Imagine your child walking into a classroom—except it’s not a typical classroom in a typical building. The students at this school walk up a ramp and enter a small portico that sports fluid, curved walls. There, they take their shoes off and stop for a moment. After a short transition, which encourages them to see this classroom as a place set apart, they enter.
This is what the students at Bentleigh Secondary College, a publicly funded junior high and high school in Melbourne, Australia, do every day in the school’s new Meditation and Indigenous Cultural Centre (M&ICC).
The college teamed up with an eco-friendly architecture firm dwpsuters, which is the Australian arm of design worldwide partnership (dwp).
Regular classes on meditation, indigenous culture, and environmental sustainability are taught at the center. The inside is designed to be conducive to meditation, “using calming forms and materials” such as rounded columns of polished wood, says Nick Cini, the center’s designer.
Students are so keen that many are now requesting more meditation classes.
To get a sense of why the students are so keen, take a closer look at the M&ICC, photos courtesy of Emma Cross.
This web extra provides additional information related to an article titled, “Designing Mindful Classrooms,” which appeared in the April 2014 issue of Mindful magazine.
