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There’s a clearer understanding that the built environment has a role to play in the education of our children
Bradford Perkins, founder of Perkins Eastman, runs through some of the issues that are having a significant impact on the planning and design of schools in the United States and other developed countries
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Concordia International School Shanghai High School by Perkins Eastman |
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Technology: After years of technologies that were “destined to change education” (radio, film, television, programmed learning, etc), information technology is finally beginning to live up to its advance hype. Web access, distance learning, virtual science experiments, libraries becoming media centers, and hundreds of other applications are being woven into the curriculum and daily life of schools. Leading schools are moving to a laptop or other device for every student in a wireless environment.
Learning outside the classroom: More and more learning is taking place outside the traditional classroom. Learning in smaller group settings, team teaching, and other trends call for a variety of new types of learning spaces and less reliance on the traditional classroom.
Alternative gateways to learning: There is a growing recognition that each child learns differently. Most Western education has been built around verbal and math skills but the gateway to some children’s minds may be through music or art or some other “intelligence.” Providing learning environments that facilitate access to different learning gateways may have a real impact on school planning and curricula. Again, this trend is reducing reliance on the traditional classroom and increasing the need for special project spaces.
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The charter school movement: Charter schools, with their common mandate to reinvent the educational experience without the restrictions of teachers unions and strict central board of education guidelines, have fostered a number of encouraging experiments in school design, curriculum, and operation—particularly in inner city neighborhoods.
The growing commitment to rebuild obsolete schools: While it has been uneven, more and more school districts, cities, and states have committed the funds to rebuild some of the most obsolete schools – again, many of which are in inner city neighbourhoods. In the US, New York City, Chicago, and cities in New Jersey have made major capital commitments to creating attractive, modern learning environments for neighborhoods that had not seen a new school in decades.
Evidenced-based design: There is a broader and clearer understanding that the built environment has a role to play in the education of our children. At the same time, there is growing interest in reliable environmental research to support design decisions. Today there is a growing body of evidence on subjects as varied as the impact of day lighting to the potential benefits of smaller high schools.
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Program growth: School districts across the country have been adding programs that call for ongoing growth and change. Early childhood education, English as a second language, reduced class sizes, and many other trends and policies are forcing schools to add to and reconfigure their buildings even in districts where there has been no increase in student enrollment. The Obama administration’s support of a large increase in early childhood education is just one of the policy changes that will be having a major impact on school planning.
Schools as community centres: Communities that are making large capital investments in their schools often want to get more use out of these assets. In spite of growing concerns about school safety and security, many communities are turning schools in to community centers offering programs year round to many age groups. Athletic facilities, large meeting and performance spaces, and even classrooms are being made available.
Sustainable design: The rapidly growing interest in sustainable design has caught on in hundreds of school districts. Unlike the initial experiments that only focused on basic energy conservation during the first energy crisis in the 1970s, schools today are proving to be ideal laboratories for implementation and testing of the full range of sustainable design concepts including water conservation, use of renewable resources, indoor air quality, etc. Sustainable design has even become part of the curriculum in many schools with the school providing lessons with their design.
A flat world: Schools within the U.S. and other developed countries are changing to reflect their multicultural student bodies as well as the fact that students will be competing in a global economy when they grow up. School design is even evolving as educators and their design teams import ideas that they have learned from their involvement with schools around the world.
There is a growing understanding that our future is closely tied to the quality of our children’s education. The planning and design of our schools have a major role to play in this effort.
Bradford Perkins, founder of Perkins Eastman, an international architecture firm with 13 offices and a large specialised practice in school design. He has been the author of five books published by John Wiley & Sons including the recently released second edition of Building Type Basics for Elementary and Secondary Schools well as more than 100 other book chapters and articles on planning and design
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