Designing Mindful Learning Spaces

The topic of the 2025 Health & Wellness Symposium will be “Mindfulness in Healing Environments.”

To start the conversation about this topic before the symposium, the faculty of the KU Institute of Health & Wellness Design are sponsoring a student design competition to explore how architecture/design learning environment designs can be employed by students to address mental and behavioral health issues experienced by human users. The goal of the competition is to generate a variety of ways by which students can develop innovative learning environment prototypes that promote mental and behavioral health. 

Competition Challenge

Design a new physical space or redesign an existing physical space as an architecture/design learning environment prototype to address and improve one or several mental and behavioral health issue(s) experienced by user(s). The space can be indoor, outdoor, or an integration of indoor and outdoor components with a maximum size of 500 SF. It can be any one type of formal or informal architecture/design learning spaces occupied by human user(s) in Marvin Hall, Chalmers Hall, Malott Hall, Snow Hall, or Marvin Studios – examples include studio, review space, cafe, display, and so on. Each competitor will define the exact objectives of their design in a single sentence and create an appropriate name for the prototype. 

Competition Criteria

The jury will use four criteria (equally weighted) to evaluate all submissions:  

• Relevance: the importance and prevalence of the mental health or behavioral health issue(s) addressed by the design.  
• Impact: the likelihood and extent of the design’s potential impact as supported by theoretical or empirical evidence.   
• Creativity: the originality of the design solution and the uniqueness of the problem addressed.   
• Aesthetics: the quality of the design and presentation. 

Design Limitations

The designed prototype can be a singular and stand-alone space, or it can be nested in a larger structure. It can be plugged into an external power grid or self-powered. It must use current and available materials and technologies. There is no budget, but the design must be environmentally sustainable and sensitive to the needs of all people. 

Focus on Mindfulness Design 

The results of the competition will be presented during the 2025 Health & Wellness Symposium at the University of Kansas on February 24th, 2025. The keynote address will be given by Tye Farrow from Farrow Partners Architects and focused on his latest book Constructing Health: How the Built Environment Enhances Your Mind's Health. The organizers of the symposium want to use this opportunity for students to further address mental health in the creation of architecture/design learning environments. The fundamental question of the competition is “How can I design architecture and design learning spaces to enhance the mental health of college students?”  

Prizes

The top three entrants of the competition will be awarded cash prizes of $1,000, $500, and $300. 

Eligibility

The competition is open to any student in the School of Architecture & Design who is enrolled during the spring 2025 semester. Each entrant may be an individual or a two-member team. There are no entry fees. Each student is limited to one competition entry. Entrants agree to allow their submissions to be displayed publicly during the symposium and by the KU Institute of Health & Wellness Design. 

Schedule

December 6, 2024 Competition opens  

January 29, 2025 Competition submittals due at 5:00 PM CST  

February 24, 2025 Winners announced at symposium dinner 

Competition Submittal

Each entrant will present their design on four (4) high-resolution 11” x 17” landscape sheets in a single PDF file. The PDF file will be titled EntrantLastName,EntrantFirstName.SC2025. The entrant name(s) will not be identified on any of the PDF sheets. 

The PDF submittal must be less than 25 MB in size and submitted to the "Submit Work" SharePoint link at the top of this page using a ku.edu email address.