Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Ceiling Designed for Learning

  • 03/01/17
classroom ceiling design with world map

A map across the ceiling serves as an amazing learning tool for students in the Springmill Learning Center’s new Earth Studies Room.

The Springmill Learning Center is a hands-on science and outdoor education center housed in a once-vacant elementary school. During the design stages of the facility, teachers decided each room in the new Center should have a unique feature that would both function as the focal point of the space and support education.

To help attain the objective, the Mansfield School District went to Splashmakers, a firm experienced in the design of exhibits, displays, and graphics for children’s spaces. “Our goal was to create an educational environment that was engaging, exciting, and on budget,” states designer, Kevin Haring. “We wanted to wow the students as they walked in each room, while incorporating educational elements throughout every part of the room, including the ceiling.”

The Center’s new Earth Studies Room features a large full color map of the world on the ceiling. It was created using Ultima Create! — a new custom design capability from Armstrong that allows designers to fashion their own one-of-a-kind ceiling art. The custom ceiling art can be generated from either digital artwork or imagery. For Springmill, Haring took an existing photo of the earth, vectorized it, and put it in an Adobe Illustrator file. The file was then sent to Armstrong, which transferred the image onto a series of Ultima Vector acoustical ceiling panels.

And, the map is not the only teaching tool in the ceiling. The suspension system in which the ceiling panels are placed coordinates with actual latitude and longitude lines, while the recessed lights in the panels can be turned on and off to highlight geographic features like continents or oceans.

“We wanted to break the boundaries of what people usually think a classroom should look like,” Haring states. “We hope other school systems will see this and get excited about implementing environments like it.”

www.armstrongceilings.com

This article originally appeared in the issue of .

Featured

  • Agricultural Sciences Complex

    Agricultural Sciences Complex

    Established in 1999, the Education Design Showcase is a vehicle for showing off innovative — yet practical — solutions in planning, design, architecture, and construction. The College of Western Idaho's Agricultural Sciences Complex has been recognized with an EDS 2026 Grand Prize award in the category of New Construction.

  • Rethinking K-12 Schools as a Continuous Learning Experience

    Most students move through three or more separate facilities during their K-12 journey, yet the built environments they encounter at each stage have traditionally been designed in isolation, with little continuity in spatial language, learning philosophy, or physical resources. Each new school is a reset with different layouts, learning models, expectations, and ways of moving through a building. The next generation of school design is making the case that the first day of kindergarten and the last day of high school can and should feel connected through common support systems and infrastructure in the physical environment.

  • school building with glowing circuit board patterns

    AI Is Coming to Schools — But Most School Buildings Still Run on Institutional Memory

    As school districts race to introduce AI into classrooms, administration, and curriculum planning, another conversation is happening behind the scenes: How prepared are school facilities themselves for the operational demands AI will create?

  • R.I. District Holds Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony for New Elementary School

    Cranston Public Schools in Cranston, R.I., recently announced the completion of Gladstone Elementary School, according to a news release. The 100,000-square-foot facility serves as a replacement for the 1950s-era former building, and it consolidates the student, faculty, and staff populations of Gladstone and Arlington Elementary Schools.