6.3 Well Laid Out Teaching Plaza

The teaching plaza illustrated above moves away from the conventional Victorian classroom layout. The result is a colourful, personal space, providing a wide range of education zones and resources for teachers and pupils. This space has many advantages over a standard classroom, resulting in an improved educational experience.

The design goal for this plaza was to accommodate 60-90 pupils, providing all aspects of teaching, focussing on both individual and group learning. The completed plaza provides a wide range of teaching spaces.

1 - Small group work tables have been dotted throughout the plaza. The carefully considered distance between desks helps reduce disruptive, unnecessary communication between group tables, resulting in reduced noise levels within this space.

2 – More private, cluster spaces have been added by stepping out the facade. These spaces are acoustically and visually screened from the main teaching area, thereby creating a more private learning area.

3 - One of these spaces contains a glass screen to further increase privacy, making it ideal for one-on-one work or nosier group activities.

4 - Desks have been placed adjacent to the facade. The desks provide individual learning stations with the benefit of restricted visibility to the remainder of the plaza. Students using these desks should enjoy improved concentration due to a reduced amount of distraction.

5 - A divider/screen added along the length of these tables helps to further reduce noise levels, by restricting the line of sight along the length of the work stations.

6 - A large central group table has been added with students all facing inwards. This minimises shouting and improves visual communication between students.

7 - To enhance speech intelligibility for dictatorial teaching, banana-like tiered seating has been used. Here, students and teacher sit extremely close to each other, improving speech intelligibility and reducing the need for the teacher to raise his/her voice. Three dictatorial spaces have been provided, one at each end of the plaza and one in the corner behind an acoustically screened space. These spaces have the advantage of being somewhat acoustically separated due to their location.

8 - Acoustic screens have been added in many inventive forms to these spaces such as the banana seating itself, glazed screens, bookshelves and other arrangements.

9 - Enclosed spaces have been provided for activities involving higher noise levels.

10 - The increased wall space created by the stepping out the facade, acoustic screens and other factors all assist in optimising the acoustic treatments to this space.