Planning Learning Spaces - USA Special

A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR ARCHITECTS, DESIGNERS AND SCHOOL LEADERS

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PLANNING LEARNING SPACES

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Planning Learning Spaces

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Inside the LA school that rapper Dr Dre and music mogul Jimmy Iovine built

‘ Comprehensive but also very practical approach ‘ ANDREAS SCHLEICHER Director of the Directorate of Education and skills, OECD

‘ Any community building a new school should read this book ‘ MICHAEL B. HORN Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation

‘ Builds a bridge from the simple to the extraordinary... awash in opportunity and inspiration ‘ PROFESSOR STEPHEN HEPPELL Chair in Learning Innovation at Universidad Camilo José Cela, Madrid

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We believe the learning environment has a profound effect on the educational outcomes for all pupils. If you would like to join us to improve these environments worldwide we would love to hear from you. This magazine is a not-for-profit journal published by the team behind the best-selling Planning Learning Spaces book. It is also supported

by The Cambridge Centre for Learning Spaces Innovation.

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CONTENTS 04

editor’s LETTER

P6 STRAIGHT-As INTO COMPTON

Irena Barker reports on Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine’s LA Academy

P16 APP FOR DESIGN PATTERNS Nathan Strenge explains all

P22 MEET THE FURNITURE DESIGNERS 1 NovaNivel’s Avron Levin on why he is a ‘irresponsible lunatic’

P26 MEET THE FURNITURE DESIGNERS 2 CEF’s Nichol Lancaster on why motherhood helped her designs

P32 JOY TO THE WORLD

How Fielding International reimagined a Rhode Island school

PHOTO & ILLUSTRATION CREDITS: Cover Steve Cohn P7 Emily Kingsolving P8 Upper left and middle: Joel Sanders P9 Upper right: Chris Shinn P10-11 Upper left: Joel Sanders P12 Steve Cohn P14 Steve Cohn P16-20 Fielding International P22-25 NorvaNivel P26-31 Custom Educational Furniture (CEF) P32 -36 Fielding International

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P38 CLASSROOM CONNECTION

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P42 BREATHING AND LEARNING

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EDITOR’S LETTER

Things can only get better Murray Hudson Co-author of Planning Learning Spaces book

There is no point trying to avoid the subject of Covid-19 but the pandemic has brought the school environment into a wider focus. It is no longer education specialists and nerds that understand that the correct lighting, heating and of course ventilation make a profound difference to learning rates. It does not stop here, every aspect of the learning space, from furniture to tech are also critical. In this edition of PLS USA we round up some excellent examples from across America.

Architects, educationalists, learners, designers, and academics all pitch in.

Beats Electronics’ founders Jimmy Iovine and Andre “Dr Dre” Young have set up an academy in Los Angeles, CA where traditional boundaries between university subjects – and departments – are smashed down and student learn to think across technology, business and the arts. We talk to the architect behind the Iovine and Young Academy.

Designing school furniture is a dream job for many and we speak to two in this issue. First up on p26 Avron Levine from NorvaNivel tells us what makes him tick and on p30 Nichol Lancaster of CEF believes being a mom inspired her to design their furniture range.

Architect firm Fielding International are determined to break the antiquated ‘cells and bells’ school model that they argue can no longer support the development of critical human skills, competencies and behaviours essential for young adults. They reimagine an elementary school in Cranston, Rhode Island.

And finally Professor Peter Barrett, the acclaimed author of the Clever Classrooms research reports on a ground breaking project to transform the learning environment of a UK school in the midst of the pandemic. Find out the results ….

The Cambridge Centre for Learning Spaces Innovation To support and advance excellence, innovation and wellbeing in school design.

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Just what Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine ordered: Inside the LA academy that Beats billions built.

As legendary pop producer Jimmy Iovine announces the sale of his back catalog to fund a new high school in LA, we meet the architects of the original USC Iovine and Young Academy. Murray Hudson spoke to Frederick Fisher and Partners, along with school dean Erica Muhl and student Trent Jones.

“There wasn’t as much making as I thought there would be…that is, physically tinkering with things,” says Trent Jones of the engineering degree he started but abandoned. “It definitely revealed maybe this isn’t quite the path I wanted.” Fortunately, the young innovator and maker wasn’t in the wilderness for long.

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A collaborative, creative model His sister told him about a brand new interdisciplinary school at the University of Southern California (USC) that would allow him to explore his many ideas and bring them to life: the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation.

Working from a central workshop known as “The Garage”, Jones would be able to innovate to his heart’s content, find solutions to real-world problems and collaborate on interdisciplinary projects with students and staff from a variety of backgrounds in art, tech and business.

Jones was part of the second cohort of the school in 2015, and he was delighted with his new milieu.

“The first thing that people notice is how unique they are from one another. While I came in as this kind of maker, who liked to tinker and build things, who loves engineering and technology, someone else may have had a background that was purely in art and design.

“I thought ‘oh wow’, everyone is so unique and different, everyone has their own thing; how can

we mesh our individual talents to make things that are collectively better than what we could do as individuals?”

This collaborative project-based working, with multiple perspectives and an interdisciplinary vibe, was exactly the intention of the school’s sponsors Jimmy Iovine and the rapper and hip hop producer Andre “Dr. Dre” Young, the co-founders of the wildly successful Beats Electronics brand.

Iovine, who was also instrumental in launching Apple Music, said in 2015 that the aim would be for the school to create a pipeline of professionals that are culturally fluent as well as technologically savvy: “We tried to hire people for Beats, and they were either engineers or music people. I’m like, ‘this is all wrong’.

