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Gen Z is quickly growing into the workplace. Those born in the mid 90s have witnessed more chaos in their formative years than their predecessors with 9/11, the Great Recession, many mass shootings and a pandemic all shaping their lives.

Gen Z has also been fully immersed in technology from birth – which is a first. For them, technology is simply an extension of daily life. As more of Gen Z continues to progress through our educational systems, their characteristics, desires and needs will strongly shape the university campus.

New Levels of Pragmatism

Gen Z is seen as more pragmatic in the approach they take to their careers. They see value in building a variety of skills and many of them have strong entrepreneurial spirits.

To adapt to this, many higher education institutions are being envisioned from the ground up as environments that blend flexible classroom learning with hands-on and virtual programs. The goal is to give them interconnected learning experiences that allow instructors and students maximal flexibility in guiding their education.

Laboratory classrooms can work with teaching spaces for hands-on experimentation taking place alongside traditional education. We’re also seeing public spaces such as large group study areas, small group focus rooms, informal gathering spaces and dining serve as connectors for all learning activities. Together, these elements shape a learning environment rich with the options that Gen Z is expected to value.

Culture MEANS MORE THAN Amenities

Gen Z’s practicality may signify the end of the competition for amenities. Generally, they care less about swimming pools and saunas and more about facilities, resources and services that contribute to their academic experience.

To cater to Gen Z, capital should be invested in alternative meeting and open lounge spaces with a selection of movable furnishings. These features can also extend outside with rooftops, plazas and other spaces that provide outdoor meeting and study options. These elements are sure to provide new students with the customizable study, collaboration and socializing spaces they need to thrive.

A New Perspective

This generation naturally sees spaces in more flexible ways. More so than in previous generations, they see renewed value in lounges and lobbies. For them, these are ideal spaces for club events and community gatherings. Spaces such as these regularly host a multiplicity of uses thanks to their easy reconfiguration. This adaptability, and the mobility of their furnishings, becomes more essential as schools emerge from the 2020 pandemic looking for ways to distance in everyday operations.

Socialization & Mental Health

For many reasons, Gen Z tends to have higher levels of anxiety and depression than previous generations. This is especially the case when entering college. Many of them desire more support in transitioning into college life. Universities are already developing and implementing systems of support for heath, wellness and psychological services for this very reason.

Architecture and design can help, too. A campus should invite students into light-filled, comfortable spaces centered on encouraging healthy behaviors. This includes spaces and aesthetic features that move beyond standard campus clinical facilities to support social, physical, psychological, personal and environmental wellness.

While growing up with technology can be seen as an incredible advantage, it doesn’t come without a cost. Social space is critical for a generation that is overtly absorbed by their screens. ‘Living room’ and outdoor spaces are growing in importance and cannot be overlooked.

Always Be Learning

Research into this new generation is evolving as more of Generation Z graduates from high school and college. Their mindset allows them to see adaptability in everything, and their new perspectives on life presents us with a full gamut of philosophies to move forward.

While Gen Z is often seen as one of the starkest generational shifts in modern history, designers are called, as always, to view this new generation clearly and without bias. In part, it is our job to bring out the best in them with beautiful and effective campus design.

In-person learning has returned, and school design has hit somewhat of a reset button—moving into the future with a clear purpose: making schools safer, healthier and more supportive. Previous years brought about changes that heavily influence the present—how classrooms are being designed and how students are learning.

Increasing material costs, inflation and labor shortages are also driving factors in the current approach. Schools and districts are left looking for ways to save without sacrificing what students and teachers so desperately need.

New designs are tapping into new themes: concern for bodily and psychological wellbeing, a greater connection with nature, improved flexibility and the ability to move about freely, and the implementation of rapidly evolving technology. This year’s trends aren’t just design-forward, they’re paying it forward—in higher efficiency, lower operating costs and value-added features that improve health, comfort and academic outcomes.

Getting Creative with Your Space

Open floor plans are the blank canvas for a multiplicity of learning methodologies. As class sizes fluctuate, classrooms need to adapt on-demand and recalibrate for higher capacity. Features such as interior partitions, mobile furniture and even sliding glass walls can give students the room they need to move around. They can also make it easy for teachers to reconfigure spaces to match the needs of the day.

Centralized Hubs for Education

As programming expands, modular builders are creating shared spaces that can multitask. Central hubs cluster classrooms around a multimodal space that can be used at different times by different groups for different types of learning.

