The role of a school is to prepare children for life. But with life-changing faster than ever, schools need to change just as quickly. Recent additions to school curriculums reflect the complexities of modern life, with environmental crises, societal injustices, and the dangers of social media now major parts of the syllabus.
Although it’s often said that long-term change begins at ground-level, change is never easy, wherever it starts. For example, a curriculum that responds to environmental issues is said to cause growing instances of eco-anxiety in children, one of a number of causes of another crisis, in children’s mental health.
As what we educate children changes, educational environments change too. Not just with low-carbon buildings and outdoor teaching demonstrating sustainability, but with modern spaces that teach children how to navigate climate, social, and inclusivity issues, while also caring for themselves and their own mental health by learning how to talk, and listen, to others.
"Be True To Yourself" in a Private Space of One’s Own: Lockers
People, especially impressionable young people, should be taught they do not need to change as much as society seems to suggest. But honesty with oneself is hard when you don’t yet know who you are. Fear of not fitting in is one of the more traditional causes of school anxiety and forces children to wear many different hats throughout the day. Which can be psychologically exhausting. Private storage spaces like lockers allow students to keep personal objects nearby, thus creating a safe, comfortable space to return to. At Hello School in Dnipro, Ukraine, for example, large personal lockers and desks with personal storage compartments are part of the school’s commitment to providing comfortable, private environments for children.
Hello School Interiors / SVOYA Studio
Lycée Bel Val / Atelier d’Architecture et de Design Jim Clemes
Saint George's College Classrooms, Courtyards and Corridors Renovations / Elton&Deves
Arabista Ribera School / Victor García Martínez
The East Harlem School / GLUCK+
The Future Is Secure: Softening the Hard Edge of School Security
As the number of school shootings continues to rise, school security is as big a part of education environments as ever, with some teachers in the US now mandated to lock their classrooms during class, despite the resulting effect on fire safety. Some, like Lisle Elementary School in Illinois, US, provide hidden student safety features such as security camera surveillance, along with exterior and interior doors that lock simultaneously during a lockdown. While the Animo South Los Angeles High School in LA, US, which was rebuilt after a fire, keeps the school setting both fun and safe, surrounding it with a 20-foot-hight bulletproof aluminum fence that ‘sparkles in the sun and glows at night,’ share the architects Brooks + Scarpa.
Lisle Elementary School / Perkins and Will
Animo South Los Angeles High School / BROOKS + SCARPA
Moulon Group of Schools / Dominique Coulon & associés
Back of the Yards High School / STL Architects
Creating Positivity and Pride with School Spirit
Bullet-proof fences and security camera networks can improve student safety, but can instead spread the uncomfortable feeling of fear. By using a palette of identifiable color schemes, design motifs, and logos, however, a strong school spirit changes the atmosphere to become more positive and joyful. The Menlo School MAC in Atherton, California, US, for example, flanks its school’s sports gymnasium with retractable bleacher seats and positions a hall of fame trophy cabinet overlooking the arena for the entire school to share its success. UDEM high school’s Maker Space Building in San Pedro Garza García, Mexico, meanwhile, proves success is not just measured in sporting achievement, with perimeter-set shelving showcasing students’ produced objects inside and out.
Menlo School MAC / Kevin Hart Architecture
Maker Space Building / Garza Camisay arquitectos
Renovation of the Primary School Affiliated to Longjiang Foreign Language School / Atelier cnS
Riverbank High School / Darden Architects
Using Learning Spaces to Serve the Community
By adding audience seating to school sports team gymnasiums, schools can invite and share their success with the community, spreading positivity to the local high street, as well as school corridors. But as schools are only used for part of the week, by opening up their common areas, they can help the local community more directly. The Community Canvas School in Sawarpada, India, for example, allows its circular central courtyard to be used for community activities such as political campaigns, performances, and temporary health care. Whereas the Copenhagen International School in Denmark closes off classrooms for common areas like the canteen, library, and performance facilities, keeping them open for community events outside school hours.
