Discusses successes and failures of subsidized housing in urban areas and the relationship between architectural environment and quality of life, particularly as regards high-rise buildings. Given that some high-rise projects are successful, most should be maintained because of the scarcity of low-income housing. (DM)

Discusses the benefits of teaching architecture to gifted students and describes a unit implemented in elementary gifted classrooms. Student activities included researching architects' styles, creating model-building exteriors out of mixed media, creating floor plans, designing interiors, and brainstorming with resource people from fields related…

Historians, architectural historians, folklorists, archaeologists, geographers, and preservationists are engaged in documenting and interpreting the material record of human occupation through systematic study of the built environment. "Vernacular architecture" as an object-oriented approach to cultural and historic research is discussed…

Highlights six award-winning newly constructed or renovated/restored K-8 school design projects for 2000. Design descriptions, data, and photos are provided along with information about the architectural design firm used and costs per square foot and per student. (GR)

Highlights two award-winning newly constructed or renovated/restored middle/high school design projects for 2000. Design descriptions, data, and photos are provided along with information about the architectural design firm used and costs per square foot and per student. (GR)

Describes projects that focus on the design, purpose, and materials of windows, such as making mock window displays and redesigning on paper stained glass windows. Provides a list of project ideas and pictures of different types of windows. (CMK)

Uses Frank Lloyd Wright's (1867-1959) organic architecture as a metaphor to define the relationship between a part and a whole, whether the focus is on a building and its surroundings or information delivered via hypertext. Reviews effective strategies for designing text information via hypertext and incorporates three levels of information…

Describes Davis, Fuster Arquitectos' design of an arts school in Puerto Rico as a sequence of light-dappled loggias and sun-drenched courtyards. Includes drawings and photographs. (EV)

Describes the new San Pasqual Union School, designed to blend with its surrounding agricultural community in California; serving grades K-8, the 26-acre compound resembles a working farm, but buildings include 21st-century technology. Includes photographs, project data, and a sidebar on whiteboard technology products. (EV)

A review of more than 100 educational facilities designs revealed common themes: desire for small communities of learners even in large schools, facilities that reflect the community they serve, and larger, more flexible classroom spaces that serve a variety of subject areas. Also noted was an "everything old is new again" trend and attention to…

Discusses spirals in nature, man-made objects, and art. Focuses on art that incorporates the spiral, including works by M. C. Escher and Frank Lloyd Wright, an African headdress, and a burial urn. Describes activities to help students make spirals of their own, such as constructing a coil clay pot. (CMK)

Kerr wrote of the black box of design decisions--that time when the "heart of an instructional solution first appears." Petroski writes of judgment as indispensable for engineering design decisions. Both instructional design and engineering are design sciences, yet engineering has a rich tradition of discussing and reflecting upon design…

While many aspects of school design have changed over the years, unfortunately the process to find the best architect is the same in many ways today as it was 20 years ago. Design teams announce how many schools they have designed, show lots of pretty photographs and list what each team member will do on the project. Education is a business and…

This article draws from the insights offered by discourse analysis and the study of gesture to examine imagination as a product of, and resource for, social action. Using data collected during ethnographic fieldwork at an architecture firm, the article explores how imagining can emerge from a group of interactants who use many semiotic media,…

As an aesthetic form, architecture deals with the creation and definition of space expressed in buildings and other physical structures. The Colosseum in Rome, Notre Dame in Paris, and the United States capital in Washington, through their designs define space, capture our imagination, and communicate important cultural and historical messages.…