As educators consider designing excellent spaces for education, it is helpful to take a broader look and talk about their approach to design the questions they need to ask. Rather than talk about specific designs of school buildings, the author suggests that they should refocus their vision and look at how ideas of citizenship, the home and current scientific thinking on the development of children and educational thinking can inform their work. Keen photographers will have heard of the Rule of Thirds: composing or cropping a photograph so that the main lines in the scene lie on the vertical and horizontal third points of the picture. Coupled with this, a broad analysis of people's energy consumption, a third of it is at work, a third at home, and a third in moving between the two. To find a new approach, to stimulate new questions, the author suggests to take the rule of thirds and apply it to one's thoughts and planning of a community where education is at the centre. This discussion focuses on early childhood and primary school examples, but many of the points apply equally to older children.