SCHOOL’S OUT!

For their final project the postgraduates Space & Service Design of Thomas More tackled a big challenge. De Ark elementary school in Kessel-Lo is a very progressive school that wants to use new teaching methods, like teamteaching, project work, city safaris, etc to educate the next generation. Right now the spaces and services they use are not well adapted to this. How can the two meet?

 

Before diving in, the Postgraduates and the bachelor students Interior and Service Design worked together to conduct some research. Some students looked at the tangible context (lighting, accessibility, orientation, functions, etc.), others conducted interviews to find out what the needs and expectations are. Other students did literature studies about talent development, ‘the class as the third teacher’ or the working of community schools. After presenting it to the client, the students could start on their designs based on all the gathered information.

 

Over the course of several weeks, the students created some beautiful and useful designs. Some focused on the school itself, others came up with concepts that could work in multiple schools. Here you can read about the projects of our 7 postgraduates.

Louise Feyen – Interior Design

The talent cabinet is a design concept for co-teaching classes, developed for the Ark, an elementary school located in Kessel- Lo. The goal of the project is to create a supportive system and environment for pupils to explore their talents and competences in an individual and customized manner. The concept is based on the model of Kolb. This model focuses on a cycle of four separate learning methodologies (dreamer-thinker-decision maker-performer) based on the subjects’ internal cognitive processes. The co-teaching classroom exhibits four types of spaces. The pupils explore these different spaces throughout the day, where the change of environment leads to a new learning experience, adapted to the individual process of the pupil. Underneath is an illustration of a dreamer-pupil.

Armen Harutyunyan – Architecture

The concept of the project is built around De Ark’s vision of discovering and developing children’s talents. The idea is to construct a transportable, little stargazing station for children and to integrate an astronomy lab and activities in the existing STEAM with Star Safari (stargazing) events as a big part of it.

Marine Danielyan – Fashion Design

The Mr. Hat is a movable cultural platform with two main sides: shadow theatre and puppet theatre. The platform will travel around the city on a trailer attached to an electric bike. The main and very important goal of it is to spread love to culture and art among the children of the Ark and children of Leuven in general.

Céline Liekens – Product Development

The Talent Rove is a new way to explore children’s talents. It is based on the Talentenarchipel but gives the children some more freedom to not only work on given tasks within an island but combine competences and choose the path they are most comfortable with. This way a student can enhance their skill or learn a new one on their own terms.

Emma Verhas – Interior Design

Arkafé is a platform, organised by the pupils themselves, that wants to showcase the talents of the pupils once a month. Parents, neighbours, friends and family are invited to take a look at the talents of the pupils. The gym, entrance and STEAM are converted into an exposition space and the teacher’s room into a cosy bar. The pupils prepare a project together with a buddy, to showcase their talents during Arkafé. This way the pupils explore their own talents while discovering new ones. They can showcase it in the modular talent walls, on stage in the gym or on the projection screen in the STEAM. Every talent can be showcased during Arkafe.

Janao Denys – Product Design

Children nowadays go outside less and less. They study inside, they play inside and they don’t experience their environment as much anymore. The goal of this project was to get children to learn more from their environment; from the city, nature and the people around them. De Vloot is challenging the current learning and teaching methods by taking the pupils out of the classroom and bringing them outside. De Vloot is a network of physical hubs at interesting learning places in the city and in nature. At each hub there is something interesting to do, explore and learn. Teachers can use these places and the explore packages to get their pupils to go outside more and learn interesting things.

Pauline Verbeke – Product Development

Talent Quest is a game for kids ages 8 to 12 through which they discover and further develop their talents in their school and in the city. The game contains different, very diverse, themes. Within every theme, each group of pupils takes up a different role. The pupils work together towards one or multiple goals by using their talents and personal skill sets. The game is supported by a website, a template to give feedback on personal talent development and an interactive ‘talent wall’ to display results of the quest in school for teachers, parents and friends to see.

Check out this video to see what the website looks like!

 

This blog post was written by Paulien Verbeke and Emma Verhas.