Location: Uppsala, Sweden.

Architect: Sweco Architects AB.

Uppsala University in Sweden has created two new study halls at its Ekonomikum campus, designed to offer the best conditions for individual and collaborative learning, social interaction and focused conversation. The halls are open to all students at the university for 21 hours a day, from 5am to 2am, and are also available for wider public use during scheduled hours, special occasions and between semesters. The outer room is designed for collaborative learning and socialising, with a bright, grass-green and sky-blue colour scheme, while the inner room is a silent study hall housed in a bomb shelter, with adjustable lighting at every seat. The halls were designed with a widely assembled planning team in a comprehensive circular process allowing trial and error testing. The design is an outcome of this process in combination with basic aesthetic principles and the predominant choice of natural sustainable materials such as oak wood, wool fabrics, leather and reindeer moss. The project was intended to be a pilot example and showcase for future learning environments. The physical environment is seen as crucial to the learning process, which requires oscillation between vast collections of diverse unsorted information and contemplative processing of that information. Processing means individually challenging the information we are exposed to, and testing our individual thoughts in the digital world. Ideas, arguments and experiences of others are also gathered by social interaction in the physical setting. The physical environment could at worst obstruct and at best facilitate these processes. The halls are designed to provide the best physical prerequisites for individual digital learning and processing, as well as social interactive learning and processing. The centre circle is designed to create a physical framework for quality conversation in groups of up to 18 people.

Photo credit: Åke E:son Lindman and Mikael Silkeberg.