Of course, the guys that run Beats understand both.”

Students at the school have now gone far wider than that, however, with undergraduates and post-graduates working on projects as varied as a digital platform to transform recruitment in the maritime industry to an app that supports black people during encounters with the police.

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Inspiration factory There are now 120 undergraduate majors and 200 graduate students at the school and 250–300 other students taking courses.

Erica Muhl, dean of the school (pictured above, to the left of Dr. Dre, Jimmy Iovine and USC President Carol Folt), and also a composer and conductor, says the school “responds to a new style of student” who has “a natural facility with technology” and a desire not to be pigeonholed into one strict subject area. “Students who had worked across music or across the visual arts or creative writing, filmmaking, etc., they were often faced with having to make a decision coming into college of doing a single major,” she explains.

“Let’s say they were really good at math and music, those things didn’t traditionally go together, so we realized it wasn’t so much about us driving anything new, it was about responding to a new style of student.

“We were incredibly lucky, we guessed right, we hit a nerve in particular with Generation Z and generations coming behind them.

“We were offering a place where students could bring

“I thought ‘oh wow’, everyone is so unique and different, everyone has their own thing; how can we mesh our individual talents to make things that are collectively better than what we could do as individuals?”

their interdisciplinary pursuits, learn how to mould those, blend those into a very powerful new discipline which very carefully focuses on higher-level problemsolving using engineering, business, arts and design.”

workshops, lecture rooms and a variety of breakout spaces and meeting rooms. The “guts” of the building are on display in the form of giant air ducts, vents and cabling, evoking a giant factory or warehouse space.

This approach, she says, is in contrast to the 150-yearold higher education model that needed to change.

“We actually love the fact that when you walk into the inside of the building it’s nothing like the collegiate neoGothic exterior; it’s very contemporary, and we love that kind of a creative tension. It’s unexpected – and there’s an ‘aha’ moment when you walk through the front door,” says Muhl.

“We will always need specialists. If I have a medical problem that requires a specialist I’m very glad they are there, but in the twenty-first century we also need big picture specialists who can actually work across these disciplines very effectively.”

His love of the school eventually led Jones to stay. After graduating in June 2019, he returned that September to become a “maker in residence”, helping students to realise their ideas and designs. Providing this support helps students to have the confidence to think they can one day change the world, he says.

This work is rendered even more rewarding by the recent opening of the school’s brand-new 40,000-square-foot (3,716-square-metre) building at the USC’s sun-drenched campus in Los Angeles. With its impressive collegiate neo-Gothic exterior, featuring red brick, tall windows and stone arches, it fits in with the rest of the college architecture.

But inside the school takes on a far more industrial appearance, with concrete floors, vast high-ceilinged

Muhl, who helped to found the school and was heavily involved in developing the design with architects Frederick Fisher and Partners, says that, as well as being functional, they wanted the look and feel of the interior to inspire the work within it.

“I experienced this when I was invited to visit the new Pixar facility in Emeryville, which was one of the last facilities that Steve Jobs was directly involved with.

“When I walked into that facility, that’s its entire goal – the expanse of it, the height of the ceilings as you looked around, the visuals that you saw; I realized that when you walked into the building you immediately thought to yourself, ‘Oh, I want to play here’.”

At the Iovine and Young Hall, as it is known, workshop spaces include a fabrication lab for metal, wood, plastics and electronics. There is also a “rapid prototyping lab”,

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We were offering a place where students could bring their interdisciplinary pursuits, learn how to mould those, blend those into a very powerful new discipline which very carefully focuses on higher-level problemsolving using engineering, business, arts and design. including 3D printing and laser-cutting facilities. Students also have access to a 2D print lab and multimedia zone for motion-capture, photo, video and audio.

The makerspaces are positioned to the front of the building and have large picture windows facing out, so the work of the school is on public display. Similar large windows in the interior walls dividing the different spaces encourage collaboration and “serendipitous” encounters between students.

This design was developed through the school’s experience with its original makerspace in another university building. “We had worked in our earlier educational facility that we lovingly called ‘The Garage’, in homage to the great things that have been launched in garages over the years: Apple and Hewlett-Packard – and many great bands, of course,” says Muhl.

There, they had learned that large, open concept spaces could drive spontaneous collaboration and innovation. “Initially our students weren’t used to it,” she says. “The very first cohort referred to The Garage as ‘The Fishbowl’, but they got used to it very quickly and then in fact they began to crave it.”

Another feature of the building is the area of “alumni incubator” spaces, also at the front of the hall, which alumni can use for meetings when they are founding companies.

While clearly being a space of serious industry – the design draws inspiration from the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit – it is also extremely playful and there are writable walls everywhere.

One of the first projects undergraduates collaborate on in their “rapid visualization” work is a giant mural that is photographed and wiped away at the end of the year.

A giant staircase (more on which later) even features an understairs cupboard known as “The Harry Potter Room” where podcasting can take place.

“There are so many walls you can just scribble on, so if you have an idea that pops into your mind and you just have to get it out, you can just grab a marker, create a rapid visualization of what you have in your mind and then begin having a conversation with whomever,” says Jones.

“It’s a communal hub, with it being open, like a sandbox… It really is this collision space where people who have different backgrounds encounter one another, working on different projects.”

This idea of collision is one of the key concepts embraced by architect Fred Fisher, who explains that the building lies at the intersection of two LA gridlines – something that is expressed in the design of the building.

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“We exploited it by making that the entry of the building, so when you come in you’re really at the intersection of the collision of those two grids – and it creates eccentric spaces within the building.”

