Learning Style
Experimental classroom, Haggerston Girl’s School, London
The furniture arrangement allows each individual pupil to learn at her own pace and where she feels comfortable. Colour works to visually divide the space but without fixing actual boundaries so everyone can learn from each other’s activities and choose how and where they conduct their own.
As a listed building, Haggerston’s main envelope cannot be altered. The Superstudio design emerges from a beautiful former dance studio where natural light, coming from all four points of the compass, lights up the existing space. The two pods located within the rectangular space take advantage from these given conditions and are designed to allow for day-light captured both through the glazed sliding folding doors and through the domes above.
The layout and positioning of the pods easily delineates certain spaces within the hall, where different speed of circulation and interaction can take place in different shaped spaces.
Though this distinction of learning styles is not new, re-inventing the space in which it happens and breaking down the barriers between subjects is. As an essential part of any design process, the Superstudio results from a dialogue between the architects and the final users, pupils and teachers through a series of activities where wishes and concerns gave shape and colour to a temporary classroom.
Comfort, adaptability, brightness and diversity are a few of the qualities that have been embodied in the design of the Superstudio.
Service: Architects
Location: Hackney, London
Client: Haggerston, London
Cost: £100k
Areas: xxm2
Dates: 2005
To Live In To Learn In To Work In To Play In