This lecture hall is one of many classrooms in the Ross School of Business. The classroom is W2740. The room is built for one-way interaction. What I mean by one-way interaction is that this room is not setup for collaboration. The teacher speaks to the students and the students are constantly hearing the teacher talk. The architect made the focal point of the room the podium/whiteboards and enhanced this element by using a semi-circular seating area around it.
The room has strong abstraction. The architect chose to keep the room as plain as possible in order to remove any sort of distraction that a student may find himself or herself looking at other than what's is right in front of them. Every color is solid. The chairs are black, carpet is purple, desk is brown, and ceiling is white. The room has no nature light, but is pretty well lit. This form supports the architect's overall goal of creating a room that is solely responsible for keep students engaged and focused.
The content of the room gives me mixed emotions. I enjoy the way the room is setup because it leads my eye to what is important: the teacher. However, the lack of natural sunlight, along with the planeness and hard materiality makes me feel a little claustrophobic and trapped. The room speaks to a lack of creativity, which in some ways makes sense because finance and accounting classes do not embody art and design. Overall, I chose this room because I think its utility is great, but its essence is lacking in many ways that I feel is important for learning.
The room is set up so that students are sitting across from each other with who we assume is the professor in between. The lighting seems to be fixed on the gallery rather that in the middle giving off the affect that this room may in fact be used for some sort of discussion or debate. The desks are designed in a way so that everyone can see everyone else in the room, this would make communication both formal and easy. The stadium like seating is able to keep a larger amount of people closer together for a more intimate discussion.
ReplyDeleteIt may be worth noting that the chairs are on wheels and thus can be moved to possibly create even smaller discussions within this classroom.