engleski

School furniture design - a comparison in primary schools in Croatia, Czech Republic and the USA

Contemporary school is experiencing dynamic changes. New pedagogical guidelines, the need for a healthy environment, further driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the inevitable application of IT technologies impose new needs in designing a healthy school environment and sustainable furniture design on the global level. Unfortunately, the furniture design in most schools did not go far beyond 250 years ago when the education system imposed frontal teaching and „desk layout in rows“ which became the norm worldwide. Today's situation, exacerbated by the COVID-19 and the closure of schools sets up the need for new guidelines for innovative and sustainable school furniture design for a healthy school. The paper aimed to determine whether today's school furniture is appropriate in usage in terms of design, functionality, and healthy materials, and what particular materials are used in the furniture design in elementary school classrooms. The paper presents the results of research in primary schools in Croatia (City of Zagreb), the Czech Republic (City of Brno), and the USA (Groton, NY) using methods of observation and photography. The analysis of the current situation and the presented results confirm that most classrooms still have the same traditional furniture layout in which uniformly designed, mismatch of dimensions of furniture and children is evident, new dynamic trends in education are not followed, and the use of sustainable materials has been reduced to low-quality and low-priced wood-based panels. In many schools, the use of metal and plastic lead to the use of wood and wood materials. The observed design of school furniture and the environment needs to be redesigned urgently. The dominant guideline must be the transformation of the design, innovative materials, and production process. This process should involve transdisciplinary experts in the many fields of design, wood technology, ecology, sustainable architecture, health, ergonomics, pedagogy, as well as public procurement and production. The main goal is to achieve the health and well-being of children in schools, which can be intensively accomplished by using healthy and innovative materials - wood and other sustainable and environmentally friendly raw materials. The keywords are innovation and transdisciplinarity.

school furniture design, innovative materials, healthy environment, sustainable production, transdisciplinary process

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