Classroom 3501 AB: EDmarket Council | From Spec to Student: An EDmarket Collaborative Learning Environment

Goal:

The EDmarket “From Spec to Student” Classroom brings educators, designers, manufacturers, dealers and students together to explore how the need to work as a team, with each segment bringing a unique perspective, facilitates learning environments to better support today’s learners. At its center is an approximately 900-square-foot middle school classroom, intentionally designed to feel like a real learning environment and surrounded by opportunities to observe, interact, test, and learn. An adjacent outdoor classroom extends learning into a nature-inspired setting, while the surrounding observation and collaboration zone invites EDspaces attendees to watch, participate, discuss, and experience the environments firsthand.

The premise is simple: students learn best when their fundamental needs are met first. The experience explores how the physical environment can support comfort, safety, connection, and belonging — creating a foundation for confidence, independence, achievement, and, ultimately, each learner’s full potential.

Focus:

Find Your Comfort Zone

The environment offers a range of furniture types, postures, and group settings so students and participants can find their comfort zone. Rather than assuming one setting works for everyone, learners can experience traditional desks, collaborative tables, sit-to-stand options, active seating, soft seating, individual retreat spaces, small-group settings, and larger social environments. These choices accommodate different bodies, personalities, activities, energy levels, and learning preferences while giving students greater agency and choice in where and how they learn.

Several educator-guided middle school furniture exercises put the concept directly into students’ hands. Students will experience and compare different furniture and learning settings, then share firsthand feedback about where they feel most comfortable, connected, engaged, and ready to learn.

Impact:

The EDmarket Collaborative Learning Environment is not designed to prescribe one “ideal classroom.” Instead, it asks a more important question: “What does each learner need to be ready to learn?”

The Lab demonstrates how thoughtful designed environments help students move from comfort and security → connection and belonging → growth and self-actualization.

The result is a living laboratory, where participants can observe, experience, compare, and question how the spaces we create can help every learner find a place where they feel comfortable, supported, and ready to succeed.

Partners 

• Clear Touch
• Fomcore
• Natural Pod
• Patcraft
• Smith System & Steelcase Education

Design Team

• Elizabeth Carter-Thibodeaux, Frost-Barber (Dealer Council)
• Mark Beebe, Ratio Design (A&D Council)

Cross-Council Advisory Members

• Bridgitte Alomes, Natural Pod (Equipment Manufactures Council)
• Dave Broz, AIA (A&D Council)
• David Cupolo, St James Intermediate School (Education Council)
• Arden Herrington, Lone Star Furnishings, LLC (Dealer Council)
• Charity Hogrefe, NBS Commercial Interiors (Dealer Council)
• Sue Ann Highland, School Specialty (Dealer Council)
• Earl Metzler, Hertz Furniture, (Dealer Council)
• Lennie Scott-Webber, INSYNC: Education Research + Design (A&D Council)