Benchmark Innovation Lab | SHoP (original) (raw)

The design of the Benchmark Innovation Lab exhibits many of the same digital processes its students will explore within.

The Benchmark School is a private elementary school in Media, Pennsylvania noted for tailoring its curriculum to the learning styles of its students. SHoP was asked to create an innovation laboratory as a small, freestanding addition to an existing campus building. Recognizing that the new structure itself could operate as a teaching tool, we designed it to embody and exhibit many of the processes and techniques that the students themselves discover in their own experimentation with various 3D modeling and printing tools and platforms.

The slatted wooden ceiling was manufactured in-house at SHoP's prototyping and fabrication facility in Brooklyn. It embodies methods that are native to the same software/hardware pairs the students can explore.

This connection between the forms of the building and the learning taking place inside is not something that will be readily apparent. But as students return to the space over time, as their comfort and capability with its tools develop, it is something that is waiting for each to discover.