EDUBUILD CONFERENCE

Over 270 experts across education, industries and academia have, for one year, being formulating our next generation of learning spaces research.  Representing 21 countries, this group has been using the Innovative Learning Environments and Student Experience (Scoping Study) or ILE+SE, to identify what gaps exist in current research, and the priorities we must set for the next decade of research.  This presentation will present the 20 gaps that were identified, the ‘top five’ (and bottom five) priorities, and plans for an unprecedented international project to address those needs. 

• Vertical School Architecture is a case study analysis of the spatial planning for secondary co-educational multi-storey school models in inner-urban areas across the globe.

• Land economics, tight site restrictions and large accommodation briefs require a school design more aligned with high-rise construction than its suburban predecessors, posing new opportunities and challenges for the facilitation of education, student wellbeing and city-making.

• The spatial organisation patterns that emerge in vertical school design precedents are documented and considered as a resource to assist the thinking of architects, school administrations and government officials when delivering school architecture of a similar type. 

This presentation will summarise the main findings: 

Opportunities -

• Building upward can create a much richer and more connected school community.
• Public shared ground floor facilities to enhance civic infrastructure. 

Challenges -

• Significant demand on vertical circulation and how to improve upon it.
• Lack of quality and quantity of outdoor spaces and how to maximise outdoor opportunities. 

• Before the pandemic learning was beginning to escape from the boxes we had placed it in: curriculum specifics, levels, assessment criteria, classrooms, campuses, age phases, duration and more.
• During, and since that pandemic the escape has begun to look like a stampede as learning elsewhere, stage not age, lifelong learning, learning families and more are producing a new learning landscape with technology as a core enabler;
• in particular the fresh locations of learning - once expensively contained in bespoke education buildings - have opened up a new life of nomadic campuses and wholly outdoor learning.
• The impact of this on everything from the capital cost of education to the sheer joy of learning is proving to be dramatic.