The Design of Design Spaces Thread

Hello everyone!
As you might have gleaned from another thread of mine, "1001 Game Ideas and a Question", I am an italian Ph.D. Student in education and communication
searching for a place that gives games their due, and I might have found it in the University of Tampere.
Beside the idea book I shared in the other thread, there are other wonders here that I think the community might find useful/interesting. Here are some links pertaining the Oasis Room, designed as a playful learning-and-design space for perspective game designers, and inspired by the colorful headquarters of many media big names:

Twitter.com
Facebook.com
Oasis.uta.fi

I must say that the room is extremely comfortable and stimulating. I always found academic contexts (especially libraries) a bit gloomy and hard to be creative in. This is something completely new, in my experience.

So, here comes a new question: have you ever done something to make an environment more conducive to game design? Or, even if you didn't, have you got some thoughts/suggestions on this kind of "design for better design"?