This article examines the changing architectural environments of deaf education in the nineteenth century, taking the national institutes in Paris and Bordeaux as its main focus. Founded in the late eighteenth century and initially housed in government-expropriated properties, both schools underwent comprehensive renovation and reconstruction…

School facilities are increasingly seen as essential to achieving educational equity. By foregrounding often taken-for-granted school spaces, this conceptual article seeks to situate school design within broader antiracist efforts in education. To that end, I make a few critical contributions: (a) I shift attention to the social construction and…

From Froebel and the constructivists's early educational theories to more recent posthumanist thinking, early childhood development (ECD) has been understood to be optimal when it occurs at the level of senses and bodies. 'Integration' discourses prevalent in ECD educational policy and curriculum debates have pointed towards sensing bodies in…

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s architectural education saw to the emergence of radical attempts to reconnect pedagogy with "the real world" and to forge greater social responsibility in architecture. From this epoch of important political, social, and environmental action, this article discusses three "encounters" between…

The bricks and mortar classroom has a long and storied history. The digital classroom is so new and different it may be wrong to even call it a "classroom". The authors argue that architecture influences behavior. So in constructing our new digital classrooms we must pay attention to the architecture and what job we want that…

This article reports on the opening up of a new, rich seam of interdisciplinary research that brings together historians of education with historians of art and architecture to examine the meaning and incidence of "The Decorated School". It examines the origins of the idea of art as educator in the nineteenth century and discusses how…

When architects discuss the educational facilities of the next century and beyond, the conversation turns to collaborative spaces. They envision flexible and fluid spaces that will encourage creative and critical thinking, and free students to communicate clearly about the task at hand. While these are admirable ideals, there are some fundamental…

Five years ago the author embarked on an odyssey that would fundamentally change his life as an architect. He and his partner, Dave Deppen, were selected through a very competitive process to design a new Child Development and Family Studies Center in the Sierra Foothills, near Yosemite National Park for Columbia College. The Columbia College…

In all modern societies almost everyone of their citizens have spent many years in school buildings, and the largest professional group in modern societies, teachers, is working every day during the working year in school buildings. In spite of this, we know surprisingly little about the influence of school buildings on the people who use them and…

The American Institute of Architecture's Committee on Architecture for Education (CAE) held their annual fall conference in Helsinki, Finland. Several international studies have rated Finland among the world's best in student achievement, largely due to the country's main principles for comprehensive education. This stands in sharp contrast to…

Over the past ten years, the Sorrell Foundation--a UK education charity--has demonstrated, through practical design projects, the advantages of involving children and young people as the main consumers of their school. The results of Sorrell Foundation projects have not only been extremely positive, but also highly creative. This article discusses…

This article explores the European dimension of a collaborative approach to school design through the lives and relationships of a group of key individuals who in England set about transforming school in the post-war era. The philosophy and practice of this group of architects, educators, designers and policy makers, who regarded the school…

This article argues in favour of challenging "best practice" generally accepted by the architectural profession by embracing a responsive design approach for creating learning environments. Such an approach accepts that the environment shapes the learner, and that learners influence their environment. A responsive design approach would embrace the…

Educating our children about our planet is a good idea, but if seeing is believing, then maybe we should consider that the next generation of school buildings such as the Redding School of the Arts can serve as potent educational tools for our teachers to utilize in their lesson plans on how to preserve our planet. Buildings are too rarely…

This article recommends approaches to take in designing sustainable educational environments. The authors present recent examples of UK school buildings that reduce carbon emissions and capitalise on renewable energy sources, and predict how schools will respond to energy needs in the future. (Contains 1 footnote.)