The constantly burgeoning student population across the globe necessitates expanding the educational infrastructure to accommodate them and enhance the quality of education. The school and college campuses’ designs are still typical to meet the coded regulations and standards that have reached an obsolescence stage. However, apart from the design requirements, the learning spaces have to be considered with the current problems associated with education. Some issues in education include high drop-out rates, poor quality, below-average learning outcomes, low teacher-student ratio, educated unemployment, alien curriculum modelled on a one-size-fits-all approach, etc. Architecture can aid in mitigating some of the above issues by making education attractive by designing learning spaces that reflect the students’ aspirations, promote literacy and mould young minds to face the world.
“A school should be a thought-built good-time place for happy children– the school should regard children as a garden in the sun”, says Frank Lloyd Wright.
Learning happens everywhere with immersive experiences in nature and mentorship programs. The design starts from the premise of a school universe at the children’s level. The imagination and layout of learning spaces have been rational since the institutionalisation of schools. Free and fluid forms aren’t the solutions to oppose the rigid density of educational environments. In the words of Maria Montessori, “A calm, peaceful, patient, welcoming, harmonious, respectful and emotional atmosphere is essential for the children in the school environment.”
Schools should serve as an environment where children prepare for life and build their spirit, free from the oppression of parenting.
Though the pandemic has driven the need to rethink schools, collective learning has been given undue importance in a child’s growth and developmental years. Schools as physical learning environments are crucial in shaping young minds to take future roles. Many Marxist scholars argue that strict discipline enforcement at schools creates a passive workforce for suiting the requirements of a globalised and polarised world order that divides the entire community into two classes- the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. However, the notion of education as the liberator of the masses that transforms people’s lives has outweighed the former idea. Thus, education has become indispensable to secure a safe future in an uncertain world. The design of learning spaces is the key to the dichotomy of imparting freedom to the students and regulating them with control. So, how can design contribute to the making of tomorrow’s generation in their learning environments?
Children’s learning spaces at school mainly need scaled-down designs according to their average heights, which can impact their interaction with the surroundings and other children. However, the standards set by the State codes, requirements and facilities according to the budget also have immutable influences on design. The planning has to consider the spatial, psychological, physiological and behavioural aspects of children’s experiences with the learning space. It can add attributes and divide the areas as open or closed, quiet or noisy, intimate or distant, bright or dull, connected to nature or technologically equipped, soothing or playful, stimulating or cosy, textured or aromatic, warm, cool, healthy, creative or breezy.
Aside from the above aspects, dedicated or transformative areas for each type of activity, such as reading, writing, peer teaching, learning, playing, eating, interacting, working in groups, etc., can unfold.
The classroom is the most dynamic area inside an educational institution. It is the primary learning space, which varies for different age groups. Kindergarten classrooms, for instance, are much larger than the usual classrooms for enabling kids between 3 and 6 years to learn to pay attention and increase their abilities to focus, listen and understand. The movement of kids within a kindergarten classroom is comparatively unrestricted as there are frequent changes in the usage of space as a seating area becomes a sleeping area or an activity area. As children grow up, the focus shifts more onto studies as classrooms adapt and regulate the children’s experiences. A decreased connection to the external environment and more concentration within the limits of the teaching space are deemed necessary. As specialisation increases with higher education, the classrooms become more nuanced as lecture halls, studios or labs, where the same learning process goes on but with different interfaces.
The staircases, corridors, canteens, common areas or courtyards are the active interaction zones where the footfall is high during recess and suddenly empty as the students take refuge in their classrooms. These are the elements that elevate the success of a design in ushering in social interaction. As age barriers vanish, the students from different classes intermingle and bond with each other in these areas. The minimal interaction and coordination are confidence-boosting factors in students’ lives that set them on track to meet with future delegations as citizens of a country as skilled professionals. The library is a ruby on the jewel, whose value is realised by many students only after they leave the campus. To revive the reading habit among young children, libraries need to be attractive and provide a conducive environment to inculcate the habit. The playgrounds are the all-time favourites, effortlessly inviting students of all age groups. A well-maintained play area means students can prepare for sportsmanship and plan alternative career options by being exposed to sports ethics.
Value education has to go alongside the contribution of design to it. Leadership and inspiration greatly influence the bolstering of values. However, the layout of learning spaces also plays a significant role in ethical character building. Transparent/ open interactive spaces can ensure monitoring and preventing unwanted activities, a welcoming atmosphere, instilling a sense of ownership, empowering the students to become active socialites, condemning discrimination and promoting ideals like equality, liberty, justice and fraternity, starting at the student stage. So, learning spaces are not merely functional but also motivate the users through inclusiveness and a feeling of belongingness, thus attributing the qualities of endurance and transcendence across time to the building and the spaces within.
However, the changing times have also changed the traditional understanding of learning. Exploring the hitherto rejected ideas today to accommodate children amid the increasing attention to mental health and well-being amongst the student community has had better results. Hence, today, Architects and Planners endeavour to break down the rigidity in learning spaces to make learning fun and enhance the quality of education. The popular desires and aspirations have accumulated and resulted in flexible forms, incorporation of nature to nurture, use of technological interfaces without replacing the human teachers but complementing them, breaking the four-wall rule, etc., thus paving the way for the dawn of a new age of education, to shape buildings and to be shaped by them, afterwards, as Winston Churchill remarked.
Citations
Ford, A. (2007) Designing the sustainable school, Amazon. Available at: https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Sustainable-School-Alan-Ford/dp/1864702370 (Accessed: 29 September 2023).
Nair and Fielding (2005) The language of school design: Design patterns for 21. Century schools. Minneapolis: Designshare.
