Spaces | Animal Sciences Lab

The University of Illinois retained Reifsteck Wakefield Fanning to provided architectural and interior design services for a flexible learning-style classroom renovation in the Animal Sciences Laboratory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus.

The existing room was set-up for lecture based teaching for 70 students. The goal of the renovation is to provide an active teaching space for 72 students with flexibility to allow multiple set-ups to facilitate teacher-led instruction, group collaboration, breakouts and large-group presentations.

Furniture concepts will allow flexibility in the learning studio environment and easily allow spaces to be set-up in various manners depending upon the instructional goal for the day. Tables will store vertically against walls or in near-by storage rooms. Multiple monitors will be installed for clustered seating arrangements with glass writing surfaces between.

Nine 65-inch and one 84-inch flat screen monitors line the classroom walls, allowing for viewing in a lecture style format or in individual groups per the instructor’s needs. A main projection screen has a mobile lectern with a touch screen monitor and the lectern control device has annotation capabilities allowing the instructor to mark-up images on the screen. Each smaller group unit has laptop and mobile device connection options. Those images may be broadcast to the entire class and transferred from one screen to the next.