

Set in the Gold Coast suburb of Tallebudgera, the Centre for Creative Industries at St Andrew’s Lutheran College houses a variety of subject areas dedicated to design, innovation and manufacturing across a wide range of industries.
With the College’s old Manual Techs premises no longer meeting the needs of the curriculum, the Centre grew out of the need to build something better and bigger to support multiple specialty subject areas including film and TV, digital technology, fashion design, business, robotics, manual arts and engineering, with a main arena for larger gatherings.

The design brief called for a space that offered flexibility, while providing the functionality to support highly-specified subjects within certain areas.
To create an adaptive education environment, flexible furniture solutions for teaching and learning spaces were required. In the design phase, ARKI Environments worked closely with architects Burling Brown, laying 3D models of the furniture into their conceptual designs. They supplied prototype furniture six months prior to obtain the students’ feedback on ergonomics and practicality, which informed St Andrew’s final purchase.

The building showcases a range of
“Classrooms have evolved even more quickly in the last three years. There are now a number of focal points in a classroom. We still have the traditional whiteboard but now also have remote learners joining via a display screen in another part of the room, projection screens and also screens for group work,” explains Matt Jeffers, education seating expert at Buro Seating. “We must allow for as much variation as possible and allow learners to adjust their seating for optimal view of presentation or display screens.”

With these evolutions, the chairs specified for the Centre’s teaching and learning spaces needed to encourage movement and provide adjustability in heights, with swivel mechanisms and castors for mobility.

The Konfurb Harmony is an active seating office chair that is designed to improve posture by encouraging natural movement and flexibility. As students are always changing chairs, the active seating technology means they do not need to fuss over dual levers to adjust the chair, instead they can achieve optimal posture effortlessly.

The Konfurb Harmony Drafting Chair is perfect for collaborative breakout spaces, with a contoured, moulded shell for superior comfort. A good option for a bar height table, this drafting chair provides ergonomic support and multi-directional movement to support learning.

The new space also features the

Supported by Buro Seating’s wide range of innovative furniture solutions, this fitout demonstrates how flexible seating can engage, inspire and promote better learning outcomes in an ever-evolving environment.
Buro Seating
Photography by





The post