2008 DesignShare Awards Announced!
Schools all over the world are being reinvented to meet the needs of an ever-changing global economy. The world is shrinking; knowledge is no longer a commodity restricted to the privileged. Developing nations are accessing the information superhighway and have passed some of the super powers. Corporations are consolidating globally and outsourcing to locations with large skilled labor forces.
The goal of the DesignShare Awards is to find those learning environments that meet at the crossroads of innovative design and pioneering educational programs. Three Patterns of Innovation stick out this year: School as the Real-World, Community Involved in the Design Process, and Sustainable Design.
The 2008 winning projects include:
2 Honor Awards
8 Merit Awards
4 Citation Awards
14 Recognized Value Awards
Teams of educators and architects submitting projects were asked to describe ideas that enhance learning, as well as innovations in planning, programming and design that facilitate education. The DesignShare Awards program recognizes projects that– by design –support the learning process, anticipate change, and inspire unimagined possibilities.
Kudos to our fabulous Review Team. We appreciate your eye for design, your experience in the educational realm, and your thoughtfulness. Big thanks to the dynamic programming duo who designed the Review Team Portal, Tony Webster & Will Buckner.
Just as schools all over the world are reinventing themselves, so is DesignShare. In preparation for this evolution, DesignShare WILL NOT hold a 2009 Awards Programs. We appreciate all the submitters from 1999 to 2008. You have shown the world the best examples of how education and architecture are uniquely bound together.
You can read the full 2008 Awards Commentary here.
“Denver School of Science and Technology: Sam Miller Interview”
DesignShare had the opportunity to sit down with klipp’s Sam Miller regarding the design of the Denver School of Science and Technology (DSST).
After seeing him present this design scenario at a CEFPI conference and watching the “Great Schools by Design” video that highlighted this award-winning school, we sensed that there was much to learn from this unique project.
We were particularly intrigued by the ability for a school to truly live up to the “for the future” technology mantra that is so common in today’s design/education conversations, while also creating spaces that immediately allowed teachers and students to collaborate across the program. We think you’ll be impressed, too.
“Transforming learning spaces to personalise learning: Four months of Fountaineering”
by Tash Lee, Learning Researcher, Futurelab
March 2007
“With current debates about what a 21st century education should look like, Fountaineers is showing that children and teachers have enormous scope to influence the reconfiguration of their buildings and outdoor spaces - and the ways in which they learn…
The Fountaineers project came to Futurelab from Sean McDougall of Stakeholder Design, through our 2006 Call for Ideas programme, which focused on ‘re-imagining learning spaces’. The focus of the project is the design and construction of programmable, interactive and intelligent water fountain, but the project is much more than that. The researchers, designers, owners and engineers of this fountain are the pupils and teachers of Luckwell Primary School in Bristol - all 220 of them! Through the design and decision making processes pupils (and staff) are not only learning about designing fountains, they are also learning how to work in teams, how to research and investigate, how to prototype and test things out.”
“Tackling the Crime of School Design” - Book excerpt from Rena Upitis, former Dean of Education at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario; currently Professor of Arts Education at Queen’s University.
“Is there a link between crime and schools?
Windowless concrete containers, surrounded by barbed wire fences - looking more like prisons than schools - can hardly be thought of as inviting environments for students. But buildings surrounded by barbed wire certainly bear cultural messages. This paper describes how architecture embeds cultural and educational values, and how schools often send messages about institutional life that are far from nurturing.
The paper includes examples from North America, Europe and Australia - such as a prison built in New South Wales that was converted to a high school, still in operation today. I also introduce three prominent educational approaches associated with early childhood - Montessori, Waldorf, and Reggio Emilia.”
“Spaces, Places and Future Learning” conference
1-2 November 2006
Rich Mix, London
by Jessica Pykett and Tash Lee, Futurelab
“This year’s Futurelab conference, held appropriately at Rich Mix in London, brought together a diverse gathering of teachers, policy makers, academics, designers, architects and IT developers to discuss the need to think imaginatively about the learning spaces of the future. The conference provided an opportunity to challenge our preconceptions of the environments in which we learn; to imagine learning taking place anywhere, in the school, home, work and community; and to reflect on the possibilities for transforming those learning spaces with innovative tools such as computer games and mobile, tangible and embedded technology.”
Conversations
Explore the design patterns for 21st century schools based on the