Versatile Classroom Furniture Solution for a Cutting-Edge Stem Innovation Hub
The Bolles School, a college preparatory day and boarding school for students’ pre-kindergarten to grade 12, recently completed a substantial expansion to its San Jose Campus. The new three-story, 47,000-square-foot building serves as a center of innovation where students can explore traditional academic programs, such as science, math and technology, plus advanced STEM courses in robotics, computer programming, information technology, engineering and design.
With award-winning campuses that house an academic community dedicated to excellence and student wellness, Bolles envisioned similar artistic engineering for its new facility’s architectural and interior design. The goal was to pair a flexible classroom furniture design with their dynamic learning space, offering the mobility to convert multiple classrooms into one open space or arrange seating to highlight the stunning views of the St. John River.
As Northeast Florida’s leading workspace design company and a premier Steelcase dealer, Perdue was asked to curate a tailored furniture and move planning solution that accommodates the center’s classrooms and 12 specialty labs, including spaces for anatomy, biology and chemistry lab instruction. Leveraging our premier Steelcase partnership, we worked closely with Zyscovich Architects and alongside Stellar’s construction timelines to procure active learning products from an expansive catalog of premium brands.
We presented an adaptable solution by pairing intuitive insights with Bolles’ unique needs through Perdue’s cutting-edge digital design service. Crafting a state-of-the-art furniture landscape that highlights Bolles’ Center of Innovation as a standout STEM facility involved transformative planning. To create a unified space, we aligned furniture across areas with similar functions, adapting standards to meet the specific needs of each space. For instance, science and math classroom tables were 19″ deep, while anatomy and technology tables were 24″ deep to accommodate laptops. Additionally, we mounted tracks to classroom walls to seamlessly store mobile whiteboards used to facilitate idea sharing and collaboration. CET Designer by Configura enabled us to digitally customize products in real time and provide a lifelike view of the fully furnished learning environment.
“Working with Perdue was an amazing overall experience from selection to final inspection. They made sure to meet our deadlines and did an exceptional job of ensuring we had every piece of furniture. Everyone we worked with was a true professional,” said Jeff Role, Chief Finance and Operations Officer at The Bolles School.
The classroom furniture design features flexible, multi-purpose active learning products, such as Steelcase Tenor school chair, enabling students to easily adapt to learning modes, Steelcase Verb’s collection of mobile tables and Smith System’s Interchange Science Table that provides solid functionality for STEM classrooms, school labs, and science classrooms.
