Education and arts customer stories.
With its Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow College of Health Professions facility, Central Michigan University intended to bring state-of-the-art science education to the center of the state.
The 28,000-student public university drew from lessons in healthcare and applied Steelcase knowledge of workplace and learning environments to create a facility that helped CMU earn national recognition for setting "a new benchmark for modern science teaching."
When Cincinnati's Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art decided to leave its location above a downtown retail store and build a home of its own, it moved with a single objective: engage and introduce people to new forms of artistic expression.
The endeavor also allowed Steelcase to introduce itself, and its ability to integrate architecture, technology and furniture as part of a seamless whole. Starting with the vision of lead architect Zaha Hadid, KZF Design director Michael P. Kelley noted that even a museum requires furniture in its office spaces that, he says, "are every bit as integral to this vision as the gallery spaces themselves."
The Klaus Advanced Computing Building brought together faculty, students and staff from three different buildings and two different colleges at the university.
"A major objective was to set a benchmark for collaboration across disciplines," says Gary McNay, architect at Perkins + Will, Atlanta. To support faculty interaction and collaboration, the new building blends a variety of workspaces.
Hobart and William Smith Colleges saw an opportunity in a small space in the 120-year-old Demarest Hall. The space was available, and no one else wanted to use it. The solution? The space would be developed into a new learning center where every person on campus could learn how to use the colleges’ new enterprise software system.
Technology, however, was not the driver for the classroom. “Our focus was people, not technology,” says Holly Morris-Kuentz, director of instructional and research technology. “It’s a hands-on learning environment where the technology is an enabler.”
Mount Royal College of Calgary, Canada, wanted to test the idea that a workplace layout should not be governed by job titles. Throughout the 90s, the college's International Education (IE) department had grown rapidly, with people squeezed into every space available-in different buildings, even different campuses.
Northern Arizona University's College of Business wanted to differentiate itself from other business schools "by creating a sense of community between faculty, staff and students," says Dean Mason Gerety." Administrators hoped that the new facility, carefully planned, would help the college compete for the nation's best and brightest business students, faculty and staff.
The university looked to Steelcase, IDEO (a Steelcase partner and worldwide leader in innovation and design) and Carter Burgess Architects for help. The team's discoveries were alarming: students avoided the existing building whenever possible and, as Gerety explains, "Staff was pigeonholed in corners and down narrow hallways." People never saw one another.
Innovation often starts when people challenge convention. People wonder: why do I have to lug this heavy bag around the airline terminal? and luggage makers put wheels on suitcases. Managers watch a wrecking crew disrupt their office and ask: isn’t there a better way to renovate the workplace? and designers respond with moveable walls.
At most schools, a fire drill interrupts learning. At Tarrant County College’s Fire Service Training Center, it’s how learning happens. An innovative facility has transformed firefighter teaching and learning at this fast-growing institution, part of the Tarrant County community college system in Forth Worth, Texas.
Founded in 1859, the 79-acre Missouri Botanical Garden is one of the country's first botanical institutions and a National Historic Landmark. To stand the test of time, the Garden has learned that its facilities must be flexible and durable-accommodating a crop of visitors of all ages, sizes and interests. This extended to the Garden's science lab, reading room, conference rooms and reception.
Working with St. Louis dealership Color Art, Steelcase created solutions that are as durable as they are beautiful. A 42-inch teacher's bench, independent of desk and storage for maximum versatility, is surrounded by a sea of svelte student seats. Two four-module student benches include double-sided islands with variable-height worksurfaces to accommodate both children and adults-flexibility that comes in handy when labs are made available to visiting plant scientists and researchers.
Bristol Enterprise Center (BEC) incubates technology-based businesses, providing mentoring and 14 office spaces to help them get established and become sustainable.
Nine startups, ranging from software to scientific companies, found it difficult to share meeting spaces. People would borrow the receptionist's paper schedule of room reservations, forgetting to return it. They would grab rooms on an impromptu basis, causing the person who made a reservation to scramble or bump them out if no other room was available. Calls to receptionist Lucy Bedford often turned into long, complicated discussions about the availability of a room.
The goal: design and build a new campus that supports the changing ways for students and staff to learn and work, set high standards of sustainability and aesthetics, accommodate 1,000 students plus faculty and staff – as a starting point – and then plan to support an enrollment of 25,000 students.
The Housing | Dining | Hospitality department (HDH) at the University of California, San Diego houses over 11,000 students, staff and faculty, so they’re quite adept at organizing the living and working arrangements of groups of people. But the workspace for the department’s own staff was another story – until recently. The solution was a new work environment with more open, collaborative workspaces.
Consistently ranked among top business schools in the nation, the University of Connecticut had aspirations to create an experiential learning environment for its graduate business studies, a place to consolidate several programs at one site, and an advanced learning facility unlike any other in the country: part college, part research lab, part working business.
Stanford University was preparing to add classrooms to a historic building and make it the home base for three research efforts: the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning, Stanford MediaX, and the Stanford Humanities Lab. For its array of intended purposes, the building needed to support Stanford's commitment to improving the educational process and using technology to facilitate learning.
Steelcase played a leading role in establishing the West Michigan Center for Arts & Technology (WMCAT), a nonprofit committed to realizing the community's full potential by inspiring at-risk students and training underemployed adults.
As colleges add more collaborative work and team projects to their curriculums, they often struggle to provide the kind of dedicated, high performance group spaces that students need to truly excel at group work. Western Michigan University (WMU) created a collaborative space that student teams give top marks. The college’s new Student Innovation & Design center (SIDC), the brainchild of Dr. Richard Hathaway, Ph.D., professor of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering at the University opened in February, 2009.