[ad_1]
School cafeterias symbolize a key design alternative. Where else within the constructing do all college students spend a portion of each faculty day?
As a hub the place college students come collectively, faculty cafeterias may be elementary in serving to to construct a way of neighborhood. Besides serving meals, cafeterias can fill a wide range of different roles as properly, akin to doubling as a “learning commons” the place college students collect to review or socialize—or remodeling right into a banquet corridor for internet hosting dances and neighborhood occasions.
Achieving these desired outcomes depends on having an efficient design. With the appropriate design, your faculty cafeteria can interact and encourage college students. Foster faculty pleasure and spirit. Extend studying past the classroom. Even generate extra income.
Here are six suggestions for designing faculty cafeterias that meet these targets and extra.
Look to the locations college students like to hang around for inspiration.
Think about the place college students prefer to spend their time after faculty: a espresso store, a café, a meals courtroom on the mall. What do these environments have in widespread? Aside from providing a tasty snack or beverage, these locations additionally create a heat and welcoming ambiance, a vibe that claims: “Come in, sit down and relax with your friends.”
School cafeterias can recreate that vibe with a purpose to draw college students in, to turn out to be locations the place college students need to spend their time. Instead of replicating the drab, institutional appear and feel of a standard cafeteria, might you select vibrant colours and cozy, engaging furnishings that make the house extra interesting? Could you add self-service kiosks the place college students can get meals or drinks exterior of regular breakfast or lunch hours? How a couple of cafe-style part with espresso and pastries?
By taking inspiration from the locations college students prefer to congregate, you possibly can flip your cafeteria into a contemporary hub the place college students join with one another—and with their faculty.
Offer a wide range of seating selections.
Giving college students a number of seating choices makes your faculty cafeteria extra comfy and alluring. It additionally makes the house really feel extra inclusive. Having a number of choices to select from, akin to conventional picnic tables in addition to cubicles and café-style seating, caters to completely different preferences and makes college students really feel extra welcome.
Make positive you supply seating choices that may accommodate completely different group sizes. You would possibly need to embody bigger tables that may seat 10 to 12 individuals, that are properly suited to internet hosting capabilities, in addition to tables or cubicles that may seat smaller, extra intimate teams of two to 4 college students—in order that college students can work together with their shut buddies in a extra relaxed method.
Consider providing a wide range of heights as properly. Taller bistro tables and stools give college students extra choices for sitting comfortably and consuming/research counters that run alongside the size of a wall or round a assist column are additionally changing into widespread. Students can use these areas to arrange their laptops and eat whereas they work.
Design with flexibility and flexibility in thoughts.
To get probably the most worth out of your cafeteria, it ought to be a multi-use house that helps a number of actions. When meals aren’t being served, can it double as a research heart, lounge space, or studying commons? Can you host neighborhood capabilities in your cafeteria to lift extra income?
Think about all of the methods you would possibly use the house, after which plan your design to accommodate these varied capabilities. Using modular tables that may be configured in some ways makes it easy to transform the house from one use to a different. Make positive they’re on casters, to allow them to be moved round simply. When buying massive tables, think about fashions that may be folded up and saved.
Interior design and mission administration by School Specialty® Projects By Design® Dallas, Texas group.
Pay consideration to motion and stream.
To improve your cafeteria’s potential for constructing neighborhood, plan the house in a means that facilitates motion and social interplay. Make positive there are clear walkways for college students and employees to flow into across the room; tables ought to be positioned with at the very least three to 4 ft of clearance between them. Think concerning the stream of visitors as properly and create sufficient house for lunch traces and meals service.
Consider the know-how infrastructure.
To make your cafeteria practical for studying or finding out, think about how one can make electrical retailers available for college students to plug of their digital units. For occasion, you can embed retailers within the flooring, or select tables and bench seating with retailers constructed into the furnishings. If you combine energy into the tabletops and seating, then college students received’t journey on energy cords—they usually received’t be restricted of their selection of the place to take a seat.
Think about incorporating out of doors areas.
If your cafeteria is accessible to the college grounds, take into consideration creating an outside courtyard or seating space. Research signifies there are clear academic and health-related advantages to spending time exterior. For occasion, respiration contemporary air can clear college students’ minds and assist them suppose by rising the quantity of oxygen their brains obtain. Being exterior may scale back stress and enhance college students’ emotional well-being, and research have proven that kids with ADHD reply positively to spending time in pure settings.
When furnishing out of doors eating areas, use seating that’s safe, weather-resistant and designed particularly for out of doors use, akin to thermoplastic tables with connected benches that may’t be eliminated.
Smart cafeteria design
With the appropriate method, you possibly can create a contemporary faculty cafeteria that college students truly need to spend time in, resulting in a stronger sense of neighborhood and extra alternatives for studying.
To learn the way the School Specialty Team may help you design, furnish, and equip future-ready inviting cafeteria areas that serve a number of functions, please contact your School Specialty Representative.
Read More About Learning Spaces
Dr. Sue Ann Highland
Sue Ann Highland, PhD, is the National Education Strategist for School Specialty. She has greater than 25 years of expertise as an educator, administrator, and marketing consultant with faculty techniques throughout the United States, with broad experience in designing and creating extremely efficient studying environments.
Read extra by Dr. Sue Ann Highland–>