The grand staircase – built from concrete, glass and metal – lies at this point, forming a striking centrepiece.

students have been unable to use it for some time: “The general student response to the building is extremely high; it’s one of the lingering sadnesses of the situation with Covid-19 that we are not able to allow the students into the building right now. They feel as if it’s their home.”

“There’s this dialogue between rationality and irrationality, and play and collision; we wanted to make that the moment of entrance,” says Fisher.

Jones, meanwhile, has been allowed to come into work, but it is a less joyful experience without students around.

He stresses that the spaces are: “Very flexible, raw, creative spaces they can play rough with.”

But there is hope – and more plans – on the horizon.

And flexibility is key, to ensure the building continues to serve its users into the future.

“The building is not designed like a custom-made suit,” says Fisher, “it’s like a pair of overalls; it’s meant to be flexible, to fit you, now and into the future no matter what goes on.

The university is currently planning on setting up a high school based around the same interdisciplinary model, and Jones is getting involved. It is hoped this school will open up opportunities to the wider community and promote diversity.

“Are the skills we are developing in the students here now exclusive to the collegiate space?” wonders Jones.

“That rawness I think supports people’s feeling that they can do whatever they want in the building and they don’t have to be in a precious, untouchable environment.”

“What’s the impact that we can have if students can learn some of these skills earlier? And particularly among students of color and around USC’s community, how could they benefit from this kind of education?”

The overall reaction to the building, adds Muhl, has been fantastic, even though the pandemic means

Judging by what is going on at university level, an awful lot.

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Around the world, communities can see a gap between their aspirations for education and what their learning environment was designed to do.

Ringing the end to “cellsand-bells” school design Narrow corridors dotted with boxy classrooms, creating an industrial and institutional feel, have long defined the typical school. Leading Architect Practice Fielding has and is launching an app to show how it can be done better.Nathan Strenge, Senior Learning Designer at Fielding, explains...

Imagine a space where you feel a deep sense of comfort. Take a moment and create your own mental picture of that environment. How would you describe the space you’re imagining? Are you indoors or outdoors? What sounds do you hear? What kind of lighting enhances the comfortable feel? Are there places to sit or lie that add to your level of comfort? Does the environment allow you to move freely about the space?

One final question: is the space you’re imagining similar to any school you ever went to?

Chances are the school you attended wasn’t designed to provide a deep sense of comfort; nor was it designed to promote interdisciplinary learning. It’s doubtful that it was built to cultivate belonging, wellness or creativity, nor any number of the things we want from our schools today.

Around the world, communities can see a gap between their aspirations for education and what their learning environment was designed to do.

The challenge Throughout the twentieth century, facilities were largely structured around a “cells-and-bells” model – narrow corridors dotted with siloed classrooms, often creating an institutional or industrial feel, define this approach.

Despite efforts by schools to make learning more collaborative, active, interdisciplinary, creative – you name it – outdated school facilities are getting in the way of twenty-first-century learning goals.

And herein lies a critical problem. Because the cellsand-bells model rose to such prominence in twentiethcentury school design, it’s difficult for many to even imagine, let alone create, something markedly different.

So, despite a mismatch between conventional learning spaces and desired school goals, without the right language, tools and guidance, making a change presents an enormous challenge.

The origins of Design Patterns Randy Fielding – founding partner of Fielding International – felt the problem of institutional schools as early as kindergarten. He developed a belief that creating learning environments to foster belonging, creativity and collaboration could radically improve life on this planet.

In 1998, Fielding launched DesignShare, one of the first comprehensive websites on architecture and learning. Through DesignShare, Fielding gathered 500

case studies and published more than 100 articles on learner-centred learning environments.

As Fielding analysed this wealth of data, patterns emerged about how learning environments could support thriving individuals in flourishing communities.

He started drawing Design Patterns as simple sketches with annotations that got down to the essence of how a space works to solve an identified problem. He noticed it was often just a few key ideas that would break down the complexity of school design.

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Eden Park – before

The Eden Park community dug into Design Patterns to holistically reimagine their learning environment around student agency, collaboration, and belonging.

Eden Park – AFTER

By the time Fielding co-authored The Language of School Design in 2005, DesignShare was at the height of its influence. The 40 original Design Patterns formed the base of a new way of thinking about space in schools.

DesignShare was the first to define the Learning Community model as a paradigm-shifting alternative to the dominant cells-and-bells approach.

The Language of School Design put Fielding in the spotlight as a rethinker of school spaces. Fielding

International now has a global reach, working in 50 countries on six continents, and has won prestigious design honours such as A4LE’s MacConnell Award.

In every project, Design Patterns have served as a common design language, helping users to effectively imagine and communicate what they want from their learning environment. They have repeatedly found that school communities that dig into Design Patterns with a local group – often composed of

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teachers, administrators, parents and students – have a breakthrough moment in creating a shared vision for teaching and learning that leads to transformational outcomes.

Scaling transformation Yet, 23 years after DesignShare went live, only a small fraction of young people around the world are fortunate enough to go to schools designed to foster belonging, creativity and collaboration. This is why, in autumn 2021, Fielding International is launching a new Design Patterns open-source library app to help reshape schools for the better.

The app, put together by Fielding International’s 35-strong team, aims to democratize best practices in twenty-first-century school design.

The team will launch the app with 70 Design Patterns; each pattern will include a statement describing the problem it aims to solve, how it solves it, along with an annotated sketch, images of the pattern in action and a

“Go Deeper” section linking to pattern resources.

By making Design Patterns free and available for anyone to use, Fielding International hopes to spur demand for school environments that foster collaboration, creativity and belonging. With the common pattern language, Fielding International aspires to give everyone the tools and access to create locally sourced learning environments where all people thrive in flourishing communities.

