Linking Architecture and Education: Sustainable Design of Learning Environments

Chapter One: The Need for New Thinking

| 3 Chapter One The Need for New Thinking Overview Architecture and education intersect when it comes time to plan, design, build, and use new learning environments. How can educators, architects , administrators, school boards, parents, and other interested community members make the most of this interaction? What can architects do to support education, and how can educators contribute to the design process? How can we create interactive environments that serve as threedimensional textbooks for learning? What elements in the physical learning environment will compel students to be responsible for their own intellectual growth and whet their appetites for knowledge? In discussing these questions, this book connects the two complex disciplines of architecture and education for their mutual benefit and the benefit of society. Architects and educators must understand each other and develop a shared vocabulary encompassing educational theories, developmental requirements of growing children, aesthetic theory, and practical issues of designing schools. Our children will reap the rewards of this integrated approach when they are able to occupy and use spaces designed expressly to stimulate their natural curiosity, where architecture is not a vacuous space but a learning tool. Many valuable resources for school facility planning list educational specifications, cite codes and regulations, outline the planning process, show precedents, and give predetermined guidelines for design. Other publications written for educators explain educational philosophy, advocate current trends in instructional methods, or list content standards for schools. Rarely, however, do authors attempt to explore the connections between architectural design and learning theory. A goal of this book is to define the unique territory that can arise from a true interdisciplinary understanding of place. When architects are cognizant of educational concepts across subject matter areas, they can design spaces that support those concepts. When educators learn to view the environment as a source of meaning, they begin to use the world of physical objects as a teaching tool to help students understand the underlying laws and principles that govern our complex, precious universe. This is a book about transcending narrow or limited views of both education and architecture. It is not merely a catalog of typical existing schools to be used as precedents for design. Instead, this book looks| 3 The Philosophical Framework 4 | forward and outward to design innovations that are not yet commonly found in our schools. My aim is to present examples of informed design to help people everywhere develop the knowing eye and attain a heightened state of awareness that allows them to see and “read” the interconnectedness of all things in the built, natural, and cultural environment. The book introduces new ways of thinking about design of school facilities and encourages a deep sense of responsibility toward the betterment of society reflected in the choices educators , architects, parents, and other citizens make on behalf of children. Educators need to stop talking only to themselves and initiate a dialogue with the public about more successful ways to educate children and adults. The call for progressive leadership presents a special challenge to architects, too, not only to design effectively, but also to explicate the ideas that formulate their work. This is an idealistic book that asks architects, educators, and parents to aim high and set new priorities. It is a book about entertaining possibilities, suspending disbelief and cynical thinking, and overcoming apathy and perceived barriers to high-quality educational environments. It is about choosing the path of creativity, generosity, and caring over that of distrust, fear, or destructiveness. An intelligently designed, attractive, ecologically responsive learning environment is not a waste of taxpayer money or an unrealistic dream, but rather a vital, concrete endorsement of our better nature and our professed concern for children and the future of the world. Author Jonathan Kozol asserts that America can afford to pay for good schools for all children. Kozol’s The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America (2005) documents inequities in our public schools. During a recent book tour stop in Portland, Oregon, Kozol expressed his frustration with the frequently asked question, “Can you really solve this kind of problem by throwing money at it?” Why is it, he wonders, that we “allocate funds” to the Pentagon, but we “throw money” at schools? And why, if money is not important to education, do so many affluent families pay huge sums for private education for their children? In an interview taped for Alternative Radio in Boulder, Colorado, Kozol’s response to the question of money for schools was: throw it! “I...