Space & Service Designers and Interior & Service Designers of Thomas More University of applied Sciences strengthen tomorrow’s city learning platforms. Their innovative, sustainable spaces and services stimulate encounter and collaborative learning.
A few months ago Maakleerplek Leuven stopped by. Maakleerplek is a workshop and meeting place, where people of Leuven (children, youngsters and adults) can share space, materials, ideas and knowledge. The MaakLeerPlek offers the physical and mental space to any learner in order to develop and influence their personal learning process.
Their challenge for the Postgraduate and Bachelor students were these: “We need a workshop and meeting place that is an open and easy accessible area that accommodates a program which goes beyond sectors, roles and structures and which starts from societal challenges.” They also had secondary challenges: the project needed to work towards sustainable, circular, temporary, adequate design solutions.
We translated their wants, needs and worries into the following design research question:
How can public services and touchpoints (space, objects, communication) support De MaakLeerPlek in becoming a place for encounter, experimenting, creating and learning?
We further divided this challenge into five research sub-questions, which were investigated by students research teams. These sub-questions then led to conclusions (via research for and of design) which determined the requirements list. Then we started working working working.
(please find out on our Facebookpage what it looked like)
The results:
What is great about the Space and Servic Design programme is that we get to realise projects ‘for real’. One of the projects is to be realised in th next year:
The furniture concept for De MaakLeerPlek from one of the Interior and Service Design teams (Sara Bormans, Charlotte Jalon and Lin Xiaoyang), called Cameleon was selected by the architects involved in the Maakleerplek project. One of the students will work on the execution of the project in the architecture firm Polo Architects in Antwerp.
Stay tuned! We will keep you posted.
Next to the selection of the Cameleon project, two design solutions of the Postgraduate Space & Service Design and one from the Bachelor in Interior & Service Design were selected to participate to the European Design Competition Cumulus Green Challenge for a New Circular Economy.
They were selected based on their concepts being circular and sustainable. You can take a look at their projects on the Cumulus Green website, by clicking on the pictures.
Space and service Design by Doriane Simon-Barboux, Liandra Sadzo, Yanou Krokos.