How should a school’s spatial design support twenty first century learning?

So I suppose we can start with the argument that many of today’s classrooms are not designed to facilitate the many different ways kids learn in the 21st century. On the contrary, they reflect the architecture of the industrial era; a system of box shaped rooms placed next to each other on long corridors that could be easily supervised. The efficiency of this model gave it  initially the name “Ford model” and even though it evolved along with pedagogical theory over time, to systems like “Learning Streets”, “The Finger Plan” and in recent years “The Small Learning Community”, classrooms especially in big public schools in urban centers remained dated.

The traditional classroom designs that we experience in many of our schools today assume certain things according to Nair, Fielding & Lackney as they list them in their book ‘The Language of School Design, Design Patterns for 21st Century Schools’;

1. The teacher knows everything, the students are empty vessels
2. One teacher can be a mentor,guide,lecturer,expert, caregiver to 20-30 kids simultaneously
3. Learning is linear, it starts and ends in the classroom.
4. Things should be tidy, students should be sitting in order
5. And most importantly: all students are ready to learn the same thing from the same person at the same time in the same way

Now, to this last point, what we know today is that kids learn different things from different people in different places in different ways and at different times; they learn inside and outside the classroom, with their peers and online. We also know that there are different modes that a classroom turns into; it can be a tinkering,collaborative, building, playing, performing or researching space. And finally we know that there there are different types of technologies such as smart-boards, touch screens, motion-capture, tablet and mobile to enhance the learning.

In the Kent New Line Learning Academy, the space of the school is designed to reflect these practices by providing flexible structures that allow a more studio-like setting. The St Francis of Assisi primary school in North Kensington designed by studio E architects, is also designed to reflect these new ways kids learn today, and was part of the DfSE Classroom of the Future Initiative. The classroom in St Francis incorporates a telescope, an indoor tropical garden (!), sustainable materials and a wireless network. Moreover, the school was designed based on original sketches and ideas from the students themselves.

Kids have also played a big role in the design of the You Media Public Library in Chicago, that by the way is not accessible to any adults who do not work in the space. The layout of the space draws from Mimi Ito’s research and her book “Hanging out, Messing around, Geeking out”.

Designed to reflect these three types of learning spaces the library consists of a “hanging out” space, a lounging area with game equipment, a “messing around” space, a laptop station area and a “geeking out” space where all the special studios with audio or film equipment are.

I  recently asked some of the students at the school I work, how they imagined school would look like in the future; they had designed last trimester a version of their classroom in a 3D game environment called Atmoshir. One of the girls who was thinking hard about it told me after a long pause; “ you know, i think a classroom in the future will be more like, you know a space for making things…and with not so many tables…”