Orville Wright Middle School's maker space was designed to serve a school culture centered on hands-on STEM learning — a place where students would prototype, collaborate, present, and get things wrong in productive ways. The challenge was creating a single room that could support all of it without feeling like a compromise.
Working in close coordination with Berliner Architects and the school's STEM faculty, I developed a space plan that divides the room into two distinct zones: a flexible presentation and gathering area anchored by movable soft seating, and a structured work zone with height-adjustable tables that reconfigure for individual or group work. Both zones share sight lines, allowing a single teacher to manage the full room.
Every furniture selection was evaluated for durability in a hands-on environment, ease of reconfiguration by students, and alignment with the architectural palette developed by Berliner — a bold blue and white graphic vocabulary that runs through the walls and into the furniture choices.
school
Orville Wright Middle School
location
Los Angeles, CA
district
Los Angeles Unified School District
architect
Berliner Architects
FF&E designer
Darra Bishop, consulting for LAUSD
scope
grade levels
6th – 8th grade
Work zone — students collaborating at flexible tables
Maker Space / STEM Classroom — Orville Wright Middle School, LAUSD
Designed by Darra Bishop in coordination with Berliner Architects
Space plan shows dual-zone layout: flexible gathering area (left) and structured work zone (right)
Maker space — presentation zone with flexible soft seating and robotics demonstration
Work zone — height-adjustable tables with movable chairs for group collaboration
Work zone — students collaborating at flexible tables
A maker space has to earn its name. The furniture in this room was selected specifically to support the physical act of making — prototyping, debugging, presenting, rebuilding. That meant prioritizing surfaces students can stand at, seats they can pull in from any direction, and layouts that don't require a teacher to rearrange the room between activities.
The color and material selections were coordinated directly with Berliner's architectural drawings — the bold blue and white graphic vocabulary of the walls informed the furniture palette, rather than competing with it.
Dual-zone layout. A soft seating gathering zone for presentations and whole-class discussion sits alongside a structured work zone — both visible from a single standing position.
Student-reconfigurable furniture. All tables and seating can be moved by students without teacher assistance — critical for a room that changes setup multiple times per day.
Durability for hands-on use. Every piece was evaluated for wear resistance in a maker environment — including surfaces that can withstand tools, paint, and daily reconfiguration.
Architectural coordination. Furniture finishes were selected to complement Berliner's bold graphic palette — not fight it.