In presenting this case study of an innovative school building in Scotland, the author describes its unique design features, conveys the viewpoints of the users, client and design team, and reveals the lessons learned. Dalry Primary, North Ayrshire...

Šoštanj Primary School offers a learning process which can enrich traditional forms of schooling. It demonstrates how a school, including its infrastructure, can influence family life and the environment, creating new social patterns and a local...

Hungary’s Belvárosi Tanoda Secondary School offers an informal, flexible environment and alternative teaching methods for students who have had problems in other schools. The Belvárosi Tanoda (which translates as downtown school) is a second chance...

Open plan schools have been largely contested in Portugal; many teachers, administrators and even parents consider this model of schooling inappropriate and therefore a failure. Recently however the Escola da Ponte, one of the open plan schools that...

Designing school buildings to respond to change is not a new idea. But perhaps what is different today is the kind and degree of change which we have to anticipate. The OECD is carrying out projects that can help in the planning and design of future...

The sustainable education campus project for San Agustín de Guadalix is based on an innovative concept of urbanism and architecture. The campus design and landscape aim to support training and exemplify sustainability.

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...

The design of this flexible school for early childhood education in Milan, Italy, takes into account children’s development and the different ways they experience space according to their age. The facilities will include not only a nursery school and...

Booker Park School is a new complex for pre-primary children and primary pupils with a range of behavioural and learning difficulties. To respond to the pupils’ varied needs, the school facilities offer a high degree of flexibility and a quality...

Brazil’s São Paulo Metropolitan Region is conducting a performance evaluation pilot study at three schools serving disadvantaged populations. The objective is first to test methods which can facilitate Post Occupancy Evaluations (POEs) and then to...

Scotland’s Building Excellence programme is exploring the implications of curriculum reform for school building design. It includes events which bring together teachers, designers, school managers and local authorities.

In 2007, the author examined existing academic libraries in the United States to determine best practices for the design, implementation and service of learning commons facilities. A primary objective of this study was to discover how to create a...

Changes in the way education is delivered has contributed to the evolution of school architecture in Zurich, Switzerland. The City of Zurich has revised its guidelines for designing school buildings, both new and old. Adapting older buildings to...

The government of New Zealand delegates property expenditure decisions to each individual school. Such a decentralised environment creates a challenge for school boards and principals to obtain advice on the complex issues around designing schools....

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...

This article briefly describes users’ experiences of two “green” education buildings. It goes on to conclude that stakeholders’ negotiation of building performance is necessary to minimise environmental impact, just as it is necessary to achieve...

Presented here are Australian case studies of educational buildings with environmentally sustainable designs – an upper secondary school complex and a university learning centre – and sustainability initiatives by a private developer working in...

This article explains how Ireland has incorporated low energy design into primary and post-primary schools and gives an overview of projects that have helped inform this approach.

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...

Since 1997 several ministries in Japan have collaborated on an eco-school programme, which applies to both newly constructed and renovated school buildings, in an effort to make its schools more environmentally friendly.