03

Menu

Hugh Gatenby: The connected class

Folio

A look beyond the four walls of the classroom

Augmented reality can transform what students see in learning environments.
One class is hosted by another. When students look at the walls of their classroom, they see a projection as if they were looking through the corresponding wall of the other classroom.
Break out spaces allow groups smaller than a whole class to join a host school. This benefits learners with particular needs which cannot be catered for in every school.
Exploring the wider school experience in axonometric. The roof is activated; spaces between classrooms are enclosed; thresholds connect inside and outside.
The Hallsville Through School: classrooms and breakout spaces link as chains; negative space in between is for assembling, performing and dining; the school is embedded in a landscape bridging two neighbouring parks.
We look into a class, and see another somewhere else projected onto its walls. Everyone is learning from each other about the carbon cycle, with some helpful graphics appearing too.
In a free period, a few Hallsville sixth formers have connected with Beamish coal mine’s education department in County Durham. As they learn about its history, its landscape appears in Newham.
In the hall space between classrooms, some primary students are building their own medieval castle, and some of their friends a few hundred miles away have got involved as well.

Location
Hallsville School, Newham, London

Objective
A prototype school to encourage the integration of Collaborative Augmented Reality (AR) nationwide, and the formation of a network of classrooms to exchange the rich and varied perspectives of schools from across the country.

Motivation
Collaborative AR is currently being tested in business, but its capacity to allow people to see into another space as if it were a continuation of their own could have far-reaching impacts on educational space.

Strategy
By integrating AR, the architecture allows the school’s classroom walls to reveal the spaces of different classrooms from across the country. The walls are no longer the limits of the classroom, but its national reach. Rather than a four sided container box, classrooms will become faceted panoramas: each wall looking into a different school. Built with earth from site, the local identities celebrated through interaction are also celebrated in the architecture.

Impact
3D printing technology, detailed in the ITT submission, will allow a rapid construction of compatible classrooms across the UK, igniting a new national conversation.

 

Related articles