Creating Productive and Engaging Education Spaces
Our environment has a profound effect on us. It can impact everything from our level of concentration and productivity to our health and emotional welfare. Yet despite this, many schools aren’t designed in a way that maximises learning outcomes, fosters community, encourages play, and prioritises wellbeing.
Having a creative yet methodical approach to design, each education project should consider:
- Flexibility in structure, interior layout, and services to accommodate future changes to technology and function.
- Appropriate orientation to limit sun exposure, selectively control natural light, and capture breezes.
- Physical and visual connections to the outdoors to improve health and behaviour
- Optimal form and layout to encourage natural ventilation, light, shadow and their integrations at appropriate times.
- Right selection of building materials, openings, insulation, glazing and environmental sealing.
- Respectful use and reuse of water.
- Environmental technologies including solar panels, energy-efficient building services and management systems.
Schools audited to reduce energy and carbon footprint
Schools worked with
Students surveyed to determine best-practice learning environments
Designing Education
With over 30 years of experience in education, we have a proven track record of designing award-winning learning environments aligning with best practice teaching philosophies.
Working closely with teachers, staff and facility managers, we ensure our designs optimise learning, collaboration, prioritise flexibility and increase sustainability. It’s this experience and expertise that GB-A brings to every education project.
INNOVATIVE, ENGAGING STORYTELLING
Projects take on new life when placemaking and storytelling combine into built form. We seek opportunities with schools to create awe-inspiring, educational, and fun experiences through architecture that depict strong senses of place and identity for their communities.
UNLOCKING THE POWER OF PLAY
We understand the importance of play. All-consuming and fun, play only provides endless joy, but builds natural life skills in problem solving, risk taking, innovation, creativity, and independence.
It’s why we believe that everyone – regardless of ability – deserves the right to be adventurous, ignite their imagination, challenge themselves and experience blissful abandon. Shaping spaces for students to explore their world through play forms a key part of our education projects.
SPECIAL NEEDS
As designers, it is our fundamental responsibility to ensure our learning spaces projects cater to children more sensitive to social behaviours and stimulants.
As veterans in designing for special needs, including Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), we have a strong and awarded portfolio of thoughtfully designed projects that keep core needs of students at the forefront.
PROACTIVE ENGAGEMENT
We understand that communication is critical for the success of a project. It’s why we build strong relationships through proactive communication and regular structured consultation through all project stages.
We’re highly experienced at managing complex projects with multiple stakeholders and work collaboratively to ensure design outcomes meet user needs, whilst maintaining each project’s vision and objectives.
KEEPING TO BUDGET, WITHOUT COMPROMISING EXCITEMENT
We understand the importance of delivering projects both on time and budget. Our experience means that we are highly skilled at approaching cost and program constraints creatively, to ensure each project’s quality and wow-factors are not negatively impacted.
CONSIDERING ‘WHOLE OF LIFE’ COSTS
Learning environments are long-term assets. We understand that buildings and landscapes need to address ongoing costs for operation, maintenance, and versatility for changes in function and climate. Energy and water use, services infrastructure, efficiency, ease of maintenance, and durability of finishes are all factors discussed as part of the design process.
PRODUCTIVE OUTDOOR LEARNING
Research continues to prove that students are more engaged when learning outdoors. More and more schools are looking to create outdoor spaces that find new learning opportunities that extend beyond traditional classrooms.
Outdoor learning benefits include improving intrinsic motivation, increasing mood & creativity, and activating lateral thinking. These benefits are proven to improve student health, cognitive skills, problem solving and social behaviour.
Our highly experienced architecture, landscape architecture and interior design teams provide a wealth of ideas to help you find the best environmental solutions to suit your needs.
HEALTHY CLASSROOMS
There is a growing focus on healthy interiors, and for good reason too. With 90% of time typically spent inside, the quality of the air you breathe and environment you live, work, and play in is critical to our wellbeing.
We develop several healthy initiatives throughout our projects, including biophilic design, salutogenic design, noise reduction, considered materials, ergonomic design, natural lighting, ventilation, and ease of maintenance.
Sustainable ways we design
To create greener, better projects, we use a range of leading initiatives that reduce greenhouse emissions and support organisations in meeting carbon-neutral obligations - including being carbon neutral by 2030.
Reduce Embodied Carbon
We actively choose low-embodied carbon materials, like sustainably sourced timber and recycled steel, and design for durability and adaptability to reduce long-term environmental impact.
Prioritise Energy Efficiency and Passive Design
We implement passive design strategies by optimising building orientation, leveraging thermal mass, promoting natural ventilation, and employing high-quality insulation to significantly enhance energy efficiency.
Create Healthy Spaces
This includes biophilic design (connection with nature), salutogenic design (minimising stress), noise reduction, healthy material selection, ergonomic design, natural lighting and ventilation, and ease of maintenance.
Design Regenerative Landscapes
We aim to go beyond sustainability and focus on regenerative design principles designing to restore biodiversity and enhance ecosystems, contributing to climate resilience.
Use Minimal Resources with Maximum Impact
We actively design for resource efficiency, striving to deliver maximum functionality and aesthetic appeal with minimal material and waste.
Utilise Renewable Energy
We strive for a net-zero or net-positive energy building that generates more energy annually than it uses.
“Guymer Bailey seeks to deeply understand the needs, wants and drivers of their clients. They bring their own rich research and experience- based wisdom to their work but foremost they seek to know the client’s dreams. Instead of sharing their past work, they start with a desire to understand what the client stands for and how they can help us shape our future in ways perhaps we cannot even articulate.”
- Dr Margaret Lee, Brisbane Catholic Education
An Integrated Approach
We believe healthy learning spaces that are connected to nature are important to inspire our next generation to connect with the planet, respect it, and live sustainably.
INTEGRATED DESIGN
Driven by a deep love of design, our multi-disciplinary and collaborative approach of bringing together architecture, interiors and landscape architecture allows us to respond promptly and creatively to your requirements. We deliver innovative design concepts that result in functional, flexible, and timeless design solutions that seamlessly integrate from the inside out.
Have a project that needs design?
Find out how we can assist you with architecture, interiors, and landscape architecture to Generate Better design outcomes.
Contact us today on (07) 3870 9700 (Brisbane) or (03) 8547 5000 (Melbourne).