Architecture, Building and Planning - Research Publications
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ItemPlans and Pedagogies: School Design as Socio-Spatial Assemblage(Sense Publishers, 2016)The concepts in this chapter were originally presented in the Journal of Architecture in 2013, addressing a design oriented audience. The research findings are included in this book to ensure an educational audience has the opportunity to see the links between pedagogy and space which were encountered in this study. The design of learning environments at every level from primary to tertiary is undergoing major transformations involving the proliferation of new learning spaces that are variously termed learning ‘streets’ or ‘commons’, ‘meeting’ spaces and ‘outdoor learning’ areas together with complex new interrelations and overlaps between them.1 Such changes are largely driven by long standing changes in pedagogical theory and practice that may be broadly described as a recognition of both formal and informal learning and a move from teacher-centred to student-centred learning. The traditional classroom is a product of a teacher-centred pedagogy, framing a hierarchic relation between teacher and students while closing out other activities and distractions. It is also a form of what Foucault (1979, 1980) terms a disciplinary technology where the gaze of authority works to produce a normalized and disciplined subject. It has long been clear that student-centred pedagogies are seriously constrained by traditional classrooms. What is not so clear is how new forms of open school environments are matched to the new pedagogies. The primary goal of this paper is to critically analyse a range of recent celebrated middle-school plans within such a theoretical and pedagogical framework.
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ItemDesigning for adaptation: The school as socio-spatial assemblage(Routlege Taylor & Francis Group, 2014-01-02)Over the last century we have seen a slow transformation of the architecture of school classrooms in response to changing pedagogical theory and practice. A shift from teacher-centred to student-centred learning is accompanied by the move towards a more open plan with new spatial types, interconnections and modes of adaptation. This paper seeks to understand this linkage of plans to pedagogies in the case of the middle school. Using an analytic framework of assemblage theory, clusters of learning spaces from a range of recent innovative school plans are analysed in terms of capacity for socio-spatial interconnection and adaptation. Five primary plan types are identified, ranging from the traditional classroom through various degrees of convertibility to permanently open plans. Patterns of spatial structure and segmentarity emerge to enable new forms of teaching and learning on the one hand, but also to camouflage a conservative pedagogy on the other. If traditional classrooms with their corridors and doors can be understood in terms of Foucaultian disciplinary technology, the new learning clusters suggest a use of Deleuzian social theory to understand an architecture of connectivity and flow. Through an analysis that is intended to reveal rather than eliminate ambiguities, architectural capacities for convertibility from one pedagogy to another are distinguished from properties of agility or fluidity that enable continuous adaptation between learning activities. We find that the most popular types have high levels of convertibility and reveal conflicting desires for both discipline and empowerment. We also suggest that the most open of plans, while cheaper to build, are not the most agile or fluid. © 2014 The Journal of Architecture.
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ItemSmart Green Schools The Unofficial Overview(Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne, 2010)The Smart Green Schools project, an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Grant (2007-2010), investigated the influence of innovative and sustainable school building designs on middle school education in Victoria focussing on understanding the links between design, sustainability, pedagogy and Information Communication Technology (ICT) within 21st century learning spaces. The projects’ aims were both practical and theoretical. Practically, there was an urgent need for current and local data on school design to ensure effective spending of government funds on facilities that support learning. Theoretically, the research project aimed to advance thinking about how schools, as complex systems, engaged with contemporary design, curriculum, technological, and environmental issues.