Over time, interactive features will be developed on the app so people across the world can share ideas, suggest new patterns, add research and resources.

Bring it home The need to create learning environments that are responsive to the unique and holistic needs of every user has never been clearer. Design Patterns can help you bring twenty-first-century learning environments to your community. Find them freely accessible at www.SchoolPatterns.com.

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Irena Barker meets designers Avron and Jolene Levin, founders of NorvaNivel, to find out how their furniture designs tune into learners’ needs.

“A lot of kids get lost in the system because the environment is stifling them.”

It is a brave business owner who describes himself as an “irrepressible lunatic” on his Twitter social media profile. But Avron Levin, the creative force behind the NorvaNivel educational furniture brand, clearly regards a degree of lunacy as an advantage in his trade.

“What I’m looking for all the time with my team is massive bursts of inspiration…I want the disruption in my classroom, the insane explosion of ideas,” he says.

Curiosity, disruption and fearlessness are key to the Levins’ design process – and these traits also reflect the kind of progressive education that the company wants its products to promote. It is a kind of education that prepares young people for the future by nurturing curiosity, giving them permission to make mistakes, learning to collaborate with others and develop a whole range of so-called “soft” skills.

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“We thrive on failure, it’s like that first attempt in learning, you’re only going to get to that level of greatness if you have stumbled and failed along the way.”

Avron’s wife Jolene, co-founder and CEO of the business, adds: “We thrive on failure, it’s like that first attempt in learning, you’re only going to get to that level of greatness if you have stumbled and failed along the way.”

A desire to make a difference The seeds for the business were sown when Avron and Jolene first met in Johannesburg, South Africa, where Avron was living and working as a product designer and Jolene was visiting relatives. It wasn’t long before Avron moved to Australia to be with Jolene; they set up a handyman business but quickly found themselves delivering and installing systems furniture.

One day in 2011 they were tasked with delivering chairs to a school that was pioneering a progressive approach. “The headteacher presented us with a problem around the lack of school furniture to support and facilitate future-focused pedagogy,” says Jolene.

The headteacher said he needed 57 couches for his classrooms, something Avron – at the time at least – first regarded as “quite a commitment to a hippy kind of thing”. But when Jolene started researching the problem, the couple saw there was a growing need.

“We were already understanding that there was a movement in education,” says Avron. “People were trying to make the difference but there was something missing, the environment wasn’t supporting that.”

They soon saw, says Jolene, that it could be an area where they could really make a difference. And it was this desire to make a difference that still drives the couple today.

Texas pioneers In 2017 the couple and their four children moved, along with the company, to Texas in the USA – a country that is further behind Australia in terms of its embrace of learning environments that go against the industrial model of school.

“Conversations we were having in Australia are only now, four years on, starting to take foot here in the States; it felt like it was a good opportunity to be pioneering something in this country that was a little bit different but was really meaningful and impactful,” says Jolene.

They soon saw this impact first-hand at a school that had used lots of NorvaNivel pieces inside its collaboration space. Their furniture had had a profound impact on a non-verbal, highly autistic boy who wouldn’t interact with others. He was inspired to build “the most incredible train” using three or four different types of furniture, she says. “This little boy turned around, and when they went to take a picture of this incredible engineering marvel that he had done, he smiled for the photo and that kind of connection had never happened before with that boy.”

Products that promote creativity Avron and Jolene are obviously delighted to be having these kinds of real tangible impacts, but are there any products they have produced that they are particularly proud of?

Avron mentions the RockerOTT, an ottoman-style seat that resembles a Swiss roll with one flat side. It specifically helps children who find it helpful to fidget and rock as they learn.

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“…I want the disruption in my classroom, the insane explosion of ideas…”

He says: “We’ve got different favourites for different reasons. The RockerOTT is a big one, it was a realization, a bit of an ‘aha’ moment and it also highlighted to us how simple it could be.

“We were doing a transport theme for Northern Beaches Christian School in Australia, so basically it was tugboats, trucks and trains. We knew we needed a surface, we wanted storage and we wanted seating.

Function as well as form Avron is keen to correct anyone who thinks that the company’s furniture is primarily about making a space “pretty” rather than having an important function. He gives the example of the “Cloudie” table, which looks fun, because it is cloud-shaped, but that shape has an important function in enabling collaboration between students.

“We put it into the environment and all hell broke loose [in a good way]: kids were sitting on it, straddling it, they were going mad, doing all these things – that was the intent, it was a happy accident.”

He also highlights how having their own children has helped the couple in their journey towards understanding the importance of learning environments that cater for a diverse range of children who learn in different ways. “They are all so different. We have a kid from most groups. They test the product; they are brutally honest; sometimes they are far too kind,” he says.

But Avron’s favourite product, he says, has to be Genga, a system of large sponge blocks that can be used in many ways.

Jolene adds: “We’ve got one kid who’s super creative, who in a traditional learning environment would not have her needs met properly.

“Purely because it is non-prescriptive and I’m always amazed at what people will do. There’s an end to my creativity and somebody else carries on.

“We’ve got another child, you could put her into a desk-and-row environment and she would function perfectly. You could put her into a NoraNivel learning environment too.

“We wanted to put little ottomans that were light, but I put the ottoman down and it kind of kept rolling away, so I cut the bottom of the ottoman off and I put it down and thought ‘that’s awesome, that’s like a solid wheel’.

“The truth of Genga is it was designed to be a wall…

I wanted to create a soundproof barrier. I kind of obsessed over materials; I was playing with foam, and it just made sense.”

