Project: Learning Space Design workshop series
Year: 2012
Client: Architects, Educators and Facilities Planners
Focus: Innovation, Capability
By: Emergent Form
The increasing importance of re-thinking the way we design spaces for learning becomes more obvious with each wave of new technology, the increasing pervasiveness of internet access and the need to accommodate the shifts in teaching styles and learning styles. The best way to take advantage of what is known and discovered in Western Australia and indeed the world, is to take advantage of the pilots and experiments and then applying the most appropriate to each unique situation.
The workshop held in November 2011 with Prof Stephen Heppell (#heppelltime) showed a demand for more information on this topic and that there was now an appetite to consider new approaches since most schools had completed rounds of maintenance and update building as a result of the Federal money injected post the GFC. Now was time to consider the next round of building in the context of these shifts. It was with this in mind that Emergent Form, together with Xcite Logic and EIW Architects came together with Prof Stephen Heppell to run a one day workshop at the University Club in Crawley.
Exploring the new cannot be done by schools and education institutions alone and so this workshop series involved architects, facilities planners, builders, furniture makers and educationalists. In fact, the tables for the main workshop were comprised of most of these groups – importantly with Students too. The aim here was to explore the best examples from around the world with Prof Heppell and then look at six WA examples as case studies to be discussed with a panel of experts. Added to this, the students were able to try combinations of furniture and record their thoughts on iPads to bring to the tables for discussion.
The keynote by Prof Heppell is below as is the case study session.
Keynote – Prof Stephen Heppell
WA Case Studies – Paul Houghton, Stephen Heppell, Alec O’Connell, Lara Mackintosh, various others…
Emergent Form 