Let's talk about school design

What began in post-war Britain as one of our greatest symbols of a meritocratic society is now utterly corroded.

Forget “banning curves”. Schools need a culture centred on creativity and collaboration, not rows of battery farm-style learning silos.
For this to happen, architects, teachers and pupils need to have adequately resourced conversations — innovative classroom design needs to be pedagogically informed.

Harriet Harriss
via bdonline

The quality of the internal environment is key to the success of learning spaces (News March 28). To this end the Priority School Building Programme Output Specification has adopted much of the latest research for thermal, ventilation and daylighting.

As a lighting designer we were wasting our time chasing 2% or 3% daylight factors. What was the point? We were contributing to the design of facades for overcast skies, yet the teachers and students experienced the spaces with sunlight arriving from a multitude of positions across the sky.

The option to switch from daylight factors to climate-based daylight modelling existed during the boom times yet nobody grasped the benefits. At least now with PSBP we are using CBDM and other more realistic design techniques.

Andrew Bissell
via bdonline