Furniture Design Ideas

The thrust of school design in the recent decades has been the maximization of the archaic educational philosophy of ‘Sage on the Stage’ and the exclusive use of the architectural mentality that ‘Form follows Function’. This thrust is well intended, and these ideas worked in the past. However, the relevance of education has shifted and […]

Like the twentieth century, the twenty-first century school building design is also driven by two primary philosophies of education and architecture. However, these philosophies have changed from those of the last hundred years. These shifts in philosophies are appropriate because they reflect the new primary context of today’s civilization, culture and ecology. From the educationist’s […]

There are limited resources in society, so the objective of an efficient education (a quantity measure) is certainly valid. But that by itself falls short of the goal of a good education. This education also needs to be effective, which is a quality measure. Certainly the design of learning environments should be responsive to supporting […]

To do this we must abandon practically everything we know about today’s school facilities. Twentieth – century school building design has been driven by two primary philosophies. First, the core­building block of the educationist’s philosophy is reflected in the classroom: one teacher who has the knowledge ready to disseminate to a group of learners. This […]

Imagine expanding the possibilities for learning. Having more places where learners are engaged, enthusiastic, and motivated. These characteristics are often found in kindergarten, yet they disappear in the later grades. Our current approach to learning compared to what learning is possible, parallels the relationship of the narrow band of visible light to the rest of […]

Bruce A Jilk Editor’s introduction Mass education originally mirrored society’s view that its main role was to control and discipline children in order to create pliant citizens who would fit into the new industrialized world; in short, education was to create factory fodder for mass production. Arguably, the physical form of most school buildings has […]

Having described the principles of agility, flexibility, and proprioception, and explained the importance of multi-functional activities, colour variation, and moving parts, I finally wish to illustrate one of the best pieces of play equipment with which I have been involved, the Supernova. Here, Claus Isaksen of the design team succeeded in integrating some of the […]

Three principles that were significant during the design of the Minkar were agility, flexibility and proprioception. These three are built into Minkar and take discreet effect, stimulating and supporting the child’s natural urge towards self-development. It is important to note that the children are not consciously setting out to train their sense of agility, flexibility, […]

With the key factors of safety, engineering, production, and accessibility in place, the emphasis for the development of Minkar could again be placed on design and play value and in order to go into more depth here, I will first touch on two areas of inspiration that are important to me. Since my time as […]

As the design development process continued, the Meteor Shower was linked to other newly designed activities forming the Minkar Constellation. The concept of linking one ground level accessible play to another, in a series, was an innovation in playground design. The design team called this solution a ‘Ground Level Composite Play Structure’ and at the […]