Standard floorplans can be reconfigured for these new kinds of spaces. For example, two oversized classrooms might open to a shared central prep space, creating a fluid lecture/lab environment that accommodates individual learning, group projects and experiments.

Spacious Designs

Schools are retooling design to make spaces live large, adding height with tall, exposed-beam ceilings and widening hallways with bump-outs and alcoves. Regular features are being upsized. For example, a two-story design might include enclosed hallways with 10-foot ceilings, double-door entryways and wide exterior walkways. These design decisions are allowing students to navigate and interact with greater distancing and comfort.

Smarter Technology

We’ve all heard of Smart Homes, but what about Smart Schools? They are growing in popularity. As schools augment their technological infrastructure, old technology is being replaced by highly intelligent systems and features that create controlled environments for enhanced productivity. They are also making students and teachers feel more protected and secure. These technological trends include:

K12 Automation

This trend is all about automating classrooms to develop the ideal conditions for learning. Occupancy sensors can automatically adjust the thermostat based on the number of people in the room, and auto-dimming lights can respond to natural light. The result? More productivity and lower energy costs.

Touchless Tech

The desire for this sort of technology is huge. We are seeing touchable surfaces being removed in favor of sensor and voice-activated technology. High-frequency touchpoints such as faucets, toilets, light switches and thermostats will become hands-free as schools look to technology to mitigate disease transmission.

New technologies like hover detection will eliminate shared touch interfaces, allowing students and teachers to navigate interactive displays without contact.

Heightened Security Fueled by Real-Time Safety Technology

Safety is a massive concern for school districts everywhere. This concern is giving way to the integration of real-time security management capabilities into building designs. Technologies like electronic door locks, video surveillance and visitor management systems control access and accelerate emergency response, remotely and onsite.

Greater Connectivity

Modern classroom design is moving toward a redefinition of interconnectivity, by creating technologically advanced environments where students can problem-solve and innovate together wherever they are. To support the wide range of technology used by students, architects and designers are configuring schools to future-proof designs for this tech. This is taking the form of increased power access with outdoor Wi-Fi and outlets spaced for individual learning. These design decisions provide a much more robust connection to a school’s programs, data and resources.

Did these K12 design trends inspire you to improve your school? We can help you. Click here to learn more about CMBA’s approach to these K12 design trends and more!

The EPA estimates that the average person spends only seven percent of their time outdoors. Contrast this data with increasing levels of stress and lower levels energy and a narrative begins to emerge. Can offering better access to the great outdoors offset negative physical and mental health conditions? There have been countless studies suggesting that this is the case. Benefits can include more happiness and less anxiety – time outside in the sun and fresh air can positively impact mood and reduce anxiety. Spending time outside can also provide eye rest, improve health and even enhance memory.

In work environments, solutions that instill a deeper connection to nature are a priority for many design strategies. Companies are searching for ways to enable staff to have access to natural daylight, views of thoughtfully designed landscapes and fresh air. Businesses aren’t the only ones – building owners are also looking for a competitive edge by way of outdoor workspaces and amenities.

Features, Benefits and Types of Outdoor Spaces

Whether your exterior space is a two-story balcony, a rooftop office or an expansive courtyard, every successful outdoor workspace will contain features found in indoor office environments. Modern employees have become accustomed to working from a living room or home patio. This has made alternative workspaces a very real benefit.

Flexibility and variety are critical, and this begins with options for both collective and individualized exterior space, including multiple outdoor options, which can be a very attractive benefit that boosts productivity and employee morale. Power access and strong WiFi infrastructure are also essential considerations.

The most common type of outdoor space is the multi-tenant amenity terrace, which allows people from individualized office floors to access the outdoors for individual focus and meetings as well as other work- or social-related events. The functionality of these spaces has expanded to accommodate alternative work, connecting, meeting, conference, collaboration, event and dining venues. The challenge is to make an exterior amenity feel large enough and unified while being human scaled. This is best accomplished by supporting more intimately scaled areas around the periphery and along the terrace’s circulation patterns.

Accounting for Climate

Inhabitable, flexible exterior spaces are in demand for office clients. These amenities give your company the potential to improve users’ sense of wellbeing – a variable that can be otherwise challenging to influence. To make outdoor spaces appealing and ensure their comfort requires careful consideration of climate and building orientation.

