Design

University of The Future: Connected Environments

/ Alastair Blyth / Leave a comment

Why is the physical environment for higher education still important when arguably with the emergence of online learning and digital access, students do not need to leave their own homes?

Creating spaces that make connections

We are, as is so often pointed out, in a world where the focus is increasingly on personalisation. In healthcare gene therapy is tailored to treat specific conditions unique to a specific person; people can order cars or computers with specific features determined before production; and of course education where students expect that educators will meet their own specific needs at a time that suits them. Continue reading →

Giving Hope to Communities

/ Alastair Blyth / 2 Comments

There is much dinner-table chatter these days about the role of schools in the community. Yet you may be forgiven for thinking that the reality on the ground is that often schools do not fulfil this role at all. Well, here is one example where they do.

These parents of children at a primary school in the state of Oaxaca in Mexico are not rich, but they are happy. Why? Because they been able to get some money to repair the school building.

Continue reading →

Creating Education by Design

/ Alastair Blyth / 2 Comments

Design is too easily dismissed as ‘nice to have if you can afford it’. Yet pretty well everything we use from tax forms to education involves design. We should be smarter and consciously apply design thinking to these things.

Benefits of design: A creative environment for learning at Northern Beaches Christian School, Sydney

Venerated German industrial designer, Dieter Rams, came up with Ten Principles of good design. He was primarily talking about product design, but they reach far beyond physical objects and could inform how we create education systems or the ‘learning experience’. Continue reading →

Education: Exposing the Art

/ Alastair Blyth / Leave a comment

Take away the school building, and what do you get? A real understanding of what the building itself should be about.

Remove the building and you can see education.

Imagine you have the power to manipulate everyday life in real time. Rather like in one of those ancient Greek myths where the Gods would intervene. Continue reading →

Enabling Effective Efficient Education

/ Alastair Blyth / 1 Comment

We need to better understand what makes a good physical learning environment. That means effective evaluation.

Does this learning environment really work?

Education buildings are a waste of money, aren’t they? They cost a fortune to both construct and operate; they sit idle for much of the time, in spite of valiant efforts to persuade ‘the community’ to use more than just the odd room occasionally; and, anyway do they really suit the needs of a modern education system? Continue reading →

The Habitable School

/ Alastair Blyth / 3 Comments

Designing a learning environment is not about creating the perfect school building. It is about creating a habitable environment.

Probably not how this piece of furniture was meant to be used

It is easy to believe that it should be possible to design and construct the perfect school building that does not need changing that sits there blissfully letting people inside it get on with their lives. In truth, this is far from how it works. People sometimes use their buildings in unexpected ways. It is the interaction between people and buildings that make them work, and education buildings are good examples Continue reading →