Exploring the notion of ‘Undefined Threshold’ through the design of a Knowledge Exchange centre based at Greens Windmill, Nottingham.
Under the current context of COVID-19, spatial reformatting is required in order to be accommodating, considering relevant aspects such as rationing enough space to ensure social distancing. This Pandemic has given us an opportunity to challenge the mythologies of learning. Rather than make minor adjustments, we should be pushed to manifest an Education Centre of the Future, using COVID-19 as a catalyst.
Through primary research, and my own subjective experience of Greens Windmill documented through sensory mapping, I attempted to harness on-site Biophilic features in order to create a multi-sensory driven learning environment - injecting the outside into the inside.
Supported and strongly influenced by my AiC3 Dissertation, exploring ‘Transgression and Transformation’, will allow me to identify and apply similar principles to my Architectural language, such as raised and sunken thresholds, as well as ensuring visual continuum, in order to fuel a fluid, dynamic space.
Scandinavian Forest Schools have been a driving influence on my project. Discovering a completely different approach to teaching inspired my narrative of learning through Visual, Auditory, Kinetic and tactile methods.
Further research into library’s inspired a hybrid typology - a ‘Forest Library’. A place which brings different people together to learn, with a communal feel amplified by the social benefits of the outdoors.
This atelier allowed me to explore what the true purpose of school is, the most beneficial way in which we should be taught, and the environment in which we should learn in from an early age.