Sun and wind studies are a great start, as they allow designers to ensure an exterior space is usable across seasons. Sun, wind and temperature are all fundamental measures. Based on the findings, consider including fire pits, fire bars and heaters to better facilitate year-round use.

For dealing with heat, plantings and shade trees can make a big difference. They can also improve your outdoor acoustics. Structures strategically placed for shade can shelter individual spaces and meeting areas. Coverings also allow your outdoor spaces to be usable in the rain.

The Not-So-Obvious Benefits

Besides the more obvious reasons you might incorporate outdoor workspaces in office design, there are also some compelling intangible benefits. Even when the weather prevents the use of outdoor spaces, users can still benefit from better views out to green terraces and gardens.

Our ability to seamlessly connect outdoor spaces with indoor spaces can make your outdoor features valuable year-round!

There are 2,000+ rural hospitals spread across the United States, and more than 20% of them are currently at risk of closure. According to research conducted by the University of North Carolina, 170 rural hospitals in 33 states have closed since 2005. Unfortunately, this trend is only continuing to accelerate.

Rural hospitals face a variety of challenges, including competing for highly sought-after talent graduating from medical schools, maintaining economies of scale, investing in capital and new technologies, and declining population in the areas that they serve. Recruitment is particularly challenging, as rural hospitals compete against the amenities major cities offer.

We understand rural hospitals are vital resources that serve as the primary safety net for almost one in six Americans or more than 52 million people. Of those people, according to Kaiser Health Network, nearly 11 million live in a county with no hospital.

Rural Facilities Matter

Some of the benefits of rural hospitals are rather obvious. However, it’s worth noting their importance. The most valuable driver of any rural health network is its ability to deliver quality care close to home. Strokes, heart attacks and car accidents, etc., can all be very time sensitive. Life or death may come down to a matter of minutes, and speediness can seriously impact the likelihood of survival.

Communities in rural areas might be located hours away from a hospital with specialized care, and this inability to get timely care results in many preventable deaths. Beyond these emergency situations, finite access to routine care for dealing with chronic conditions reduces the likelihood that patients will maintain their regimens for care.

Improving the Design of Your Rural Facility

Projects that require a large amount of capital can be daunting for smaller organizations. However, there are key components that can improve the success rate and impact of construction within a rural hospital. Strategies that can assist rural hospitals include the following:

Advancing Profitable Service Lines

One key component is to start with profitable service lines that add to the hospital’s revenue and can fund future upgrades. While surgery, imaging and cancer treatments are expensive construction projects to undertake, state-of-the-art facilities and technology can help recruit surgeons and clinicians to increase volumes. They may also draw patients to the hospital who might otherwise travel farther to a different facility for elective care.

Procedural Spaces

Procedure rooms can be connected with surgical suites to share resources and allow for flexible staffing. Sterile supplies can also be strategically located to support both the surgical and procedural spaces. In some cases, depending upon schedules and caseloads, the operating rooms may provide excess capacity for the procedure rooms.

Surgical Spaces

These spaces should be designed with as much flexibility as possible. Doing this ensures that they can be used for a wide variety of case types with minimal changes in equipment and supplies. Operative spaces have the opportunity to be designed in ways that provides flexibility back and forth throughout the day. This allows for a smaller footprint while supporting the same patient volume. A compact plan, with good visibility of patients improves the efficiency of your workflow.

Investing in Flexibility

Flexible design is an integral part of supporting rural healthcare. While many rural communities won’t need full-time specialists in cardiology or neurosciences, they will still need to have access to these services.

When designing for this sort of flexibility, appropriately sized exam rooms can serve family medicine and the needs of primary care, as well as rotating specialty services and remote needs. All exam rooms should be prepped to handle basic needs with specified supply carts and equipment located nearby that can be wheeled in for each specialty on different days. Remote health technology needs to be accessible – this includes computers and cameras that enable local caregivers and patients to connect directly to specialists anywhere in the world.

Great attention should also be given to the spaces of support in clinics as well. Consulting rooms are critical to providing adequate patient education. Group education areas can also offer classes to help patients deal with many health conditions.

Flexible working spaces can also provide a home base for rotating specialists and their support staff. Utilizing a two-sided model for your exam rooms can be highly effective in this scenario, because it provides private collaboration space for staff to coordinate without patients hearing them.

