Beyond the Makerspace

As universities continue to invest in hands-on learning environments, the ability to move seamlessly between creation and analysis is becoming increasingly important. At South Africa’s Stellenbosch University, this shift has taken shape inside the institution’s main library, where a new Immersive Technology Lab (ITL) has recently been developed.

Rather than emerging as a standalone initiative, the ITL facility was conceived as a direct response to how students were already working. The university’s Makerspace provides access to tools for 3D design, printing, scanning and basic electronics. However, as its usage grew, a clear limitation began to emerge.

“What we noticed with our students using the Makerspace is that they were missing a component,” recalls Wouter Klapwijk, director of information technology services at the university library service, “which is the ability to critique CAD design work and prints which they built within the Makerspace. They wanted an environment to share that work amongst each other and collaborate. From the library’s side we also wanted to create a better environment to teach students the meaning of construction in data visualisation, a core competency needed when seeking employment in the contemporary data-centric society.”

This gap, combined with a broader awareness of how academic libraries are evolving internationally, led to the development of the new lab. Located alongside the Makerspace within the university’s central library, the facility has been designed to provide a shared visualisation environment accessible to students and staff across all disciplines.

Turning that ambition into a working environment, however, required a multi-year process. The university engaged Digital Fabric as its consulting partner, building on an existing relationship established during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the company supported the rollout of hybrid learning infrastructure across the campus. Local systems integrator AVT handled systems integration, with much of the AV equipment supplied by local distributor Peripheral Vision.

“We’ve been working with Stellenbosch since around 2020,” explains Gary Atkins, director at Digital Fabric. “Initially, it was all about hybrid learning and extending the physical classroom into a virtual environment. So we already had a strong understanding of their infrastructure, their users and how they operate.”

Following the identification of an unused space within the library, the immersive lab itself began as a concept in late 2021. Originally a storage area with an unusual footprint, the room presented both an opportunity and a challenge. “This space had effectively been empty for years, and it wasn’t really designed for this type of application at all,” Atkins recalls. “It was long and narrow, so the question was really, can we make this work as an immersive environment?”

The room’s proportions, combined with budget considerations and the need to maximise usability, meant that every element of the system had to be carefully evaluated. “We did a lot of sightline studies,” Atkins notes. “We had to look at where people could stand, how the projectors would behave in the space and how much usable floor area we could actually retain without people casting shadows onto the image.”

While the physical design was driven by those constraints, the technology strategy was shaped by a different priority – flexibility. Early concepts were based around a packaged immersive media server platform, but this approach was later reconsidered in favour of a more open system architecture. “We’d originally looked at a more closed solution,” Atkins explains. “It presented a very polished environment with a nice front end but, ultimately, was also quite restrictive. For a university, that’s a problem. They need to be able to run different applications, different software and they don’t want to be limited by plugins or licensing structures.”

It was these considerations that led Digital Fabric to build the system around a BRAINSALT media server platform, configured to provide what Atkins describes as “a very powerful, very flexible Windows-based environment”.

At its core, the lab is a 270° projection environment spanning three walls, built using five Optoma ZU820TST laser projectors to create a continuous, edge-blended visual canvas. Behind the scenes, a dual-server BRAINSALT B8 PRO system separates image processing from user applications, with a dedicated pixel server handling warping and blending across the projection surfaces, while a second render server allows users to run their own software.

“You don’t want users installing software on the same machine that’s doing all your projection mapping,” Atkins explains. “By separating those two environments, we ensure stability on the display side, while still giving the university complete freedom to manage their own applications.”

Control is managed via an Extron system with a touchpanel interface, while a simple Bose ceiling loudspeaker setup formed from a FreeSpace subwoofer and four in-ceiling speakers provides audio playback. The result is effectively a large-scale, curved desktop environment, where content can be introduced via network, laptop or NDI inputs and interacted with directly using tools such as a Surface Pro for annotation. Rather than a fixed immersive experience, the space operates as a flexible visual workspace that can be adapted to a wide range of academic applications.

For Klapwijk, this flexibility was essential to ensuring the long-term value of the space, particularly given its intended role as a shared resource across multiple faculties. “We’ve really opened the facility to all disciplines and all different use cases,” he says. “We have people from engineering, from visual arts, from urban planning, accountancy and computer science. Each of them wants to use the space in a different way.”

The usability of the space is the critical factor driving adoption. Rather than creating a complex or specialist environment, the system needs to be as intuitive for students and faculty as possible. “You press a button, the system starts up and you’re presented with a Windows desktop,” Klapwijk says. “From there, you can load your content, connect your laptop directly via a BirdDog Flex 4K or access data over the network. So, the experience is familiar to the user.”

“We didn’t want something that required a specialist operator every time,” Atkins adds. “If it’s too complicated, people just won’t use it.”

Although the facility only opened earlier this year, initial engagement suggests strong interest from across the academic community. “We’ve had many separate engagements already with academics from across all disciplines,” Klapwijk says. “They come in, they see the space and they start to think about how it could fit into their teaching.”

At this stage, however, the focus remains on familiarisation rather than formal integration into coursework. “It’s not yet curriculum-integrated,” he continues. “We expect that to come later. Lecturers need time to understand what the space can do and how it can be used effectively within their modules.”

This measured approach reflects a broader recognition that the success of such environments depends not just on the technology itself, but on how it is adopted and adapted by users over time. “Most immersive environments are built for a single use case,” Klapwijk observes. “In our case, we are trying to accommodate many different use cases within a single space. Our focus now is to understand what our users need and how far the current technology can support that.”

That process is expected to shape future developments, whether through software refinement, workflow adjustments or potential hardware upgrades. “We’ve deliberately allowed time for experimentation,” he furthers. “This year is really about learning how the space is used, identifying the limitations and then deciding how the current configuration can accommodate that.”

For Atkins, this emphasis on adaptability is what ultimately defines the project. “For us, it was not about building a showpiece,” he concludes, “but creating a tool that people will actually use. If the space is flexible, accessible and easy to work with, then it has a real chance of becoming part of the day-to-day academic workflow.”

In that sense, the immersive lab represents not just an extension of the university’s Makerspace, but a step towards a more integrated approach to teaching and learning, where the boundaries between creation, visualisation and collaboration are increasingly blurred.