Community Canvas School / pk_iNCEPTiON
Copenhagen International School Nordhavn / C.F. Møller
Reggio School / Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation
Porto Potenza Picena Primary School / Settanta7
Aspen Community School / Studio B Architecture + Interiors
Educational Social Spaces
Schools teach more than just maths, languages, and science. They’re also where children learn about life: how to talk to one another with empathy, learn from each other with grace, ask for help with humility, and listen with understanding. In short, schools teach how to be a good friend. It’s imperative, therefore, that they provide both the environments and opportunities for children to learn social skills, by being social.
With many resources now available online, the Stevenson School Library in Del Monte Forest, California, US, found they had an abundance of unused space, so transformed the once quiet library into a multi-use presentation, collaboration, and social space. While Victoria Park Academy in Shenzhen, China, has an area of the school dedicated to social networking, and a timetable with ten minutes of the social recess between each class.
Stevenson School Library / Studio O+A
Victoria Park Academy / Atelier Global
Children's Campus Theodoor / cuypers & Q architecten
Billie Holiday School Complex / BPM Architectes
SISB School Thonburi Phase II / Plan Architect
Adaptable: Ready for an Unknown Future
Designing a school with laptop-friendly power sockets in every desk, or even a designated Twitter area, as Victoria Park Academy has, seems like a sensible way to future-product classrooms from the digital path we’re on. But those design considerations are responses to the educational environment we can see already changing around us. What about the more urgent future events we find harder to predict?
Whether we look to examples like Mount Si High School in Washington State, US, which is raised above-ground to protect from flood waters due to its valley location, Reeds Spring Middle School’s tornado-proof, vegetated roof in Missouri, US, or Santa Monica High School’s adaptable classrooms in Malibu, California, US, designed and prepared for the building’s adaptive reuse from the outset, education spaces that consider the uncertain certainties of future events are those that will last the longest.
Mount Si High School / NAC Architecture
Reeds Spring Middle School / Dake Wells Architecture
Santa Monica High School Discovery Building / HED + Moore Ruble Yudell
Desiderata Alternative High School / Jones Studio
Curro Durbanville Highschool / BPAS Architects
Learning to Utilize and Conserve Outdoor Spaces
There’s been a huge shift towards biophilic workplaces in the last decade or so. Well before the pandemic we started to realize how important it s for employee well-being to have regular access to green, outdoor space throughout the working day. Schools meanwhile, essentially workplaces for children, are no different. By positioning its collected buildings around a green-topped playground space, the Kincang Modern Pre-School in Shaoxing, China, allows children to playfully discover the natural world in the center of a very urban environment, enclosed and protected from the city. The Belvue School in London, UK, meanwhile, utilized its location aside from woodland by installing two rooms to sit on the edge of the spinney and house unique facilities which allow environmental learning.
Kincang Modern Pre-School / LYCS Architecture
Woodland Classrooms Belvue School / Studio Weave
Farm Kindergarten Rheinhof / MWArchitekten
Quzhou Xinhua No. 2 Primary School / LYCS Architecture
Environmental Classroom UES / Plan:b arquitectos
Alternative Learning: Collaborative Space
As well as biophilic design, using other contemporary design techniques to create more comfortable, productive, and empathetic workplaces has an obvious correlation with learning space too. Education systems have failed children in the past by assuming everyone learns in the same way – sitting quietly and reading from a blackboard or textbook. Research in educational psychology, however, tells us that providing alternative types of learning improves both the student experience and the results. The Yokohama International School, in Japan, for example, includes diverse ‘open hubs’ that connect classrooms and facilitate collaborative group work, while the John S. McCain III Elementary School in Buckeye, Arizona, US, features environments with multi-dimensional infrastructure, reaching a high degree of flexibility, variety, and collaborative opportunities.
Yokohama International School / TAISEI DESIGN Planners Architects & Engineers + Kengo Kuma & Associates
John S. McCain III Elementary School / Orcutt | Winslow
Kindergarten in Saint-Ouen-Du-Tilleul / ACAU Architectes
Prototype for UDEM Polytechnic / Bernardo Hinojosa
Find these Contemporary School Design projects in this My ArchDaily folder created by the author.