A Brighter Future for Rural Hospitals

Many rural hospitals are struggling, but the work they do is imperative. They are at times the sole providers of routine and critical care within multiple hours. They give care to millions of Americans in local communities across the nation. Rural hospitals truly are a necessary component of the US healthcare system.

Design strategies discussed in this article – and many more – can provide a path forward in a time of uncertainty. We see design as a chance to help rebuild rural healthcare facilities in America.

Interested in learning more about our approach to healthcare architecture and design? Click here.

Operators of senior living communities are increasingly motivated to promote resident health and wellness with better designs. This is due in large part to a growing body of evidence that the way communities are designed and built plays a key role in supporting this goal. As people are living longer, senior living communities should help them live better. With the right approach, it is possible to significantly increase the overall wellbeing of your residents through your design choices.

Designing for Activity

Keeping residents active is a high priority and a major contributor to feeling of wellbeing among residents. To help promote this with the design of your senior living community, offer easy access to inspiring outdoor spaces and fitness centers. Indoor and outdoor lap pools also offer a perfect all-around workout and are a very attractive benefit to many residents.

Incorporating Biophilic Design Principles

Biophilic design is a concept used in all types of buildings to increase occupant connectivity to the natural environment with direct nature, indirect nature and space and place conditions.

People are naturally drawn to nature. Biophilic Design strategies seek to act on this truth by offering more access to it, which can improve mental and physical health. This is more than simply putting plants in your lobby. Without a doubt the best biophilic strategy, if possible, is to provide residents with more access to outdoor spaces. Make the connection between your community and nature as seamless as possible. This provides residents with more fresh air and more sunlight, both of which contribute to increased wellbeing.

Cleanable Materials

It is vitally important to consider material choices for residents with weaker immune systems. Germs and serious illnesses grow on surfaces, and surfaces in senior living communities get touched a lot. For surfaces that get touched the most, choose cleanable materials to better support senior health and wellness.

Materials that make cleaning the easiest are antimicrobial fabrics and solid, nonporous surfaces. Choosing these materials makes it much easier for staff to keep your community clean.

Curious to learn more about CMBA’s approach to architecture and design? Click here to discover our approach.

With newly established workplace preferences and expectations, it’s time to rethink certain aspects of the workplace. Specifically, the different types of furniture used to support workers throughout the day.

Effectively catering to personal preference is more important now than it has ever been – people want to work where they want and how they want – and the burden falls heavily on architecture and design to facilitate those desires.

Bench-Style Seating

It’s time to replace old seating systems that put workers in linear stations. Instead, consider incorporating long, open bench-style workstations. These tables can be wired with plenty of power for everyone so that each user can define their space and easily gather for collaborative work.

Tables like these are a flexible workplace solution that will encourage unprompted meetings and increased teamwork. When considering bench-style working solutions, be sure to find ways to offer more secluded spaces for focused work if your space allows.

Using Furniture to Create Desirable Layouts

With less people going in to work, fewer dedicated workspaces with increased circulation can make the layout of your spaces more attractive to workers. Imagine the office as a series of sections, divided by open shelving modules, panels or mobile walls.

Moveable pieces such as these allow your workplace to become more agile, with segregated spaces that feel a bit more like rooms. This allows workers to experience an atmosphere that feels a bit more like home should they choose.

Meeting Room Furniture

Trying to collaborate with a blend of in-person and virtual meeting attendees leaves little room for debate: The long rectangular conference table is on its way out!

What will fill its place? We see many workplaces opting for theater seating with swiveling chairs. This move is making meeting rooms more agile and appropriate for interacting with people in-person and remotely.

Furniture is an Investment

Many furniture manufacturers have been quick to respond to changing worker sentiments with agile new products. We are seeing an influx of new carts, mobile tables, connectivity accessories and more, all of which are meant to support the needs of the modern worker.

There’s no better time than the present to upgrade your office experience! Investing in the right furniture for your space will serve the needs of both facilities managers and teams.

At CMBA, we see the critical importance of involving everyone in your K12 project. From students and faculty to school boards and even community members. This gives everyone a sense of connection to the project. When everyone is working together toward a shared vision, amazing things can happen!

The approach that we take to listening is special. We want to hear what everyone has to say. Giving everyone a platform gives them the same buy-in. This way, we are all on the same page working together on the same vision. At CMBA, everybody understands the uniqueness of the project and has a chance to be heard.