Jolene adds: “It’s been the craziest thing. When we design a product, we might have an intention then put it inside a space, inside the hands of the child, and they will then take that and just perpetuate that creativity with that product in different ways – and ways that make sense to them.”

“It’s about being in tune with kids’ needs. A lot of kids get lost in the system because the environment is stifling them.”

It is the recognition of this last point that clearly drives Avron and Jolene to help schools nurture the potential of all pupils in creative ways that will prepare them for the future.

My children thrive where the tone of the room is relaxed and relationships are strong.

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Learning from Experience Nichol Lancaster describes how her children’s bumpy journeys through the education system helped to inspire an innovative range of shape-shifting classroom furniture.

Many commercial products are born around a conference table, in an office building, a long way from the people who will ultimately use them.

Others are born of raw, real life experience, and their designers instinctively understand the users’ needs.

In the case of our company’s latest furniture line — the Chameleon Classroom System — the latter is true.

Of course, in our industry, we are all guilty of thinking our furniture is going to revolutionize the classroom and I am personally guilty of standing back and assuming kids will “love” our furniture arrangements.

But the truth is that our furniture is simply a tool for the classroom, and is one piece of a jigsaw puzzle that teachers must put together every day.

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The idea is that the system allows for complete flexibility for the teacher, it’s mobile, flexible, collaborative and inspires educators to create order.

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As a mother of four children, I have been wheeling in and out of the car rider line to drop my children off at various schools for 22 years.

To say that our experience in education has been a pleasant journey would not be accurate. My children have been average students, and haven’t exactly thrived in school.

My career hasn’t always been in educational furniture, but when I joined the industry, my eyes were opened to some of the reasons why my children’s school years have been difficult.

Over the years, I’ve discovered that my children learn best in a non-traditional setting, along with a teacher who has the ability to capture their attention on a personal level.

My children thrive where the tone of the room is relaxed and relationships are strong.

When that is coupled with great instruction, I have seen them transform into fabulous students, and they absorb the subject like sponges.

An example of this is how my two oldest children, who are three years apart, both thrived under the same fourth grade teacher, at different times.

Under that teacher, my typically “middle of the road” students both maintained an A average for the entire fourth grade. I was ecstatic and confused all at the same time.

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I immediately fell in love with the concept.

Years later, after entering the world of educational furniture, I wrote to their teacher and asked…

“What is your secret sauce?”

She sent back an entire page of her secrets, but the common thread was that she was always going to truly let her students into her life, and she wanted to be in theirs at a real person to person level.

She also gave them freedom. Freedom to make mistakes and then correct them, freedom to sit where they want, freedom to lead their parent-teacher conferences, and the freedom list goes on.

She created a home away from home, and empowered the children to look at their time in the classroom differently, while maintaining order and an expectation for performance and respect.

She got all of that and more as the culture in her classroom began to flow naturally from her students.

I remember visiting her room back in the years of 2002 and 2005, and thinking “This is cool, and I love the way she has her room arranged”.

She was using the standard desks that she was given by rearranging them in pods of three or four where the children faced each other. Her room was clean, neat and she was highly organized.

This may have been my first sight of a collaborative classroom. Now, if you will fast forward with me to 2015, I will share an opposite experience.

My youngest child was also in the fourth grade and had done well in previous years. However, this year he began to have behavioral problems, was not focused in class, and his grades were declining, so I was called in for a parent-teacher conference.

When I walked into the classroom, I was instantly overwhelmed with the sense of chaos. His teacher, although very pleasant and kind, had been teaching for 28 years and was retiring soon. The teacher was tired and seemed overwhelmed and the desks, the case work and walls told that same story.

There was “stuff” everywhere…piles of papers, stacks of text books, and trinkets on every bookshelf. Every inch of every wall was lined with motivational messages, paperwork, reminders, and more.

The floor had book bags, coats, and personal belongings scattered about beside each desk. There was not an inch of this classroom left to breathe. It’s safe to say that not many people would thrive under those circumstances.

To be fair, this was not the single cause of my son’s problems, however, one has to ask if that could have been a contributor.

These types of real life experiences have become the inspiration and driver behind our company’s mentality of “How can we fix this, and what if we tried this?”

At CEF, we are absolutely passionate about providing school furniture that is a tool for fostering creativity and a sense of freedom for the children.

When children use our product they can sit or stand, collaborate around writable tables with high stools,

work at a butcher block surface or simply roll their desk or storage cart across the room.

The Chameleon Classroom System, which is the brainchild of my colleague and CEF’s lead engineer Terry Davis, became a very exciting product from the start.

When he called me out to the factory floor and started stacking pods, and explaining how it would work, I immediately fell in love with the concept and we began the process of designing the full line.

We saw that this could not only provide multiple types of pieces, but solve many of the organizational problems in a classroom. It would also create a highly functional space with the ability to transition the room quickly for any teaching style.

In a nutshell, The Chameleon is a mobile pod system that can sit anywhere from two to six children per unit based on one multi-positional top.

The customizable pod configurations allow users to

create everything from student seating to wall cabinetry.

The idea is that the system allows for complete flexibility for the teacher, it’s mobile, flexible, collaborative and inspires educators to create order.

It can also be a teacher’s desk, classroom storage and reduce the need for case work around the entire classroom.

The Chameleon is only one product line of several where CEF has seen a need and worked towards a solution.

It’s not rocket science, it’s simply being present and staying connected to our children and the classroom.

CEF is honored to have our furniture placed in classrooms across the country, and we are committed to creating unique pieces that are well built, highly functional and beautifully designed.

