First and foremost, I’d ensure that the environment is more conducive to work and collaboration. This means fewer people or twice the space. In that space, we’d need many small, reservable rooms to facilitate deep work sessions for group work.
I’d like the space to feel much more like MAGNET—a place where quality, compelling work is created, rather than creative chaos. That’s a personal preference, but the environment often influences the style and finish of the work produced there. This would probably help also help improve the vibe of the floor so people aren’t constantly sending out nasty, patronizing emails about cleaning up after yourself and what it means to be adult (though the mess is super frustrating). An easy near term fix? Make the floor look less junky so people don’t treat it like junk, and hire a full-time cleaning staff.
I’d like furniture and the spaces to be more conducive to learning different subjects and working different ways. This means modularity. No bolted-down, massive tables or unweildy chairs. Everything small, and reconfigurable, and stackable, and on wheels.
Similarly, all flat surfaces should be white board materials (walls and tables) and have cleaner at the ready. This will both make the space feel cleaner (the black tables are always so gross!) and provide a prompt to student to constantly be thinking and connecting dots (something that often comes AFTER prototyping). Each room should be equipped with brainstorming materials like pens and post-its and flipcharts.
I think staging desks should be eliminated from the general workspace and the kitchen should be separated from the general workspace.
I also think there should be a display gallery, that is highly public (at the front of the floor) and highly curated. Each item would need a placard to force students to refine concept and subject matter, like real artists/designers must do.
I’d make staging space be a separate area, that doesn’t encroach on the general work space and create the “have” and “have-not” subtle dynamic. This would prevent 2nd-year students from boxing out the newer (and less grabby) students, who aren’t as aggressive or pre-emptive enough to book (or squat on) permanent (often unnecessary) staging space.
The main changes to my floor plan would be:
- Twice the space.
- A separate quiet room to work.
- A separate kitchen to eat and socialize in.
- A separate staging space to temporarily set up permanent shop.
- Rentable work rooms.
- And then a 2-section truly egalitarian space for people to work and collaborate in—one part for loud work like the shop, and one part for less equipment intensive work like coding and design.
- A curated public display gallery.
- All rooms with modular furniture.
- All rooms designed for brainstorming and concepting with white-board surfaces and cleaning supplies, geared toward brainstorming.
- All rooms clean and creativity-inducing.
- The floor structured from “quiet” to “loud” : gallery to quiet room to staging space to rentable rooms to normal workspace to kitchen to loud workspace.
not pictured: missing embankment for classrooms
A rough sketch of your ideas would add to this post.
What do you possibly lose implementing these ideas?
Some of the wacky aesthetic and controlled chaos of the floor would be lost—it has its charm, even if that comes at the expense of the work and the learning environment. Also, some of the flexibility of the floor would be lost for the big shakeups, like the show, but perhaps a small price to pay for year-round improvement. Other things might be like social experiments. A highly curated gallery at the front—does that improve the quality of work and profile of the program, or merely the competition? Modular everything—are these highly flexible spaces more conducive to individual or group work, or does it encourage seating cliques?