Design for the changing educational Llndscape

Design for the Changing

Educational Landscape

The whole landscape of space use is undergoing a radical trans￾formation. In the workplace a period of unprecedented change

has created a mix of responses with one overriding outcome

observable worldwide: the rise of distributed space. In the learning

environment the social, political, economic and technological

changes responsible for this shift have been further compounded

by constantly developing theories of learning and teaching, and a

wide acceptance of the importance of learning as the core of the

community, resulting in the blending of all aspects of learning into

one seamless experience.

This book attempts to look at all the forces driving the provision

and pedagogic performance of the many spaces, real and virtual,

that now accommodate the experience of learning and provide

pointers towards the creation and design of learning-centred

communities.

Part 1 looks at the entire learning universe as it now stands,

tracks the way in which its constituent parts came to occupy their

role, assesses how they have responded to a complex of drivers

and gauges their success in dealing with renewed pressures to

perform. It shows that what is required is innovation within the

spaces and integration between them. Part 2 finds many examples

of innovation in evidence across the world – in schools, the

higher and further education campus and in business and cultural

spaces – but an almost total absence of integration. Part 3 offers

a model that redefines the learning landscape in terms of learning

outcomes, mapping spatial requirements and activities into a

detailed mechanism that will achieve the best outcome at the most

appropriate scale.

By encouraging stakeholders to create an events-based rather than

space-based identity, the book hopes to point the way to a fully￾integrated learning landscape: a learning community.

Andrew Harrison is a researcher and consultant with experience in

many aspects of space use. In 2011 he set up Spaces That Work,

an independent consultancy specializing in learning environments.

Before that he was Director of Learning and Research at DEGW,

leading major research projects in the UK and internationally.

These included Sustainable Accommodation for the New Economy,

supported by the European Commission, Spaces for Personalized

Learning for the UK Department for Children, Schools and Families,

and Project Faraday, which developed new space and experience

models for the teaching of secondary school science in Britain.

He has also led projects exploring the impacts of technology

and pedagogy change on school and higher education institution

design, including work internationally for the Aga Khan University,

the University of Central Asia, Aalto University in Finland and the

Dublin Institute of Technology.

Les Hutton is a writer, editor and copywriter with experience in

education, management, commercial property and architecture.

Publications include Architectural Knowledge, The Distributed

Workplace, The Responsive Office and Working Beyond Walls. He was

the founder editor of Facilities magazine and has written exten￾sively on the UK and international real estate market.

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Design for

the Changing

Educational

Landscape

space, place and the future

of learning

andrew harrison and les hutton

First published 2014

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2014 Andrew Harrison and Les Hutton

The right of Andrew Harrison and Les Hutton to be identified as authors

of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77

and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced

or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,

now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,

or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in

writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or

registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and expla￾nation without intent to infringe.

Every effort has been made to contact and acknowledge copyright

owners. The publishers would be grateful to hear from any copyright

holder who is not acknowledged here and will undertake to rectify any

errors or omissions in future printings or editions of the book.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN: 978-0-415-51757-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-51758-4 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-76265-3 (ebk)

