Designing for children is certainly not child's play. While adults lead the design process, the end-users are often children, as seen in kindergartens, schools, and parks. Architects have the responsibility to create built environments that provide children with opportunities to play, explore, and learn, even in today's digital age.
Educational infrastructure is key to any community. The better the quality of these spaces, the better the learning experience for those who use them. However, these facilities often serve a much broader purpose than just education. In Global South communities, in countries like Peru or Vietnam, where a significant portion of the population lives in rural areas far from urban centers, there are few educational spaces and a lack of places where the entire community—not just the students—can come together.
For the 18th year, the International Architecture Awards has returned to celebrate outstanding architectural achievements globally. Based in Chicago, these awards feature exceptional new buildings, urban planning projects, and landscape architecture of 2023. Additionally, this month, the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB 5) is currently taking place in the city. Both the awards and the Biennial attempt to shed light on each country’s architectural, design, cultural, and social trends.
Since the inception of the International Architecture Awards in 2005, this annual program has served as a platform for celebrating contemporary architecture. Moreover, the awards institution believes in architecture’s potential to enhance the quality of life for individuals globally. This year, the selected winners span 48 countries, from Ethiopia to Tokyo and New York to Nova Scotia.
For architects, schools are often complex structures to design. They must provide a variety of spaces for education, and also consider sports and recreational activities. But beyond its size or surface, the greatest challenge is to design an area that fosters a positive pedagogical environment for children. Below, a selection of +70 school projects with their drawings to inspire your proposals for learning campuses.
Sports arenas hold significant relevance in society as they serve as vital meeting places for sports and cultural activities. They play a role in enhancing overall well-being, encouraging an active lifestyle, and fostering social inclusion. Within these projects, architects assume the responsibility of designing spaces that seamlessly accommodate athletes and the community. Moreover, architects must actively engage with the surroundings to create a harmonious dialogue and establish a distinct identity for the arena.
Environments that inspire, promote well-being and stimulate a connection with nature. Biophilic landscaping in education spaces recognizes the importance of this bond for student development, as it benefits well-being, academic performance, and people's health. We have selected eight projects that bring natural elements to the classroom or that place students directly in nature to illustrate the qualities in these spaces.
I always consider myself fortunate to have grown up outside the city, where my ‘cross-country’ lessons, for example –national right of hardship for 11-16-year-olds– were through the actual countryside rather than the high street. For many children, however, modern school life is not so close to nature.
Already over-populated cities are continuing to expand, meaning more schools are suffering from the limitations presented by inner-city architecture including noise, air, and light pollution; a lack of space, especially green space; restrictive budgets and building regulations resistant to change.
With innovative and considered design solutions, however, these four inner-city schools show the rest of the class how to work through their architectural answers and provide quality, green spaces for all.
On January 24th, the fifth edition of the 'International Education Day' was celebrated under the slogan "Invest in people, prioritize education". Proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly, it promotes a strong political mobilization seeking to chart the way and accelerate progress towards the 4th Sustainable Development Goal: Quality Education.
As part of the Circlewood consortium, OMA’s David Gianotten and Michel den Otter have developed a modular system to build schools that can adapt and transform throughout their lifecycle. The system was selected by the City of Amsterdam to be employed to build multiple schools in the coming ten years, as part of the Innovation Partnership School Buildings program. The citywide initiative aims to build nine to thirty “high-quality, flexible, and sustainable” schools as a way to contribute to the city’s goal of becoming fully circular by 2050.
For the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, the Bulgarian Pavilion will present the exhibition titled “Education is the movement from darkness to light.” Curators Boris Tikvarski, Bojidara Valkova, and Mariya Gyaurova, joined by Belgian photographer Alexander Dumarey, have chosen to focus the exhibition on the subject of depopulation, urban decline, and rural flight, expressed through the image of abandoned schools present in the country. The project was selected following a national competition organized by The Ministry of Culture, The Chamber of Architects in Bulgaria, and the Union of Architects.
Hidden in plain sight, ceilings are often the final surface interior designers and architects think about, but the expansive plane of unobstructed plaster or concrete offers mar more creative freedom than we realize. Modern design rules demand that the ceiling is kept clean. Not with a telescopic mop attachment, but by stripping off the popcorn spray, wood-chip wallpaper, or plaster patterning that haunt my own memories of ceilings-past.
While many clients greet this contemporary need for clean lines with acquiescence, choosing smooth, skimmed plaster finishes with unobtrusive yet forgetful recessed spots, other bolder clients recognize the ceiling’s potential for the creative outlet it is.
Pantone has revealed its Color of the Year for 2023, 18-1750 Viva Magenta, a brand-new color "brave and fearless, whose exuberance promotes a joyous and optimistic celebration." The shade falls under the red family and is inspired by the tone of cochineal extract, one of the most precious dyes historically used to color textiles, cosmetics, and food.
Hard times bring people together. In recent years we have seen how collective work can be a driving force to help those affected by natural or man-made disasters. After a disaster or displacement, a safe physical environment is often essential. Therefore, the need for coordination becomes a key factor in assisting people in times of need.
Architects, as "Shelter Specialists", play an important role in creating safe and adequate environments, whether it is individual housing, public buildings, schools, or emergency tent camps. But as architect Diébédo Francis Kéré says, "When you have nothing and you want to convince your community to believe in an idea, it may happen that everybody starts working with you, but you need to keep fighting to convince them."
The New York City Senate and Assembly have passed the SIGH act, prohibiting the construction of new schools near major roadways. The act, named The Schools Impact by Gross Highways Act, aims to protect school-age children from air pollution. Under this law, the commissioner of education for the city will not be able to approve the plans for the construction of any new schoolhouse within 500 feet (150 meters) of a controlled-access highway unless the commissioner determines that space limitations are so severe that there is no other site to erect such new schoolhouse.
This week’s curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights educational facilities submitted by the ArchDaily community. From a contextual Earth school in Senegal, to a borderless, collaborative school in Vietnam, this round up of unbuilt projects showcases how architects infused nature with architecture, offering students the chance to engage with the landscape and learn more about their surroundings from their academic institutes. The article also features projects from Lebanon, Switzerland, Armenia, Ukraine, and Greece.
Creating an educational setting is a specific and sensitive task. Merging children’s safety and learning optimization requirements with an aesthetic appeal and solid concept can birth some of the most beautiful unique projects around. One configuration we see quite often is the elliptical or circular school.
A new report from The Trust for Public Land (TPL) makes a compelling case for transforming underperforming, paved public schoolyards into green oases for the entire community. While the benefits for schools and their educational communities are clear, TPL sees an opportunity to open up these facilities to surrounding neighborhoods after school hours, on weekends, and when school is out. If all 90,000 public schools in the country had a “community schoolyard,” more communities could tackle the persistent park equity issue — in which too few communities, particularly undeserved ones, enjoy access to nearby high-quality public green spaces. TPL argues that opening up all schoolyards, essentially turning them into part-time all-access community hubs, would “put a park within a 10-minute walk of nearly 20 million people — solving the problem of outdoor access for one-fifth of the nation’s 100 million people who don’t currently have a park close to home.”
.jpg?1656583509 "The Creeper – COAF Smart Campus Armavir by TarberAK Architectural Studio; TL Bureau. Image Courtesy of TarberAK Architectural Studio; TL Bureau")