Building Relationships in Community Meetings

Every district is different. This is why truly listening is so important. Generic solutions won’t work for your district. We’re looking for specific problems and solutions for your school.

We make a real effort to put community meetings together. These meetings will often take the form of small groups and teams. This makes it possible for every voice in the community to be clearly heard. People will often come to these meetings with very valid concerns – whether those be cost related or relating to the future viability of the project. The community wants to make sure their concerns are being heard and CMBA makes sure that they are.

Involving the Community During Bond Promotion

Many schools rely on bonds to finance their projects, so communication is a vital process that cannot be overlooked. From the beginning, we work diligently to understand what the community desires out of the project. The community is paying for this project, and we want to know where they’re coming from. During the process, we seek to get a strong grasp on what success looks like to them.

The community has a stake in what students are learning in school, and we care to know how the project will affect and influence them. Everyone in the community will either be attending the school, sending a child to the school or know someone who goes to the school. In stark contrast to other types of projects we work on, a school is not a place where only a specialized group of people stand to benefit. A school is a community project in the truest sense.

Success starts and ends with your community. If we can use our knowledge and expertise to create a space that brings your community closer together, that’s when we know we’ve achieved real success with your K12 project. This definition of success is why deep community involvement is such a big part of the approach at CMBA Architects.

Universities are more than just places for education. They also exist to support students both socially and psychologically. Modern students place a value on campuses that are designed in a way that makes them feel at home. When architects design campuses with this front of mind, students can feel more connected to the university culture and look forward to going to class each day. This is where effective university campus design has the greatest impact.

The fierce competition in today’s work industry is pushing students to pursue an institution that will make them truly prepared for the future. The cornerstone of this process is the incubation space where students spend most of their time: the university campus.

Approaching University Campus Design

Many students, especially first-year students, live on campus full-time. When approaching university campus design, architects should be thinking about details that full-time, live-in students value.

This study proves this point by finding that the farther away students moved from their families for school, the more likely they were to drop out within the first year because they lacked a sense of community. When these important concerns are addressed, students not only feel happier, but they may even perform better academically.

The socially centered approach to campus design can also have a beneficial impact on students who live off campus or live at home and commute to class. When you provide spaces for your students to connect and engage with their peers outside of class, they’re more likely to stay on campus for longer periods of time.

Details That Matter Most

Architects have a greater impact on the college experience than many people realize. A quality university education depends on a mix of academic productivity and healthy social bonds. If a space isn’t functional, then students will struggle to get their work done, and their education will suffer as a result. The same goes for socialization on campus. If there aren’t enough comfortable areas for students to relax after class or spontaneously meet up, they may get burned out and struggle to make connections. To fully embrace their role in campus life and better support students in every aspect of campus life, architects should consider a variety of design opportunities for a school’s program types.

Putting Students First in Educational Spaces

Collegiate classrooms are often much bigger than what you’ll find in high schools. This can make newer students feel overwhelmed. Large spaces will often make students feel disconnected from their peers and may even be distracting for students who are used to focused, one-on-one instruction.

One potential solution to this problem is to create fewer large lecture halls and to build more intimate learning spaces, both formal and informal, that encourage engaged learning rather than passive listening. This is a practical way to put students first in campus design.

Our Responsibility

The information taught at universities has a powerful impact on the world, but this is only possible if students feel fully supported from day one. If your goal is to retain students in order to provide a comprehensive education, then students should never feel overwhelmed or isolated.

This is a primary reason many institutions are working with architectural firms that employ a student-first approach. It makes a difference when a firm sees the value in meeting with your students in-person to talk about their needs and wants.

When an architect gets the student perspective straight from the source, they gain an understanding of how the campus can better support them and make them feel at home. Modern campus design is more than the implementation of new technologies or flashy designs just for the sake of it. It’s about designing spaces that feel like home and putting students at ease. It’s about giving students an environment where they can succeed.

When a campus is thoughtfully designed in a way that supports the needs of students, the university will make a lasting impact on the student body.

While COVID-19 had an impact on most people’s lives, it arguably took the biggest toll on seniors. This fact has accelerated the search for new design models that provide safe and desirable senior living options. In addition, a very small percentage of those 65+ reside in a senior living community of any kind. The majority choose to live at home. These factors are causing new living communities to be increasingly directed toward concepts of resiliency and choice to expand market share. Let’s see how architecture and design is addressing these issues.