Typeset in Officina Sans Std 9/12.5pt

by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

iv | v

Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1

part 1: learning space 4

chapter 1 the learning universe 6

Schools 9

Further and higher education 13

Business and cultural spaces 16

chapter 2 driving change 18

Technology 21

Learning theory 29

Policy 33

Events 39

chapter 3 design imperatives for a changing landscape 44

Linking pedagogy and space 44

Transforming the higher and further education campus 47

Beyond the institution 52

part 2: innovating space 58

chapter 4 schools 60

Introduction 60

Core teaching spaces 67

Informal learning spaces 80

Staff workspace 92

Outdoor learning spaces 95

School libraries 98

chapter 5 the further and higher education campus 108

Introduction 108

General teaching spaces 108

vi | vii

Contents

Laboratories and research facilities 128

Specialized learning spaces 134

Social learning spaces 138

Academic libraries 147

Academic and administrative workspace 158

Student centres 169

Academic innovation centres and business incubators 172

Student housing 181

Sports facilities 186

chapter 6 Business and cultural spaces 190

Introduction 190

Business and education 192

Cultural spaces and lifelong learning 200

part 3: developing a communitY learning model 228

chapter 7 the Blending of institutions 230

Discovery 1/Unlimited Paenga Tawhiti, Christchurch, NZ 230

Design Factory, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland 233

Natural History Museum, London, UK 233

chapter 8 a conceptual learning landscape 236

Bridge School, Xiashi – a village connection 238

New Orleans Nexus Centres – education at the hub 240

Hume Global Learning Village 240

Learning Towns – Dumfries 243

chapter 9 creating a learning matrix 246

Supply and demand 247

Building on a workspace environment model 249

Physical and virtual learning resources 254

Illustration credits 259

Bibliography 261

Index 291

vi | vii

Acknowledgements

The dominant theme to emerge from these pages is that space,

place and learning have become inextricably bound up with each

other into a blended whole which is beginning to achieve a critical

mass of importance across society. In great part this spatial world

view is the legacy of almost 30 years of discussion and shared

information with colleagues at the international architects, DEGW,

and in particular Frank Duffy, John Worthington and Despina

Katsikakis. We would like to record and acknowledge both their

professional rigour and personal generosity of access to a wide

range of new ideas, many of them instrumental in the formulation

of our own thoughts.

DEGW was a rich centre of enquiry about the workplace in all its

manifestations and as a forum for innovation will be sorely missed.

Many of its values, fortunately – and certainly its chief quality,

intellectual curiosity – are present in the work of the worldwide

diaspora of DEGW people who continue to find new ways to

describe, analyse and systematize the built environment, among

them the business strategists and designers of Strategy Plus, our

colleagues at Spaces That Work and Tom Weaver, whose assis￾tance was especially invaluable at the early stages of this book’s

development.

We would also like to acknowledge the contribution of clients who

have provided us with the opportunity to get to know their institu￾tions and work with them to address issues of academic mission,

pedagogy, space and technology. Everyone at the institutions

illustrated in this book deserves our thanks for their generosity and

support with photographs, illustrations and project information.

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viii | 1

Introduction

This book attempts to look at all the forces driving the provision

and pedagogic performance of the many spaces, real and virtual,

that now accommodate the experience of learning – from purpose￾built school and higher education buildings to museums, galleries,

hotels and conference centres – and by means of this examination

provide pointers towards the creation and in particular the design

of learning-centred communities.

It is our belief that this move to putting learning at the centre

of our lives is well advanced and universally observable across

the learning landscape at all scales and in all societies. There is

no doubt, however, that the overwhelming weight of academic

evidence for this phenomenon lies in a relatively small handful of

territories worldwide – the UK, the US, Scandinavia, Australia and

New Zealand – and deals disproportionately with formal, mandatory

education at the expense of compelling new narratives involving

business and cultural spaces.

We are unapologetic about concentrating on the findings that have

emerged from this narrow band of academic and organizational

enquiry – particularly the astounding ten-year period in the UK

when the debate about learning and space reached a sustained

fever pitch before collapsing with the arrival of the 2008 world

economic crisis. This coincides intellectually, geographically and

chronologically with our main (though not sole) areas of experience

and expertise but it is also sufficiently suggestive of innovations

in educational space worldwide to claim universal significance – to

justify our concentrating on the mass of data to emerge from such

initiatives as the Building Schools for the Future programme and

the blizzard of higher education research conducted during the

course of 2006.

We must similarly justify our delimitation of our conceptual

framework. Because we are fundamentally concerned with design,

aiming to provide designers, procurers and users of space with the

means to effect useful change in their own sphere of influence,

we take a place-based approach to this learning universe. And

because our purpose in looking at these places is not primarily to

systematize (although that is an essential and rather neglected

first stage) but to assess their performance as a necessary precursor

to prescriptive action, we must acknowledge that this transfor￾mational imperative inevitably privileges certain spaces at the

expense of others: classrooms will always command more of our

attention than hotel conference centres and coffee shops.

The learning environment is not alone in having to deal with this

opening up – and, critically, running together – of possibilities.

It is taking place in organizations of all sorts – part of a wider

pattern in which the whole landscape of space use is changing:

the hybridizing of space, the dispersing of work, the annexing of

non-traditional spaces or the freedoms and constrictions that come

with new technology and the blending and layering of virtual and

physical work arenas. The learning environment is, though, we

would contest, in the front line of these volatile developments,

as we illustrate in Part 1, in which we look at the entire learning

universe and track the way in which its constituent parts came to

occupy their role, assess how they – individually and collectively

– have responded to a complex of drivers and gauge their success

in dealing with renewed pressures to perform. We show the gap

widening between what learning space could support and what it

in fact does support, during the course of which two things become

clear: the costs of the loss of transformative potential are rapidly

becoming economically insupportable and societally damaging; and

a piecemeal response, however reflexive, is damned to fail both

case-by-case and systemically.

