Hawken Brown Innovation Lab Design
About Hawken School
Hawken School is a private co-education school with multiple campus locations in Cleveland, Ohio. They provide education for students in pre-kindergarten to students in twelfth grade. Their mission is to "prepare students to navigate a complex and dynamic world with self-confidence and determination; embrace challenges with disciplined analysis and creativity; and engage others with empathy and integrity.” Hawken Brown wanted to encourage innovation and creativity in their students, so in 2017, they contacted studioTECHNE to help them develop their Innovation Lab.
Our Student Innovation Lab Design
One Monday, we were contacted by Hawken School to assist them in developing their student innovation lab design. “We would like to make a place of innovation where students will explore complex ill defined problems and engage in non-sequential iterative processes to solve essential questions”, a perfectly terrifying start to a day. Fortunately, our ten plus years of experience creating makerspaces (spaces that foster innovation, creativity and learning) have equipped us with the skills and knowledge to help our clients.
Our main goal in this makerspace and student innovation lab design was to allow students to develop skills in brainstorming, exploration, critical thinking, and collaboration. The opportunity for students to define a problem, organize a solution, develop prototypes, test, fail, and repeat this process are critical 21st century skills. These help students to develop resilience at a young age, which leads to true innovation.
“We would like to make a place of innovation where students would explore complex ill defined problems and engage in non-sequential iterative processes to solve essential questions”
Our Student Innovation Lab Design Process and the Result
The space our client chose to renovate was an underutilized 1930s era brick walled gymnasium. Our team first met with educators and students and sought to develop a set of design criteria and sketching exercises that would meet their needs and focused on designing a learning environment that would engage students and foster a culture of playful but rigorous problem solving (makerspaces). We collaborated and supported school leadership in the development of the project through open communication and understanding. We successfully developed inspirational drawings and images that reflected the school’s vision to their donors and the community.
To start our student innovation lab design plans, we created a prototype of a place where children could freely collaborate - a place for students to develop and present their ideas. The problem was, these needs were much more than the gymnasium’s size could support. The design team decided to utilize the height of the gym by adding a mezzanine (a second story with a low ceiling that replicated a balcony) to create a collaboration and ideation area that overlooked the fabrication and making equipment.
The completed Student Innovation Lab met the curriculum and educational goals of the school and students are utilizing the space by excitedly engaging in hands-on learning, exploration, and making. With this project and others, we successfully achieved techne.
