Learning Spaces: Testing the Boundaries

Learning happens in all kinds of places. That’s the opinion of participants at a recent gathering of the Learning Spaces Special Interest Group hosted by the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning Through Design (CETLD). The CETLD is a partnership of highly pedigreed universities and museums, as well as the Royal Institute of British Architects, that aims to explore how design impacts and enhances learning.

The examples of good learning spaces submitted by the seminar’s participants held some surprises: a garden in Devon; Britain’s National Art Library; and…Herman Miller’s National Design Centre in London, which students described as a “multi-functional modular open space…flexible, adaptable, ‘aspirational,’ interesting use of partitions.”

Herman Miller, of course, has researched how design affects learning for years and has contributed to a roster of educational environments that push the design-and-learning envelop. The Crosland Library at Georgia Tech, for example, or Columbia College in Chicago.

The CETLD might also like Herman Miller’s Los Angeles showroom, for that matter.