What is CASE 21

The perfect educational environment through architecture, technology, & construction techniques.

CASE 21 is the classroom of the future… the creation of the perfect classroom…providing an “Ideal” learning environment for those who understand the impacts of High Performance Learning Environments and Sustainable/Green Design.

CASE 21 began when Architecture Involution LLC (Ai3), an architectural firm specializing in 21st Century academic environments, began a multi-year quest to design the perfect classroom… a classroom educationally and environmentally superior to any classroom in the world… a classroom which sets new standards for high performance educational environments.

Subsequent to beginning the design process, a handful of critical goals were established. We determined the classroom MUST be:

1. Educationally superior, incorporating the latest research on technological, physical, and environmental factors which clearly influence teaching and learning. It must be a laboratory for teaching and learning, with every manipulation of the design targeted at improving the learning environment.
2. “Green” and “Sustainable”.
3. Readily and easily available, allowing educators a “Fast-Track” to occupying a superior academic environment within only a few months.
4. High quality, offering many years of low maintenance service
5. Cost competitive and cost reliable.

As the design work continued to evolve, it became obvious that we were designing much more than just a perfect classroom… We were designing a solution for one of the biggest problems facing educators today; the need for high performance, sustainable, and immediately available academic classrooms. We also realized that permanent pre-fabricated construction was going to provide us with the perfect means for achieving all of our goals.

Pre-fabrication had many advantages we had not previously considered:

-The precision of prefabricated construction would allow us to incorporate (In the factory) the advanced technological infrastructure we had designed, without relying on the technical expertise of a field technician

-The precision of factory-built prefabrication would allow us to design to much stricter tolerances on the critical components affecting such attributes as ventilation, heating, cooling, acoustics, day-lighting, artificial lighting, etc.

-The inherent green and sustainable qualities of pre-fabrication far exceeded site built construction.

-We could make the classrooms more readily available than we had ever imagined through pre-fabricated construction. They could be on-site and available, with less than six months from project inception to final occupancy.

-We could be competitive with site-built construction cost AND eliminate any unknowns relative to cost

Upon learning all of the advantages of permanent pre-fabricated construction, Ai3 began seeking out a progressive specialist within the pre-fabrication industry. Almost immediately, we found Triumph Modular, a national award-winning modular construction company who was just coming off of a whirlwind tour promoting their award-winning modular classroom SmartSpace. Smartspace was more of a “Temporary” classroom, was not permanent, and was a bit pre-historic compared to our work on CASE 21, but it suggested that Triumph had an open mind and a strong commitment to progressive classroom learning environments. We met with Triumph, and their enthusiasm for the CASE 21 project immediately rivaled ours, as we began to collaborate on the most immediate path to making CASE 21 a reality. Triumph introduced us to NRB Inc., one of their most sophisticated and progressive permanent pre-fab manufacturers, and suddenly the CASE 21 project had all the key ingredients for deploying the most advanced educational classroom in the world.