The School for the Physical City was built in an office building in the central business district of Manhattan for 500 students, in grades 7 through 12, who use the city’s infrastructure as a vehicle for studying traditional academic disciplines. It is one of the new, small theme schools...

In 1995, PEB published a case study on the United Kingdom’s Leith Academy. The following article examines the Academy’s original design, how the facilities have served over the 13 years since their construction and their influence on subsequent designs.

The New Zealand Ministry of Education is undertaking a project to provide information that can assist schools to design quality environments that will improve student learning outcomes. The project started in 2004 with the ministry surveying boards of trustees, principals, teachers and students...

“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...

Greece’s School Buildings Organisation (SBO) is developing bioclimatic pilot schemes which are yielding positive results. Bioclimatic action has been one of the principal priorities of Greek school infrastructure planning since 2004. Among the activities undertaken by SBO to use renewable...

The South Australian Department of Education, Training and Employment, in association with Flinders University, are collaborating in the design, construction and development of a senior secondary high school which will specialise in the teaching of mathematics and science and focus on innovative...

Describing primary schools in a small city in Portugal is an opportunity for an overall look at the evolution of schools in general as special public buildings. A look at four of the six primary schools in the city of Caldas da Rainha shows how these public buildings have evolved, what they...

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...

In the knowledge society of the 21^st century everyone – not only children but every person, enterprise and organisation – will need ongoing access to a full range of quality education and training services. This principle, often espoused by the OECD and endorsed by the ministers of education...

In March 2007, the Portuguese government announced an ambitious plan to modernise secondary schools by improving the quality and usefulness of its teaching and learning facilities, while putting schools back into the centre of the community of which they are an integral part.