Tradeline 2018

With a couple of colleagues, I attended this year's Tradeline conference with its focus on STEM and lab buildings to see if we can gather ideas for our next classroom building that will incorporate teaching lab spaces for a couple of different disciplines.

Clearly, lots of places are building lots of very interesting buildings right now, though sometimes the small tweaks may be the most interesting.  On the first day, we toured Tufts University's new teaching and research lab building, where a couple of features struck me as interesting.

cloth wall

1. walls made out of cloth outside of faculty offices so that notes can easily be pinned to them. 2. integration of art that connects to the science in the building

art in science

translucent office windows

 3. lots of natural light but translucent glass to provide privacy

Power cords from ceiling

4.  Retractable power cords from the ceiling

passthrough window

ladders for storage

5. a pass-through window between a prep and a teaching lab that can be covered up by a white board
6.  Ladders to extend storage up to the ceiling.

Other ideas I gathered over these two days included the reminder that Art programs really could do some amazing things with augmented and virtual reality as the current exhibit of Art in the Age of Internet showed.

Use unusual spaces for unusual projects - Lehigh University was able to take over an old factory and started turning its spaces into creation and experimental spaces

Ask the right kinds of questions - broad, open for innovation, specific and targeted for keeping with the status quo.