Addressing an Uncertain Future

The pandemic, which hit congregate living residents, has been a massive wake up call. This isn’t the first pandemic in history, and it won’t be the last. This unfortunate truth is expediting the move toward a more residential, small-scale type of living – the small house design model. This model seeks to group skilled nursing residents into households of 7-12 persons. Each household looks and functions much like a normal house, complete with a living room, dining room, kitchen and more.

Recent research into the small house model has shown that COVID transmission and death rates are significantly lower than in more traditional senior living environments. Residents also enjoy more comfort and choice throughout their day-to-day lives.

Improving Safety and Standard of Living

Nobody wants to decrease their standard of living. Many seniors, who are currently living in an apartment, cooperative or condominium, desire to continue living in a residence similar to what they’re used to. It is important to place more attention on making new and existing multifamily-style communities. This can be particularly helpful for those dealing with cognitive decline.

However, simply maintaining a certain standard of living isn’t necessarily ideal. We think a much better goal is to actually improve upon the standard. Examples of this can be seen in the increasing demand for luxurious senior living experiences. Luxury brands – mostly notably, the Ritz-Carlton – are capitalizing on this by developing senior living developments that combine high-end living with name-brand hotel services. These same concepts can be applied to your senior living community to provide an exceptional living experience.

Promoting an Active Lifestyle

Continue with themes of health and standard of living, senior communities with amenities that promote a healthy lifestyle – gyms, gardens, walking paths, etc. – are becoming more and more popular. Communities that manage to connect residents with the community at large by offering valuable access to the outdoors, recreation, and self-care, are by far the most attractive.

Are you interested in having a senior living community that provides unexpected levels of safety, and an unusually high standard of living? We can help with that! Click here to learn more about CMBA Architects.

The learning spaces of today are calling for new levels of versatility. There are times when a teacher needs to provide direct instruction to a whole class, while other times, students are having a class discussion, working together on projects, or working individually. A few highly effective concepts that enable this sort of versatility include learning zones, adaptable furnishings, and more.

Design concepts like these address the need for more flexible, dynamic learning spaces that can easily be changed and adapted.

Even before COVID-19 forced K-12 leaders to rethink the design of school spaces, versatility was an important design element for classrooms and other instructional environments. As life returns to normal, versatility is a critical design element that’s here to stay.

Versatility is Vital

The design of the learning space should facilitate each of these activities effectively, with minimal or no downtime in transitioning from one type of activity to another. By seamlessly supporting many different learning activities and modalities, versatile spaces help engage students more deeply in their education — and they ensure that teachers can meet a wide range of student needs and abilities.

Segregated Learning Zones

One very powerful way to increase versatility is through the addition of learning zones. These are separate spaces that support different kinds of educational activities. One learning space could have an area that allows students to study quietly with soft, comfortable seating – while another might be a dedicated space for creativity and collaboration with tables featuring built-in storage for supplies. It’s important to clearly define and limit the purpose of each zone to maximize its effectiveness. It is then possible for each zone to be equipped with the furniture and materials that are most appropriate for that particular kind of learning.

Choosing the Right Furniture

Not every learning space is big enough for separate learning zones. In these situations, educators can create flexible, multi-use spaces by simply making use of furniture with wheels. By making use of modular pieces that can be easily rearranged into different configurations, you can achieve much higher levels of versatility with relatively little effort.

This gives teachers the ability to have students congregate at front-facing tables for direct instruction or disperse with modular desks to facilitate a class discussion. Having movable, agile furniture makes this transition easier and more seamless.

Multi-Purpose Furnishings

Another part of versatility is having furniture that can serve multiple purposes simultaneously, with very few adjustments. Choosing furniture that can serve multiple purposes allows you to maximize your use of a learning space. One example of this would be mobile shelving. These can fill your storage needs while also serving as an attractive space divider.

Versatility is the Future

The big takeaway is that versatility is both important and practical. When designing a modern learning environment, remember to consider how you might incorporate learning zones and/or movable, agile furniture that can serve multiple purposes — and understand how various pieces of furniture can help you accomplish different types of learning goals most effectively.

However you go about achieving versatility, it’s critical to design flexible and easily adaptable spaces to different needs and uses. Starting with large, open spaces, and using portable dividers or other design elements to delineate these spaces, gives you the flexibility to create, adapt and reimagine learning spaces on the fly.