Gerald Ajam

The designed conditions of one classroom

A redesigned room is eight redesigns at once.

Status Practice-derived

Published September 2026

The designed conditions of learning

Changing the furniture touches every condition of learning, whether or not you planned it. So plan it.

The classroom

A lower primary classroom in Singapore, prototyped over two weeks as part of a national prototype. The class followed one theme, celebrating friendship, across English, Mathematics, Chinese and Physical Education. Afterwards the school decided which features to keep as it scaled the design to other classrooms.

Eight conditions

What changed in each condition, and what it touched

Inside the learner

Cognitive conditions

Big ideas were carried across subjects, so each lesson reinforced the same concepts from a different side.

TouchesTemporal

Affective conditions

A “ME corner”, screened off for privacy, where a child could calm down; a mural for a little whimsy.

A boundary in the room, and permission to use it.

TouchesSpatialSocial

What they act through

Representational conditions

Big-book stories and projected video launched the theme. An interactive display replaced the noticeboard.

Where the display hangs decides where the front is.

TouchesDigitalSpatial

Digital conditions

Tablets travelled in zoning carts for research on the national learning platform, with QR codes at the stations.

The carts took the technology to the group, not the group to the technology.

TouchesSpatial

Spatial conditions

Furniture that reconfigured, zones inside the room, and an outdoor learning zone.

Distance decides who talks to whom.

TouchesSocial

Among people, over time

Social conditions

Groups were allocated to carts, and the teacher could follow each group’s progress even when students left the room.

Supervision rules decide how far a group can go.

TouchesSpatialInstitutional

Institutional conditions

After the prototype, the school kept each feature’s intent and chose simpler ways to achieve it, such as a simpler way to mark the space for calming down.

What scales is what the institution can sustain.

Touchesall seven others

Temporal conditions

A three-lesson arc: immersion, then work in zones, then a celebration day.

TouchesCognitiveAffective

What transfers

Plan the eight, not the furniture

  • List all eight conditions before choosing any furniture. The furniture will touch them anyway.
  • When scaling, keep the intent and simplify the feature.
  • Watch the institutional condition. It decides which of the other seven survive the prototype.
Singapore