Nichol Lancaster is the director of business operations at Custom Educational Furnishings (CEF) To see a video of The Chameleon System, go to bit.ly/33ozvL1

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Jay Litman AIA, Jill Ackers and Jennifer Leyva from Fielding International explain how their company has reimagined a school for the needs of the modern age.

Eden Park’s Learning Community: more joy and more learning

and bells” school model can no longer support the development of the human skills, competencies and behaviours essential for young adults. To find success in the rapidly approaching AI-driven digital world of the mid-21st century, schools must prepare students to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Much like the post-Covid-19 workplace has evolved, so too must our learning ecosystems by breaking free from traditional school schedules and reconsidering the boundaries of when learning, playing and socialization occur. This new kind of collaborative teaching and mentorship has taken root in many of the schools we have designed over the last 18 years. Although the world has changed and become flatter and faster, schools have not. To support these changes, we conceived new design patterns and evolved the “neighborhood” model into what we call a Learning Community.

What should modern learning look like in 2021 and beyond? It’s a question we have been asking ourselves for the last 15 years. We know the answer does not begin with the school building. It lies with our Fielding mantra, “We start with the child”.

The child we are now contemplating will not be out of college and into the “real” world until the early 2040s.

What will that world be like, and how do we ensure these future young adults are equipped with the durable skills needed for times that are so far ahead from now?

What can we do to prepare this incoming generation to be successful and happy in the years to come?

We believe that for tomorrow’s children to find success in a wired, AI-driven, technocratic society, they must also have a solid grounding in the physical world.

Our future schools must create a learning environment that fosters the development of critical human qualities and skills, such as patience, empathy, inquisitiveness, curiosity, collaboration, confidence, humor and critical thinking.

Developing a Learning Community It has been evident for many years now to all of us at Fielding International (FI) that the antiquated “cells

“The beauty of play and movement is that it gives children the chance to achieve the necessary levels of physical activity in a way that is motivated by the fun of it.”

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A Learning Community is a powerful ensemble of spaces.

At its heart is a “Commons” for shared learning, which acts not only as a social heart but also the main venue for teaching and student-directed learning. The learning begins in the flexible Learning Commons, but surrounding it is a collection of discrete learning studios, small group and seminar rooms, which provide a variety of breakout spaces for teachers to personalize learning through a workshop model and to respond to individual needs. This represents a paradigm shift from the neighborhood model, which is no longer viable to enable learner independence, resilience when making decisions, or engaging in sustained enquiry through problem-solving.

Educators work in cross-functional teams to support learners’ growth collectively. Therefore, no one teacher owns a classroom. Teachers and children select appropriate spaces that best suit their learning or best elicit the types of thinking they are engaged in at the time. To support these spaces’ planned use, teachers now have a collaborative workspace where real-time professional development can occur.

With the departure of corridors and autonomous classrooms has come new freedom in the language of school design. The shift in pedagogical programming has meant that the fundamental form of a school building has shifted from a rectilinear office building to something far more organic. A new school must be far more than a place to work and learn. It is also where we begin to build relationships with other people, find out how we work collaboratively, develop a sense of ourselves and discover how we as individuals fit into our world and society. At FI, we believe that it takes an entire community to educate a child.

Our Learning Community’s systems are grounded in best practices for cognitive development and learning while proactively being focused on well-being, digital innovation and problem-solving. Sustainable schools must be adaptable on many levels. These new spaces are cultural ecosystems that transcend the traditional notion of school because they are based on interactions, relationships and meaningful curriculum design. An excellent example of this type of reimagined environment exists at Eden Park, an elementary school in Cranston, Rhode Island, USA.

Eden Park Elementary Cranston Public Schools (CPS) is an average-sized American school district of 22 schools that serve an economically and ethnically diverse population. Cranston is the second-largest city in Rhode Island and, typical of most American cities, most of its schools were built in the 1950s and ’60s. Despite the advanced age of many schools in the District, CPS leadership proclaimed that “we must go beyond warm, safe and dry”. Fielding had just completed a comprehensive school facility plan, reinventing and reimagining Cranston’s schools for the next 20 years and beyond. When approached by CPS district leadership to identify a potential “Pathfinder” or demonstration project, Eden Park presented a golden opportunity.

In addition to a forward-thinking School Superintendent and District administration, Eden Park has a very progressive principal and a teaching staff that was ready to reimagine and redefine their roles as teachers by letting go of the assumptions of what used to be school.

They have fully embraced new instructional methods, real-time collaboration and a flexible schedule to match their learning environments’ flexibility. Although limited in scope, the Eden Park project entailed a total transformation of the 12,000-square-foot (1,115-square-metre) west wing, of this 68-year-old, K-5 elementary school, including a new main entrance.

We demolished everything back to the original structural frame and then rebuilt from the ground up.

When designing this Eden Park wing as a Learning Community, as we do with any FI learning community, our focus was to craft an ensemble of student-centred collaborative spaces. Moving away from the model of one teacher–one room–and sole care of one group of students, we create an environment that supports learner-agency, transparent technology, and supports a wide variety of teaching and learning situations. These situations range from small group and independent study to whole group instruction or one-on-one with a teacher. FI spaces also emphasize the importance of teacher collaboration and include workspaces that allow teachers to work both independently and as a team.

The adoption of the Learning Community model at Eden Park allows for more flexibility and variety in day-to-day learning activities. The old corridor was

absorbed into the Learning Commons, leading to an agile space that supports multiple ways of learning, and multiple groups of learners. This type of shared commons creates a diffuse distribution of students and collaborative work areas. Transparency between the Learning Studios and the Commons facilitates interdisciplinary learning activities for kids, adults and folks who use these spaces for special services.

