Bringing a newborn home from the hospital can come with stress for any parent. Coming home with twins can be double the stress. This article shares the story of a couple faced with this situation 12 years ago with the birth of twins, one was born with complications. They lived in a Colonial until the twins were almost five years old, at which time…

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,…

As the designer of primary and secondary educational facilities, the author has become familiar with educational thinkers such as Sir Kenneth Robinson, Peter Senge, Ewan McIntosh, Daniel Pink and Howard Gardner--each promoting an approach based on system-thinking, self-directed exploration and multidimensional, interactive learning. In 2009, he…

School design has developed into a specialized area in the interior design field. When considering candidates for a school or university project, education institutions should move beyond a prospective designer's resume of experience and accomplishments in order to get a better handle on what to expect when working together. This article offers…

Making furniture decisions can involve many factors, and they vary from institution to institution. For fixtures, furnishings and equipment, comparing initial cost with the cost of ownership over a life cycle can be more challenging. It may be the functionality of the furnishings that provides the greatest return on investment. In this article,…

Parents of children with special needs are beginning to realize that a home designed for their child who might now use a wheelchair may benefit them as well in the future as they "Age in Place". As the boomers age and Medicare and Medicaid seem to possibly decline in the not so distant future as a source of funding for elderly and special needs…

Designing break-the-mold classrooms--learning spaces that depart dramatically from traditional classrooms--comes with increased risk, especially when the design will be replicated multiple times within a new building. One way to reduce risk is to build a life-size mock-up classroom before making final design decisions. This can help faculty better…

Universal design is the design of environments and products to be used by people of all ages and abilities. The goal is to use design to reduce physical effort, regardless of some of the frailties that may be acquired due to an accident, health, or age. EasyLiving Homes[R] is a non-profit organization that advocates making all homes visitable and…

This experiential teaching method demonstrates students' enhanced understanding of the influences that cross-cultural perspectives have on the interior design of the home and is achieved through research and application of elements of assimilation and acculturation in the United States. Knowledge of human factors, family dynamics, geographic…

The question of remodeling an existing house to make it wheelchair accessible or building a new barrier-free house is a difficult decision. This article presents some initial questions and considerations followed by a list of pros and cons for remodeling an existing house vs. building a new house.

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how a large comprehensive family and consumer sciences unit has incorporated sustainability into its curriculum and research agenda. It summarizes how each area within the department (Interior Design, Apparel Design and Merchandising, Consumer Affairs, Family Studies, Nutrition, Dietetics, and Food…

As school administrators search for empirically-based ways to facilitate student learning, their efforts are confined and constrained by decreasing budgets. In short, doing more with less is their charge. This article describes a no-cost, evidenced-based best practice to raise student achievement and engagement in the elementary grades based on…

Accreditation for Family and Consumer Sciences and for Interior Design programs includes standards to globalize education of undergraduate students. An integrative approach to planning curriculum relates the concept of global interdependence to the development of critical thinking skills for student decision-making. This was addressed in modifying…

This article describes how Beverly and Martin Ryfa, working with an architect who specializes in accessible design, were able to build a house that is handicap accessible for their 9-year-old daughter, Danielle, who suffered an intraventricular hemorrhage when she was three days old. The article describes the features of their house that make…

While some Olympic results don't leave room for argument, scoring other events such as gymnastics, is subjective. So much so that in 2006, the "Code of Points" and the entire scoring system were overhauled. It is the same with school design. One might think it would be nice to have a "Code of Points," so that every education institution could…