few decades, we have not only developed the technologies to allow us to learn in new ways, we have also developed a far better understanding of the processes involved.
The U.S. workforce has undergone a significant shift in recent years. People change jobs roughly every 4.2 years, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s predicted that 43 percent of the U.S. workforce will be freelancers by 2020.
Today, we’re watching an American economy prepare for a liquid workforce, creating “highly adaptable and change-ready enterprise environments” where qualities such as ‘ability to quickly learn’ or ‘shift gears’ rank higher with prospective employees than ‘deep expertise for the specialized task at hand.’ To prepare our young people for this significant shift, in recent years innovators in education have been responding.
The consensus of the students in Mallory Warrick's second grade class in Hewitt, Texas is that they love the furniture. They won't get to keep it all semester, but during the next six or seven weeks students at Sun Valley Elementary School will enjoy it and be part of a research project.
The Student Engagement Research Project is a collaborative effort between the Midway Independent School District, the BRIC, Region 12 Education Service Center, and Huckabee, a design firm.
The colorful chairs, a mix of red and blue, and orange stools or stackable pillows are part of a study looking into how flexibility can affect student learning and engagement.
Researchers expect this furniture, which is designed to wiggle and be adjusted, may help students stay focused.
"There's a lot of variables in a classroom environment that have an impact on a child's learning and engagement,” Baylor Assistant Vice Provost for Research Todd A. Buchs said.
“It can be the lighting. It can be the furniture. It can be the noise level. It can be so many different things and it's different for every child,” he said.
San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) noticed a problem in their schools; students weren’t eating their lunches. San Francisco Public School officials conducted a survey and realized that 57% of SFUSD students who had been approved for reduced-price or free meals actually consumed them. After that realization, the district started serving fresher, non-frozen meals in hopes that the students would take advantage of school meals. With little to no luck and an extremely generous donation from the Sara and Evan Williams foundation, SFUSD sought out IDEO, the global design company, to help them with a game plan.
Julie Marshall has taught a lot of students. More than 3,400 students have passed through her classrooms in her more than 30 years of teaching. She thought she had seen it all. Until this past year.
“I have worked hard to engage students for more than three decades. It wasn’t until this year, that I saw the change I’ve been hoping for,” said Marshall of Saluda Trail Middle School in Rock Hill, South Carolina. The big difference is the classroom itself.
Marshall currently teaches seventh grade at Saluda Trail, in a community where the majority of students come from families living at or below the poverty level. In 2015, the school was one of 12 recipients of the Steelcase Education inaugural Active Learning Center Grant bringing flexible mobile furniture, new technology and interactive learning tools to Marshall’s students.
Following the classroom redesign, Marshall’s 2015-16 seventh grade students completed assignments 98 percent of the time – up from her previous year’s class who had a 52 percent completion rate.
As the world becomes smaller with the globalization of ideas, trends, and style, the divide between traditionally institutional interiors and the corporate workplace is shrinking. Today’s students no longer accept the facilities their parents once considered acceptable. Similarly, the office worker’s Dilbert-like cubicle is a thing of days gone by. Today’s learning, social, and creative environments are about mobility, choice, and comfort. These environments have less, but more efficient, personal space with more shared and amenity space.
David Hatton, AIA, NCARB, takes the helm of CannonDesign’s firmwide education practice. A recognized thought leader and speaker within the market, David takes over a well-respected and growing area within the firm.
“David’s perspective and approach will support the education team in further exploring what’s looming within the market,” says CEO Brad Lukanic, and the firm’s former education leader. “I’m excited to witness how he will further advance our collective education resources and the resulting design solutions.”
David comes to CannonDesign as a partner from VSBA LLC (Venturi Scott Brown Associates), where he specialized in higher education, healthcare and museums, while leading business development initiatives. He’s also held senior leadership roles at Stantec and Burt Hill.
“I’m intrigued and passionate about the educational evolution and our ability to create environments that enhance learning opportunities,” says David. “The convergence of technology, pedagogy and design is currently in an exciting transformational state. The concept of “learning is everywhere” allows CannonDesign to exploit our services not only in education, but also in healthcare, workplace and other institutional markets.”
