UK furniture brand UNIT Fabrications has created a series of mobile screens for a primary school in London to help pupils returning from coronavirus lockdown to social distance.

UNIT Fabrications created the screens after being approached by the Charles Dickens Primary School's head teacher to help create a masterplan to implement social distancing measures at the school.

"With a two-week lead time before the phased return of reception, year 1 and year 6 classes, the plan needed to divide and utilise the existing space, whilst creating a friendly, visually clear map for pupils to safely navigate the space," explained UNIT Fabrications director Toby Hadden.

One of the main physical interventions made by the furniture brand was a series of colourful screens that will be used to divide up the internal spaces.

Each of the screens is made from a plywood panel, which is colour laminated on both sides, framed by two exposed plywood fins that are mounted on machine castors.

"The coloured laminate is playful and easy to clean whilst the ply details give the panels warmth," Hadden told Dezeen.

"From a scaling perspective, the screens had to be designed at a height to enable teachers to maintain a visual of their class whilst creating enough of a barrier for the pupils not to interact outside of their bubbles."

When designing the screens, UNIT Fabrications chose to combine the timber with bright colours so that the children didn't immediately associate the furniture with the current pandemic.