The redesign of learning spaces has been a growing trend in education, especially higher education. The redesign of such spaces takes time and involves a variety of stakeholders, sometimes resulting in ill-defined designs. This can be exacerbated when individuals leading such efforts depart and there is not a consensus on the design, sometimes…

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…

Amid increasing global and national interest in the built educational environment, this editorial considers developments within the Nordic countries that are investigated and discussed within the articles in this special issue. We discuss commonalities and divergences in the experiences of transition and change in the schools, located in a range…

In this article, Shushok, Farquhar-Caddell, and Krimowski, compare the vestiges of old residential environments as introduced in a 1981 article entitled "Invitational Engineering in the Residence Halls" by Jack Murphy and William Purkey ("The Journal of College and University Student Housing," v11 n1 p13-16 Sum 1981) (See in…

The United States has about $2 trillion tied up in aging school facilities. School districts throughout the country spend about $12 billion every year keeping this infrastructure going. Yet almost all of the new money we pour into school facilities reinforces an existing--and obsolete--model of schooling. In "Blueprint for Tomorrow,"…

Many school and college campuses are like small cities--they offer a little bit of everything. Although academic buildings and residence halls account for a sizable percentage of the facilities on a campus, the academic community on a school campus can include other buildings with specialized design and performance needs: laboratories,…

Today, the threat that has caught the attention of many Americans is Mother Nature herself. 2010 and 2011 may go down as two of the most destructive years in the recent history: The Haiti earthquake; the Icelandic volcanoes; the Japan earthquake and tsunami; flooding along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers; wildfires raging in Texas. And, a…

Good architecture responds to contemporary challenges, irrespective of fashionable trends, and is characterised by rigorous building processes. Office buildings, housing, stadiums and theatres offer outstanding examples of this principle. But do school buildings figure among them? Happily, in Germany they do, although they are still too rare. This…

This article presents a critical overview of European school building design types, based on an analysis of morphologies and spatial layouts. The different design types are evaluated in function of specific didactic and social needs. (Contains 1 figure, 18 footnotes, a bibliography and 2 online resources.)

School design utilizing integrated architectural and structural precast and prestressed concrete components has gained greater acceptance recently for numerous reasons, including increasingly sophisticated owners and improved learning environments based on material benefits such as: sustainability, energy efficiency, indoor air quality, storm…

This publication, part of the new Building and Infrastructure Protection Series (BIPS) published by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) Infrastructure Protection and Disaster Management Division (IDD), serves to advance high performance and integrated design for buildings and infrastructure. This…

As a technologist, the author is interested in how the digital world is changing the educational landscape. As he began to research effective learning spaces, he discovered that the architecture, design, and school facilities communities are making a great deal of progress in creating better classrooms and school buildings. Unfortunately, many in…

There has been a tremendous increase in use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in the design and construction industry. There have been numerous case studies that have documented the improvements. The majority of these improvements have focused on better coordination of design resulting in fewer Requests for Information and/or change orders.…

After a 35-year building hiatus, the nine colleges in the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) needed a major facelift. Facilities on LACCD campuses were antiquated and had fallen into disrepair. For years, students voiced dismay, saying their campuses resembled high schools rather than colleges. Inadequate infrastructure drove many…

It is important to engender a "sustainable" architectural consciousness in the students who will be the next generation architects. In architectural education, design decisions taken during the early phases of the design process play an important role in ensuring concern for the sustainability issue. But, in general, all discussions…