Schools of Tomorrow
Jan 1, 2004 12:00 PM, Joe Agron
With the amount spent on education construction at record levels, and future spending projected to remain vibrant, savvy administrators and planners not only are envisioning what needs to be built over the next decade and beyond, but also what future schools will look and function like. American School & University recently brought together a panel of prominent education architects to explore 10 concepts that will shape future school facilities.
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AS&U: We're here today to stretch our thinking and explore concepts that will shape the future look and function of education facilities. I'd like to start with an area that not only changes as rapidly as we can keep up with it, but also that has become increasingly important to all areas of education. How do you see technology shaping the way education facilities will look and function in the future?
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Our panel of experts
Loeffelman: Clearly, technology is an evolving topic. Some of the things that schools are doing, such as introducing wireless technology to the classroom, bring a wide variety of topics and information that I think broadens the dialogue and starts to break down the physical barriers of the classroom itself. This [technology] has huge implications on what the physical reality of a school is.
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Dyck: Technology integration and connectivity are broad concepts. Not just at the high-school level, but also at the elementary level. Pedagogically, we're going to see elementary as well as high-school students going out more and becoming more involved in the community. Technology will help learners connect with their communities and the global community.
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Blurock: If you think of technology as a force for change, all you have to do is really think about how it's changed virtually any kind of environment outside of school. Unfortunately, school environments tend to be risk averse and conservative. Maybe [technology] is one of the concepts that will force the kinds of changes that we are talking about in educational spaces.
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Leonard: The history that we've all had to deal with over the past 20 years in incorporating technology and the changing of technology in our buildings has been very insightful as to how we need to look at our buildings and our building systems. If you look at an HVAC system that is going to change three or four times over the life of a building, it's important to try to incorporate and build in ideas of flexibility into a facility that have been learned from technology planning.
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Hendricks: There are a number of possible uses of technology into which even we in the business world have yet to tap the potential. In particular, the thing that interests me is this idea of “knowledge communities” or “communities of practice.”
I think, as a group, those of us on the Committee for Architecture in Education are a community of interest that is exploring some of that potential in terms of the exchange of ideas and information, in a way that's much more powerful than just visiting a website. At some point in the not too distant future, even kids in schools will be able to become members of similar communities of interest. And that's when we will really begin to see the power of technology to bridge those barriers surrounding the isolated classroom.
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Conference to address learning environments
AS&U: How do you see that changing the way the facility is designed and how it may look in the future?
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Loeffelman: One of the issues with technology is that you can really individualize a program for a student. For example, take a physics class with 25 students. There's a huge variety in terms of what their knowledge and understanding is because they have access to incredible amounts of information. The physical environment, more and more, has to be designed in such a way that those students can continue on, in some ways, their individual path, but then also learn from each other. That completely changes the notion of having a classroom of 25 or 30 students sitting in rows of tablet-arm chairs.
There are a lot of implications in terms of budget when you are providing more room so students can be broken out into either individual or small groups. But how do you start to design an environment that isn't necessarily going to be twice as expensive, because clearly we all have budget concerns in providing that envelope? So there are a lot of issues in terms of net to gross, and how do you make an efficient school environment that allows flexibility and adaptability of how and where students are learning.
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Blurock: I think one of the challenges is trying to anticipate the change. One change that is absolutely inevitable is that, at some point in time, virtually all students will have an individual computer, be it a laptop or whatever form that takes, on a wireless network, which inevitably will be centralized in the pedagogical process. Pam mentioned the 30 chairs lined up in rows; that's not possible in that environment. We're not there, but we know that that's coming.
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Loeffelman: It's there in a lot of schools.
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10 concepts that will shape future education facilities
Blurock: But it's not universal, and many of the schools that we plan now don't anticipate that.
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Dyck: I'm not sure technology will actually carve out criteria for facility design as much as a pedagogical shift where there's far more integration with both the local community and the global community. It's hard for me to say how technology changes will impact facilities, because I think it's more indirect and that the real forces behind how schools will look in the future have to do with how kids learn and how that shapes this teaching and learning enterprise.
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Loeffelman: Another issue is how can we help make sure that, particularly in those larger school districts that are building numerous schools, that the people leading that process are, in fact, thinking about the future; thinking about the changes. Because, unfortunately, there are still a large number of schools that aren't even interested in that discussion or dialogue.
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Dyck: There are still a lot of “cells and bells” schools being designed and built today, and no matter what we say today, all of us are going to go home to a lot of clients who are going to do exactly the same thing. Change isn't something that comes easy.
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Blurock: A major point we need to consider is that most of the environments in which we hold schools today are already built, and will remain built. What we have the opportunity to do with new buildings is create new models.
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Dyck: But I think you can still create flow; you can still create cluster; you can still create — to some degree — what I would call physical connectivity to reinforce the technical connectivity. Because no matter how far we go with technology, the eye to eye, the physical connectivity including going out to the community or bringing the community in, needs to be reinforced by the architecture.
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AS&U: Speaking of community, how can we further incorporate the concept of community into schools of the future?
