Vega Collegiate Academy
AURORA, COLORADO
Blank walls, put to work. Erin Gaskins saw this academy's empty walls as an opportunity. Colorful Felt Right tiles softened sound and doubled as bulletin boards into playful and focused places to learn.
THE CHALLENGE
Uninspired Blank Walls
Vega's students had been learning in an old church building, and many come from home environments that aren't built around their needs. Their new building gave them room to grow, but its walls were bare and its classrooms echoed. Professional organizer Erin Gaskins set out to turn those blank walls into space that students and teachers could actually use.
THE APPROACH
The Environment as the Third Teacher
Erin sees every classroom as a relationship between three parts: the student, the teacher and the environment. To create a space that truly supports learning, she reworked the school's blank walls with Felt Right tiles that absorb sound and double as bulletin boards, so the rooms became soft, colorful, and functional.
THE SOLUTION
A place designed just for them.
The finished classrooms are soft, colorful and focused, built around the relationship between student, teacher and environment that guides Erin's work. Even the architect noticed the difference, saying that while he had put up the walls, the treatment they added turned the building into a school.
A NOTE FROM THE PROJECT ORGANIZER
“To watch them come from an old church building to this beautiful, colorful, soft, focused learning environment was just magical. Their faces just lit up.”
ERIN GASKINS
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