Today @ AIA. Hufcor® Features SMARTITION™ Rotating Walls.
Day two of the 2012 AIA national convention exhibition is underway and Hufcor® again will be featuring five new products, including the SMARTITION™ rotating wall system. Visit Hufcor at AIA booth#2942. The SMARTITION rotating wall was designed to provide schools and commercial offices a way to provide flexibility similar to operable partitions without the need to stack the wall.
Recently at a Council of Education Facility Planners International Midwest regional meeting, I got a chance to meet with some of the top education facility architects in the world, including representatives from Fanning & Howey, PBK, Perkins+Will, Cunningham Group, DLR Group, HGA, and others. During one-on-one meetings, we discussed the use of traditional operable partitions or movable walls to divide school classrooms. Concensus was that operable walls did provide great benefits when used properly, but, in many cases teachers used the walls as large, bulletin boards. We've all seen this where the walls are plastered with artwork and educational posters, which ultimately make it almost impossible (and very improbable) that the walls will ever be moved to open up the classroom for group interaction or team teaching. (Who knew that moveable walls were the predessor to Pinterest! If only Hufcor would have thought of that!)
The architects' candid input was consistent with what Hufcor was seeing within the schools over the past decade. And, this was the same reason back in 2010 that the Keller ISD in Texas was looking for a large door system that could offer similar acoustical separation and flexibility to open up spaces, but rotated and instead of stacked. So, based on Hufcor's end-user experiences and the Keller ISD request, we designed the SMARTITION rotating wall system.
These large rotating doors, customized up to 9' wide x 12' tall in size, are self-supported by Hufcor's patented Unispan overhead support system. As such, the SMARTITION can be installed in new and existing walls. The doors are designed to have up to an additional 300 lbs of equipment or work surfaces added to the face, easily supporting electronics, projectors and removable markerboards.
The SMARTITION rotating doors are pre-wired with electric and data conduit. As such, the doors provide schools and offices a way to share technology from room to room. Imaging mounting a large flat screen high definition television on one side of the SMARTITION facing a conference room. Then, if needed for a group meeting in a lobby or joint office training room, the wall could be rotated and the television shared.
The SMARTITION can also be installed with markerboard faces. The architects at the CEFPI meeting agreed that using markerboard faces actually provided more flexible work surfaces to teachers and "discourages" the wall from becoming a pin cushion. And, if the technology could be shared from room-to-room, that added value to the districts installing SMARTITION.
The design concept was so successfully beta tested at the Keller ISD, that this fall, the architects at AST&R in Minneapolis incorporated the SMARTITION system within their submission for the "Classroom of the Future: 2021" contest. The project was deemed "Best of Show" and incorporated three of Hufcor's new products featured at the AIA convention today: SMARTITION, acoustical glass wall and exterior bifold vertical lift doors. Click this link, docs/ZoN; Hufcor Featured Products_low res.doc, to see how AST&R used the Hufcor products within their ZoN classroom.
For more information, download the product flier "SMARTITION Rotating Walls" or visit Hufcor representatives at booth #2942 at AIA 2012, today.
