“On the day we heard that there was agreement to establish an upper secondary school in the region, every house in Snaefellsnes flew the Icelandic flag,” explained one parent in the first workshop to develop the Snaefellsnes Upper Secondary School. The new school in this rural Icelandic...

Innovative teaching methods and organisational change make new demands on our future learning environments. The Brink and the Laak Clusters are two related examples of a new type of building for a community in the Netherlands. The Firebird School (<i>Vuurvogel</i>), a primary school for students from...

Joinedupdesignforschools explores how good design can improve the quality of life in schools by listening to the voices of the clients: pupils. The programme is an initiative in the United Kingdom that joins client teams of pupils with the country’s leading design practices to provide...

School Works, a not-for-profit company in the United Kingdom, has developed a secondary school design process which enables communities to create unique school buildings that cater for their own particular needs. At the heart of this process is the basic principle that it is the people who work...

The Torcy Junior High School is located on the outskirts of the new town of Marne la Vallée in the Paris suburbs, between a motorway and a stretch of ordinary countryside on a site overlooking a small lake. Special attention was paid to its geographic setting and to the various aspects of its...

As a result of feedback by employers and tertiary institutions, an innovative form of “learning architecture” is emerging in secondary schools in the Netherlands. Dutch curriculum authorities decided that an entirely new approach was required. In an environment that is far removed from the...

St. John’s Central College, the third largest further education institution in Ireland, recently expanded and refurbished its facilities. The resulting site is more open to the community, and the new building spaces are designed in accordance with their social and academic functions.

Developed below is a selection of the ideas and case studies presented at the conference on “Planning, Designing and Managing Higher Education Institutions”, in San José, California (United States): Megatrends and myths which influence facilities management practices. The technology-enabled...

The school soon to be completed in Paskuqan, a suburb of Tirana, was created to meet the present and changing needs of the community. The long-lasting, flexible structure designed to stimulate learning is the result of a close collaboration between pedagogical and building experts. The Albania...

Infrastructure for tertiary education is currently the object of attention in the United Kingdom. Presented here are four articles that describe recent planning and research regarding facilities for UK universities and colleges of higher education. They cover a case study in planning a...