Reimagining workspaces is helping organisations create environments that contribute to high employee productivity and enhanced job satisfaction. A similar focus on educational spaces is encouraging academic institutions to collaborate with designers to optimise spaces that help students achieve superior outcomes.
When designing for the university sector, the emphasis is on providing a cohesive environment with spaces for collaboration, creativity and solitude. When students, staff and faculty have to spend long periods of time on campus, they need comfortable, functional and adaptable furniture for a variety of situations. An uncomfortable chair, for instance, can be mentally distracting and physically damaging, while heavy furniture may impede flexible and spontaneous collaboration.
Ke-Zu collaborated with Zenith Interiors on the recent upgrade of lecture halls and study areas at Monash University, providing seating and desks for more than 2,000 students. The design brief sought a comfortable, adaptable, ergonomic and versatile solution that met the needs of the students as well as the university.
Axona AICHI’s Tipo chair offered a high-performance and sustainable solution, as well as value for money.
Axona AICHI’s Tipo chairs
The Tipo chair is lightweight, comfortable and stackable, and its portability makes it a functional and convenient choice for a variety of education environments. Being customisable, each chair was fitted with a writing tablet and integrated bag-store compartment for the Monash University project.
Axona AICHI’s X50 chairs
Axona AICHI’s revolutionary new X50 chair pushes comfort even further, with a flexible seat and back that adjusts to the user’s body pressure and allows for extremely compact stacking.
Puck by ENEA
Puck by ENEA is also a popular choice in social and collaborative spaces. The mobile soft-seating collection is practical and decorative while its simple, lightweight form with casters makes it a flexible, portable solution.
Andreu World Radial conference table
Advances in table design to support connectivity and interactivity create opportunities for collaboration and increased levels of enjoyment, which flows through to better output and outcomes for users. Highly versatile in design, the Andreu World Radial conference table is suitable for different environments and activities with multiple table heights and table-top shapes and sizes. The tables can be configured for tutorial rooms or classrooms, study centres, multi-use tables and individual or shared workstations. The table features integrated cable management system, providing power and access to internal or external networks, audio, video or data.
The Andreu World Reverse table
The Andreu World Reverse table is similarly versatile and adaptable for individual or group work and meetings. It can be configured in almost any size, shape and height, and is available with wire management.
The Andreu World Reverse table
Conclusion
Equipping education spaces with highly comfortable and functional furniture not only supports productivity and focus for studies and work, but also contributes to creating an environment that helps to attract and retain students, staff and faculty.