Fielding International-designed Learning Community were more successful when setting up their at-home learning environments. Teachers found these students could work more independently than those who were not used to learning environments that provided freedom and agency – where learners have to make an independent choice over the type of space to work in based on the kind of learning and thinking they are engaging in.

Measuring success Teachers’ professional development is embedded into the fabric of our work. Cranston is involved in ongoing professional development, which includes a threeyear teacher coaching programme. Teachers develop mastery in a collaborative, interdisciplinary, projectbased curriculum. Each year, the programme becomes more student-centred, with learners identifying and defining problems and projects themselves by year three. The results are in: at the 3rd–5th Grade Learning Community at Eden Park Elementary, the first completed, the level of engagement, personalization and physical comfort has reduced absences, seen a huge drop in disciplinary issues and all but eliminated the need for specialized isolation and decompression rooms for students with special needs – instead, they are thriving within a suite of spaces shared by everyone in their learning community. The result is more learning, more joy and less space required.

Our team designed a new exterior envelope with a highly insulated rain-screen system that uses a sustainable fiber cement panel cladding. All the new windows were sized to bring in the maximum amount of natural light, and operable with screens to allow for the ventilation of fresh air. Our consulting engineers, Creative Environment Corp., designed the mechanical systems to deliver dedicated, Merv 13-filtered outdoor air to each space through an energy recovery ventilator (ERV).

In March, when schools shut down for Covid-19, Eden Park Elementary found that students who had been in a

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The heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system is controlled by a building management system (BMS) that enables pre- and post-purge occupancy of indoor air. Many of these features have just been recommended by a joint US Environmental Protection Agency/Energy Star Task Force on preventing the spread of Covid-19 in schools. We mention this here because this level of performance will now be part of our postCovid-19 reality for all new schools.

“A new school must be far more than a place to work and learn. It is also where we begin to build relationships with other people.”

Eden Park’s furnishings were carefully selected for this new way of learning and teaching. The space was fitted out with agile and flexible pieces, engaging the learner to be autonomous and create their own learning environment. Therefore, the furniture is intentionally selected to reinforce the pedagogy, not the other way around. Soft, sturdy building blocks in various shapes, sizes and colors allow users to explore their learning community and find new ways to work together rather than being tied to a desk and a chair.

The beauty of play and movement is that it gives children the chance to achieve the necessary levels of physical activity in a way that is motivated by the fun of it.

Developing a pattern of being active will stay with a child because it teaches us how we learn through our whole body and not just our minds. Studies have shown that when our bodies are engaged physically, our minds are more alert and prepared. This allows the children to feel a part of their community and to respect the space they share with their teachers and peers.

There are valuable lessons to be learned here, which should be repeated elsewhere worldwide because we are at a pivotal moment of change. This is a turning point in history. The reimagination of learning spaces, along with the critical issues of health and well-being, will play a vital role in the development of this new, holistic, sustainable design strategy for our schools. Only this kind of approach can address the challenges posed by the broad spectrum of ecological, energy, educational health, and social issues humans now face. The Eden Park project proves that when a school is designed to support the whole student at every level, it will prepare them and their teachers for the twenty-first century and show them a new vision of the future through the joy of learning.

The multi-sensory room is a space where children can unwind mentally and emotionally.

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Often imitated, but never duplicated, our award-winning RockerOtt™ was the first of its kind.

Initially designed as a simple seat, we soon discovered it wasn’t just a static place to sit. It offered learners the movement their minds and bodies craved. They could sit, rock, perch and engage like never before. The choice was theirs.

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More than a decade later, our award-winning and truly versatile RockerOtt™ and RockerOtt10™ are not only two of the most ergonomic seats in today’s learning spaces, but they continue to impact learners worldwide as true champions of learner agency and choice.

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We pour love, time, energy and money into our homes. But do we do the same for our schools and classrooms?

We should and must. Pupils spend more time in the classroom during the day than at home.

A learning space that has had time and energy invested to reflect the visions and values of a school will be an environment where a child will thrive. And a new study proves that learning outcomes will improve too.

Murray Hudson investigates.

The classroom connection Two years ago, Trumpington Park Primary School, in Cambridge, UK, was invited to participate in the Planning Learning Spaces in Practice (PLSiP) project; a new approach to learning space design which aligns physical learning environments with the school’s educational vision, supporting children’s personalized and independent learning. Headteacher Mel Shute and her staff were passionate about exploring the potential of “learning by enquiry”, believing it could have a significant impact on improving the learning outcomes of students.

But how does a school translate its educational vision into the design of its learning spaces? How does a school ensure that its learning spaces match its ethos

and enable the successful delivery of its vision and values? Is it through pedagogy? Classroom layout?

The choice of furniture, fixtures and equipment? All of the above?

And most importantly, would this “hands-on” approach to creating their own learning environment produce quantifiably improved learning outcomes?

Professor Peter Barrett, author of the Clever Classrooms report was on board to monitor the impact on the pupils, teachers and support staff in Year 4.

A little bit of background In October 2019, Planning Learning Spaces was published as a guide for anyone involved in the planning and design of learning environments. With

expert contributors from across the global spectrum of education, architecture, design and FF&E, the book aimed to help inspire the design of more-effective learning spaces. In September 2020 the Planning Learning Spaces in Practice (PLSiP) project was launched to help schools translate their education vision into learning space design principles. The PLSiP team work with schools to create new, or refurbish existing, spaces so that they actively support their learning goals.

