From Egyptian temple schools to ICT workplaces, much has changed during 5,500 years of institutionalized education, particularly in the past decade. New learner and user concepts mould the twenty-first century learning experience. Moving away from traditional, teacher-centred methods of transmitting information with the help of blackboard and chalk, schools are increasingly developing into open, flexible learning landscapes.
As school buildings pose an increasingly complex architectural challenge, clients and architects alike require extensive and detailed information about much more than just education or construction. The new volume School Buildings in the Construction and Design Manuals series, edited by Berlin-based architect Natascha Meuser, gives an overview of the subject and provides essential information and fascinating facts for anyone planning, modernizing, or extending a school building. Detailed drawings and photographs introduce more than thirty school buildings from all around the world. Progressing by age group from primary to secondary school and including special schools, the book presents best practice projects successfully solving the many challenges involved. Security, accessibility, flexibility, social and cultural environment - all these factors may be included in the architect's brief.
There is no doubt about the importance of the physical environment for the performance, comfort, and development of children and young people. Most of our time during childhood and youth when not in the parental home is, after all, spent in settings of formal learning. Introductory texts discuss the building typologies, organizational models, and expected future development of schools. The authors present the findings of a study conducted by the Montag Foundation on successful concepts for learning spaces, teacher areas, and common rooms and discuss the impact of ICT on learning and teaching. An essay entitled '5,500 years of detention' summarizes the cultural history of schools. Ten design parameters round off the practical planning aids provided in the book.
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