The Physical Design Lab

With the start of school, there were many questions regarding the progress with our physical design lab space. As you may recall from reading about our mini-conference, the decision was made to first cultivate a philosophy and vision for design thinking at Parker before investing heavily in materials and machinery for the design lab. We did, however, need to take some preliminary actions so that the space would be ready for that point in time when we would invest in equipment.

The Parker library at the Linda Vista (Middle and Upper School) Campus is a two-story building. Over the summer, the physical books and other library materials were all relocated upstairs, and a major updating on titles and culling took place. In the now vacant downstairs area, a new "collaborative space" was created. The main feature of the collaborative space is a new, beautiful, wired group table that features stone detailing and which matches other concrete work on the campus:

As you can also see from the photos, some new whiteboard topped round tables finished off the downstairs space. The result is that we have seating for 50-70 students between stools and chairs, and kids can group up to complete work, brainstorm, and create together. The first week of school featured some re-training of students. A new schedule that would allow for students to collaborate and study during the academic day was being rolled out, and as part of that rollout, we needed to orient students to the proper places for the activities they wished to do during their free periods. The upstairs of the library is now designated as a quiet individual study zone, while the downstairs is for group study and collaboration. A separate area in another building was designated as a "hangout zone" of sorts, where students could be more social if they chose to do so. We are still in the early stages of helping students end up in the spot that best suits their activity, but so far, so good.

As for the design lab itself, the room was being worked on right up until the opening day of school. Again, while there was no machinery put in place, the room was fitted out with glass walls facing out to the collaborative zone in our library, and shiny new whiteboard tables and roll-bottom chairs were put in place. Teachers who used the space during the first week reported back that they liked the space, and we have some suggestions on things to adjust as we move forward. Here's what the design lab looks like in its infancy:

We will continue to monitor and adjust for this space, and we hope that some of the new design thinking courses going on in our middle school will inform the space greatly.








As for our Lower School campus, several classrooms are set up to be used as design thinking spaces from the get-go. We will be paying close attention to the teachers using those spaces to determine what our next steps will be in terms of outfitting the Lower School in its work with design thinking.