Kewaunee Scientific Corporation (KEQU) Tuesday announced that it has been awarded the Laboratory Casework contract for the City University of New York (CUNY), NYCCT New Academic Building, located in Brooklyn, New York. The total contract value is approximately $8.4 million. The scope of work includes wood laboratory casework, dental casework and equipment, fume hoods, and miscellaneous laboratory equipment. The general contractor is Sciame Construction Co., Inc., of New York City.
"We are pleased to be awarded this important project for CUNY," said David M. Rausch, Kewaunee Scientific's President and Chief Executive Officer. "This continues our commitment to our nation's top universities, and New York City in particular, where we are just finishing up Columbia University's Jerome L. Greene Science Center on their new Manhattanville campus. This award demonstrates the confidence that our customers have in Kewaunee's ability to deliver large complex state-of-the-art laboratories around the world."
We in the educational design community have an obligation to help teachers and students take advantage of those hours -- by activating learning environments that engage students on a human centered level and that grant them permission to learn in the manner that fits them best, where the 10,000 hours they need to master something fly by.
Haworth white papers: higher education institutes around the world are undergoing radical change as they swap old-fashioned lecture rooms for flexible learning spaces, according to an expert in educational environments.
A global shift towards large, open-plan "learning studios" is transforming universities and colleges as they adapt existing buildings and build new ones.
The trend is forcing many institutes to look beyond their traditional city-centre locations to more suburban locations where there is more space to provide these more land-hungry facilities.
"It's a quiet revolution," said Andrew Harrison of Spaces That Work, a consultancy that specialises in learning environments, pointing out that the change is part of the same shift that has seen the workplace transformed by the rise of flexible shared workspaces.
"Education on every level is moving from passive learning with a speaker at the front and everyone just listening, to much more active learning where people are more engaged in the processes of learning."
There is a video for everything… workout routines, recipe tutorials, DIY projects and baby’s first steps. We connect and relate to visual experiences. And soon, there will be a virtual, augmented, gamified, and even a technology-embedded experience for everything. These experiences not only trickle into our personal lives but are becoming pervasive in business and more importantly, education.
Preview: KI's newest furniture solution for education environments, Ruckus changes paradigms that directly impact the way students and teachers learn, share and relate to one another. As a comprehensive solution, Ruckus increases interaction, engagement, movement and scalability – while augmenting the learning experience.
DLR Group’s recent Applied Learning Virtual Symposium provided great insight into the current state of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. It seems only fitting to expand upon that discussion and explore how our K-12 clients can begin incorporating STEM spaces into their existing buildings.
Education in the U.S. has steadily been shifting towards a concentration on STEM. Many of the districts we’re fortunate to work with see the value of these disciplines, but also find themselves faced with the unique challenge of finding or creating the right spaces for this type of education within existing buildings.
Today’s universities recognize that much of a student’s education happens outside the classroom. When students interact, exchange ideas and collaborate across disciplines with each other and with faculty, they become more creative and entrepreneurial.
This type of engagement requires flexible, collaborative, often informal spaces; however, traditional academic programming often doesn’t account for this style of learning. Efficiency — that is, the amount of space dedicated to academic programs like classrooms and faculty offices, excluding support spaces like corridors, stairwells and mechanical rooms — still drives many design decisions. Yet productive exchanges often occur in unprogrammed spaces like stairwells and hallways, where casual interactions naturally occur.
What we need is a different method of academic space planning. Not through expanding “inefficient” space — because few institutions can afford to spend money on spaces they can’t justify — but through a new way of programming for collaborative learning.
School interiors have the ability to inspire and enable student learning. Studies have proven that the physical environment affects a student’s capacity to learn. Similarly, we know that color alone in an interior setting can influence our mood and even productivity. There is no doubt that colors inspire students’ imaginations and creativity levels, from elementary children to young adults in college.
moreThis premise alone explains why these colorful learning spaces intrigue our imagination. We’re amazed by the many ways our vibrant Color Field collection is enlivening a range of learning environments across North America.
