A study conducted by Indiana University's National Study of Student Engagement reveals that architecture majors spend the most time outside of their classes studying, beating out even engineers. On average, an architecture major will spend 22.2 hours a week working on projects and generally... View full entry
School buildings in the UK are of such poor quality that children are underperforming and teachers are quitting the classroom, experts have warned.
A new study by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) found that one in five teachers have considered leaving their school as a result of stressful, overcrowded working environments caused by the poorly designed buildings they have to teach in.
— independent.co.uk
Relating UK articles here: Crossrail unveils images of new Elizabeth line stationsLatest University of Westminster Burning Man studio project needs a KickstartThis week's picks for London architecture and design events View full entry
'None of the buildings seemed built to impose and in all of them one had the sense that what mattered about a room was the spirit and determination with which it was filled, and the uses to which ingenuity could put it. When I want to remember what a first-class education felt like, that is the architecture I remember, and it mattered solely because of what people did with it.' — The Guardian
It seems that no matter how many years have passed, those schoolyard memories — whether cheerful or hellish — will always be buried in the back of our minds. In light of the 2015 Stirling Prize recently awarded to the Burntwood School in Wandsworth, London, some of The Guardian's writers share... View full entry
"The design of a school itself might matter as much as something like a gym class. 'The environments in which we live affect not just our behaviors, but our lifelong attitudes about things like healthy eating and active lifestyles...It's also clear that it's so much better to help prevent children from becoming obese than to try to help adults lose weight.' — Fast Company
More on Archinect:Abandoned schools = new development opportunities"Active design" movement wants to trick you into taking the stairsJason Danziger heals psychosis with designNew Parsons-led collaborative aims to make affordable housing healthier View full entry
Curiosity is a driving force in architecture, design, and just about every creative field. Whether it was through collaborative projects in grade school, reading comic books, or sitting in a corner doodling away, it's not unusual for creative practitioners to say their interests were formed during... View full entry
... how does using a different physical space have an impact on learning? Bosch argued that changing the environment helps teachers and students to break free from old habits: "One of the things you can do is create an environment where you cannot function the same way as you used to. What happens when you go out of the school into a theatre, you have to improvise. When you improvise, you start learning and developing." — guardian.co.uk
Architecture for Humanity announced their strategic partnership with the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). The announcement comes in conjunction with today’s release of the Center for Green Schools 2013 State of our Schools Report, which calls for the... View full entry
Mark Simon, a founding partner of Centerbrook Architects and Planners, agrees. “I think [bars and other fortifying techniques] send the wrong message to both kids and teachers,” he says. Based in Centerbrook, Connecticut, Simon has designed 20 school buildings, including five public elementary schools, though none in Newtown. “Buildings tell stories, and when a building is designed that way, it tells you that it doesn’t trust you. And kids intuit that they’re not trusted,” he says. — archrecord.construction.com
After seeing “Best School in the World,” a Center for Architecture exhibition on the progressive learning environments where Finnish students to the top of world rankings, New York’s Justin Davidson aligned the layout of these schools more with tech company offices. We’ve rounded up a few of the design perks that your middle-school self never dreamed of. — blogs.artinfo.com
The Best School in the World exhibition explores this question from an architectural perspective: in what types of environments does learning take place today, and what kinds of physical settings are the most conducive to successful learning? View full entry
To do things differently, it helps to connect with new people and contexts. Universities and design schools seldom make that easy... This handout contains the most interesting ones we’ve found so far. It includes [with their permission] the findings of a scoping study for Schumacher College in England. No quality judgment is implied by inclusion in (or omission from) this list. — doorsofperception.com