What is required is innovation within the spaces and integration

between them. Part 2 looks at the many examples of innovation

in evidence across the world – first in schools, then the higher

and further education campus and finally in business and cultural

spaces. It finds and celebrates many examples of best practice,

fewer – though shining – examples of innovation, and almost

no strategic vision at the level of the community or city. The

innovation that is taking place is happening at different rates in

different institutions, as organizations have responded to changing

imperatives and to some extent met them – but the response is

undeniably piecemeal. It is notable that while there has been a

great deal of innovation within building types – and a lot of talk

about shared community resources and partnerships – there is little

concerted effort to take an overview about holistic learning and

remarkably little concentration on the spatial implications of any

cross-cultural partnering that does exist – in short, an absence of

integration.

2 | 3

Introduction

We cannot, of course, impose a culture of integration where none

exists, but in Part 3 we offer a model that encourages stakeholders

to redefine the learning landscape – their learning landscape – in

the widest and most generous way possible: to enter into a briefing

process that takes into account in the first instance the activities

required by the total learning community and only then negotiates

the square foot utilization of budgetary and departmental allow￾ances. With its unbounded view of learning requirements, this

process allows stakeholders to look at learning outcomes in much

the same way as strategies evolved over the past decade to deal

with distributed work patterns in the commercial and corporate

workplace. Using existing tools to make their decisions on desired

outcomes less subjective, this model allows providers to map

spatial requirements and activities into a detailed mechanism to

achieve the best outcome at the most appropriate scale.

We have uncovered many instances worldwide of integrated learning

strategies between institutions, some examples of business–academia

collaboration, and there has undoubtedly been innovation in terms

of sharing of community learning resources. There has been some use

of university facilities by schools and some shared curriculum work

and even the creation of neighbourhood schools as hubs – the ‘nexus’

centres in post-Katrina New Orleans, with schools at their core but

providing a resource for the entire community (CELE 2010).

What there has not been is a general acceptance, unprompted by

the upheavals of nature that – in learning as in so much else –

interconnectedness is the reality from which we diverge at our cost.

By encouraging educators to withhold the rush to provide physical

accommodation until an entire learning strategy is in place – by

creating an events-based rather than space-based identity – we

hope to point the way to a fully-integrated learning landscape: a

learning community.

WORK LEARN

LEARN

LIVE

PLAY

WORK

PLAY

COMMUNITY DIVIDED INTO

SEPARATE FUNCTIONAL ZONES

INTEGRATED COMMUNITY

LINKED THROUGH LEARNING

LIVE

Figure 0.1 Learning is the hub of the community. Source: Harrison 2007/Steve Smith

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part 1

Learning

space

part 1

Learning

space

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6 | 7

Chapter 1

The learning universe

Learning takes place throughout our lives and across the physical

and virtual communities we occupy: as an activity it can be

encountered in an enormous range of spaces, from purpose-built

school and higher education buildings to museums, galleries,

hotels and conference centres (Figure 1.1). This is an extensive

portfolio across a rapidly changing landscape. Both the scale and

the speed of change ask designers the hard question: is it possible

to create space for learning that will be responsive, resilient and

well designed – or is it already too late to do more than passively

acknowledge this change in status and circumstance?

Because we are fundamentally concerned with design, this book

takes a place-based approach to this learning universe, while

acknowledging that the activity can be free-fl oating and virtual.

Our purpose in looking at these places is not primarily to system￾atize, although that is an essential and rather neglected fi rst

stage (Temple 2008: 229–41), but to assess their performance as

a necessary precursor to prescriptive action. We also acknowledge

that the aim of this book is to provide designers, procurers and

users of space with the means to effect useful change in their own

sphere of infl uence – and this transformational imperative inevi￾tably privileges certain spaces at the expense of others.

Three major space groupings emerge from the baggy portfolio

covered in Figure 1.1. The first place is the school building, the

core space of which, the classroom, at one time adequately defi ned

the activity – teacher at the front, children facing – and now

does not (Figure 1.2). The second is the complex of spaces and

activities that make up a further and higher education campus

– lecture rooms and classrooms, libraries, student centres, sports

facilities (Figure 1.3). This is no longer a remote, hermetic space

but an accessible, permeable space with deep roots in the wider

Stage of learning

Academic

retirement

communities

Non formal/life

long learning

Museums,

galleries and

libraries

Professional

bodies

Universities

Colleges

Schools

Early childhood

centres

Type of institution

Figure 1.1 Mapping the learning landscape