School

Applying Design to Education

/ Alastair Blyth / Leave a comment

In designing an environment for learning we have to imagine better ways of being. The same could be said for designing education itself.

Interior of High Tech High, San Diego, California

Interior of High Tech High, San Diego, California

I once asked a student at High Tech High in San Diego, California what advice she would give those designing learning environments. She replied: “Create somewhere relaxing and bright, so you can open the windows and see out; you know, somewhere you actually want to be for 7 hours a day!”

I asked another student. The answer: “Create a building that allows students to want to learn, rather than merely containing the learning process.” Continue reading →

Quiet please! We’re trying to learn.

/ Alastair Blyth / 8 Comments

If students cannot hear, how can they learn? Why is sound such a difficult issue in schools?

Quiet please

Is this an effective way of taking control of a problem that should not exist?

Imagine that you are sitting in the middle of the room and all you can hear is a garbled “mash” from the teacher. You don’t know what has been said, are you being asked a question? Or, given an important piece of information? If you are reasonably extrovert, you might ask someone else. If you are at all shy, you may well keep quiet to avoid looking stupid amongst your peers. Continue reading →

Valuing School Heritage: Lisbon School Given Prestigious Award

/ Alastair Blyth / Leave a comment

The renovated Liceu Passos Manuel in Lisbon, a picture of which has headed this blog for 18 months, has just won a Europa Nostra Award 2013 for European Cultural Heritage. It shows how an old building can be renovated to both preserve an identity but serve a modern context.

Liceu Passos Manuel, Lisbon, Portugal renovation completed in 2008

Liceu Passos Manuel, Lisbon, Portugal renovation completed in 2008

Passos Manuel is Portugal’s oldest Liceu, originally designed in 1882 but built a little later and opened in 1911. The Europa Nostra Awards are a prestigious mark of European heritage and Europa Nostra itself is about protecting Europe’s cultural and natural heritage. The award for the conservation work on Passos Manuel is a testament to the painstaking work of its architects, husband and wife team Victor Mestre and Sofia Alexio of VMSA Architects.

Continue reading →

Co-creating Effective Learning Environments

/ Alastair Blyth / Leave a comment

I saw a television interview today with a head teacher talking about a new school that he had designed. Then as an aside he said: “… of course I designed it with the architect”. Many might worry about this – but they shouldn’t. 

Collaborative design

Good environments are not designed by just one person, but as a co-creative project with the participation of those who will use it. Indeed design is a continuous process, with the environment being adapted (re-designed) to meet changing hourly or daily needs. A good building design enables this to happen, it enables users to continue long after the architect has departed. Continue reading →

Sustaining an Energy Future through Education

/ Alastair Blyth / Leave a comment

A sustainable school or university is about the role of education itself. But at a time when the temptation is to cut expenditure right back we still need to make sure that it supports the decisions that we still seem to be delegating to the next generation.

The Earth at night shows the intensity of energy use

The Earth at night shows the intensity of energy use

A former colleague of mine, Yamina Saheb, Head of the Sustainable Building Centre at the International Energy Agency  (IEA) has a dream. It is that one day energy savings will be a marketable commodity – so profitable that everyone will be clamouring to buy and sell them making it totally unnecessary to impose legislation on energy requirements of products and buildings. She hopes that generation ‘Y’ will make her dream a reality. But the ability of this generation to respond depends on the role of education that we put in place. Today we are educating the policy makers for tomorrow and we need to help them make better choices.

Continue reading →