XR Lab win at Education Estates Awards 2024 for Windsor Patania
Windsor Patania Architecture’s futuristic Extended Reality Lab – XR Lab – project claimed the ‘Inspiring Learning Space’ award at the recent Education Estates Awards 2024 in Manchester.
The Perne Road-based company, founded in 2017, designed an immersive learning facility including AI-powered Virtual Reality (VR) Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality elements for Eastern Colleges Group UK.
Eastern Colleges Group is a forward-thinking educational consortium that aims to deliver world-class and inspirational life-long learning journeys for its students. Its commission has resulted in the purpose-built XR Lab housed at West Suffolk College, which offers a range of qualifications across technical and innovative sectors.
For Windsor Patania directors Giovanni Patania and Ryan Windsor, the XR Lab project provided an opportunity to envisage a dynamic new way of learning by drawing heavily on the firm’s ethos of innovation, aesthetics and sustainability.
The intention behind the XR Lab is also to leverage the space as a business catalyst and business hub for the surrounding community, and a place in which industry partners can collaborate, learn, and develop.
Over the long term, this multi-pronged approach will help the college generate income thereby reinforcing the sustainable investment credentials of the project.
The high-tech, futuristic and pod-like XR Lab comprises an Immersion Lab, a Collaboration Theatre, Green Room and Conference Room. The steel structure incorporates thermal and acoustic insulation, allowing for a maximum and unmatched immersion. The XR Lab is equipped with an array of advanced cameras and microphones to facilitate an interconnected and interactive educational experience using the latest in immersive technologies including artificial intelligence-powered Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality. Together, this fusion of real-world and the metaverse, supports a truly next generation teaching and learning capability, in line with the project brief.
Ultimately, Windsor Patania was inspired to transform an existing workshop hangar within the College’s 7200m2 STEM complex into a light and inviting space for students, with the imposing XR Lab at its heart. High-spec, polished plaster exterior draws students in, and offers them a portal into the future of learning.
For Ryan Windsor, development director at Windsor Patania Architects UK and a former governor of West Suffolk College, the XR Lab has the potential to revolutionise teaching and democratise education because students will be “getting the chance to explore innovative industries like engineering”.
“The XR Lab is truly an inspired learning space, where ambitious architecture embodies the function of the building,” says architect director Giovanni Patania. “We are very proud to have been part of this exciting and game-changing educational initiative.”
The prestigious awards – now in their 12th year – recognise excellence, innovation and sustainable practices by architects, consultants, contractors and clients operating in the education space.
