AIA Life Designers is a French engineering and architecture group founded in 1965. Today, they are a tightly knit group of architects, engineers, economists, urban planners, landscapers and site supervisors. As part of their aim to reflect upon the future of our cities, they constituted a specific working group on research & educational buildings. On this occasion, the AIA Research & Education working group met a group of Design students from the Sustainable citie's master cycle from L'Ecole de Design Nantes Atlantique in order to reflect upon the future of learning spaces. But there is a twist to the thinking process, all the ideas, no matter what, had to be prototyped quickly!!

The particularity of this workshop is its focus on Prototyping as a mean for challenging and pushing the innovation process. As part of their ongoing work, the AIA Research & Education working group had already identified some key ideas around the future of learning spaces that they wanted to push further. It seemed a great opportunity to experience the power of quick and rough prototyping as a method for testing and generating ideas.

The workshop was conceived and facilitated by Design students. Four mixed teams were formed with two or three AIA R&E members with backgrounds in architecture, engineering or management and two design students. The tools put in place by the facilitators are part of the AYCH ToolBox. Throughout the workshop, a researcher observed and noted the different interactions and reactions to the tools as well as the creative outcomes of the process.

Duration: One day from 10 am to 5 pm.

• 1. Presentation of AYCH project & the aims of the workshop
• 2. Presentation of the workshop's themes and the work in progress by AIA Research & Development group
• 3. Teams formation: 4 of 2 AIA members & 2 Students
• 4. Idea Wall
• 5. User scénario
• 6. Quick prototyping round I
• 7. Quick prototyping round II
• 8. Test by students
• 9. Feedback & Conclusions

The Idea Wall is a powerful exercise that allows groups to easily share, visualise and make sense of different issues and ideas around a particular subject. It is a very flexible tool that can be adapted depending on the subject, the participants and the kind of project they are working on. For more details on how it works idea wall (english)

On this occasion, each team built an Idea Wall where they collected a series of main values and ideas associated with their particular working theme, many of these ideas and values were represented by images. The idea wall evolved and got richer as the team's work progressed during the day. After some exchanges, each group had to agree on one particular project-idea they would have to develop next.

The Idea Wall allowed the participants to understand each other's vision on the subject,

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