Trumpington Park Primary headteacher Mel Shute explains: “We started from the heart of our ethos and our values, and looked at those in terms of what we wanted to achieve in our teaching and learning. Then we assessed the constraints of the current classrooms

we have in being able to get that vision to work”.

Terry White, Co-Director of PLSiP, continues: “Our methodology places learning and teaching at the heart of a reflective process that empowers schools and stakeholders to become the creators and not just the consumers of the design of spaces and places for future learning.”

And then there’s a pandemic Despite the constraints, the design framework process continued through the pandemic, implementing Covid-19 safety measures and moving workshops online. Led by Co-Directors Terry White and Bhavini Pandya, the six workshops covered key themes of pedagogy, curriculum experience, organisation

of learning, leadership of learning and community engagement.

Staff reflected on their vision, values and ethos, reviewing whether they were evident in everyday learning and teaching practices while identifying strengths and challenges. Encouraged to define their next practice, staff then identified the learning behaviours and activities they hoped to see in the new spaces, considered how they would overcome potential challenges and what this might look like in terms of space and design.

After analyzing their current and future practice ideas, the school and team developed a design brief that considered the learning activities and different zones that would be required.

The results are in The key finding from Professor Peter Barrett’s report was that in comparison with the other classes, the children in the PLSiP classroom rapidly regained ground lost due to Covid-19 and ended up ahead of where they were with age-adjusted assessments the previous year.

The teachers in the PLSiP classroom noted that there was improved concentration, increased independent learning, more engagement with curriculum content,

more pupil dialogue and peer-to-peer learning: • The ability to independently choose groups led to reduced conflict, promoted further independent learning and children’s ownership within the process was more developed.

• The write-on surfaces and shape of the tables allowed much more pupil dialogue and peer-topeer learning talk, achieving the goal of changing the balance between teacher talk and pupil dialogue.

• The pupil-led lesson structure has meant more engagement with curriculum content. Children are enquiring into their own interest areas and asking thought-provoking questions.

• Children are, at times, more able to provide help, support and challenge for each other.

• The furniture enables a much more flexible classroom and variety of teaching methods. As the tables move easily, no time is wasted reorganising spaces.

The pupils also had positive thoughts about their new learning spaces, feeling ‘more free’ and enjoying being able to work closely with peers and learning from each other. They appreciated the choice of different zones to work in and the variety of table and seating options.

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Graph shows academic progress based on averaged test scores in reading, writing and math for yr 4 (new classroom – solid red line) compared with yr 3 (old classroom – dotted blue line).

In conclusion “The PLSiP process has without doubt led to a transformation in the appearance of the Year 4 learning environment,” writes Professor Barrett in his report.

“But, much more importantly, it is underpinned by a re-evaluation of the pedagogy and teaching practice to align more directly with the declared ethos of the school. There is good evidence that the project has had a positive impact from the perspectives of the pupils and of the staff. Overall, this is a success story that can be a sound basis for future developments.”

Trumpington Park Primary is now moving into a “Strategy for Change” phase where the school will examine opportunities to embed the gains achieved through its engagement with PLSiP.

on reflection Breathing and learning Everyone from The Hollies (if you’re of a certain age) via Kate Bush to Ariana Grande seems to have sung about breathing and now, albeit belatedly, a number of governments around the world are waxing lyrical about it too. In Belgium, Ireland, Victoria state in Australia and even England we are hearing of centrally provided CO2 monitors going into at least some classrooms to meter the air inside.

Why the change of heart? Well, it probably wasn’t the pop lyrics! CO2 has been touted as an interesting marker for viral aerosol infection. Covid droplets behave much like CO2. Good ventilation reduces them both.

Sub-optimal learning spaces hurt children’s education So, does low CO2 mean a great (and safe) learning space? Unfortunately, it is way more complex than that. In our Learnometer research project we have been logging the CO2, TVOCs (those nasty chemical Total Volatile Organic Compounds), PM2.5 (the little soot particulate matter associated with diesel engine exhausts), temperature, humidity, light and noise in learning spaces for well over half a decade. Generally, it is not good news.

If a school is anywhere near a busy road, as many are, then opening the windows might drop the CO2 levels, but that action will bring in all types of pollution. Sadly, good, published research confirms the impact of that on children’s cognitive health and thus their academic performance: they drop an average of a year’s schooling by the time they reach the end of school (no massive catch-up funding for them though!). Once temperature gets out of the “optimal” 64-70 degrees Fahrenheit range, mathematics performance drops in a straight line. Each extra degree is equally additionally damaging. Poor light levels are demonstrably soporific, often stressful. Anything below 500 lux (use a free app on your phone) is so unfair on the students. Almost everywhere that we looked we found profoundly suboptimal learning spaces.

Worse still, the poor behaviour, low attention levels and patchy performance associated with these damaging spaces ends up being blamed on the children. It is rarely their fault.

We’ve known all this for many years, and yet somehow it has taken a pandemic to draw attention to just one of those important variables. Probably this is like smoking: for decades people knew it was damaging, but somehow smoking carried on being normal everywhere from restaurants to school staffrooms.

Eventually, slowly at first but then rapidly, smoke disappeared from pubs, offices, homes and public spaces. Maybe the pandemic is the small beginning that will, quite quickly, lead to us cleaning up the classroom atmosphere. The science is unequivocal, now we need architects, ministers, teachers and children to fight hard for learning spaces that let our learners be their very best selves.

I’m hopeful that change has begun.

Professor Stephen Heppell is CEO of Heppell.net and holds the Felipe Segovia Chair of Learning Innovation at Universidad Camilo José Cela, Madrid.

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