I'm looking for resources on design space for academic departments, particularly, We've been asked to provide ideas on designing a "dream math department". I'd like to gather some ideas for doing this. What ideal characteristics should the space/architecture/furniture in a good math department have?
I'd like innovative ideas for:
Classrooms, offices, student lounges, lighting, furniture, bookshelves, artwork. Any suggestions should be mindful of improvement of creative output and innovative instruction and ideally be accompanied by rationale.
I'm sure (although having resources allocated for this is rare) I'm not the only faculty member faced with this. Any links to, or thoughts about, math department design ideas would be helpful.
As strange as this question is, it may indirectly help departments flourish and may indirectly benefit mathematics in the long run.
(As I'm writing this question all I can think of is a window I saw in a classroom in the math department at MIT once that was stuffed with newspaper...but I nevertheless ask.)
EDIT: In light of Mariano's very accurate assessment of this question as off-topic, I'd like to apologize to the moderators and the forum for the question. Also, though, I'd like to clarify my rationale for asking: this site is more or less for anything about mathematics (even...gulp...for homework problems), so I thought the question may not be too much of a stretch because good answers to it may affect the allocation of resources to mathematics departments. We aren't individually inclined to think about questions like these, although not doing so may lead to our being put in substandard space because administrators and/or other departments with more time to put value on these things actually put in their two cents. A site like this can be used to "crowdsource" such a problem without too much loss to any individual and yet with great gain to the group. Certainly this question is not mathematics, but is directly related to the health of mathematics in mathematics departments...and hence I asked the question.