Sam Holland’s Post

NBBJ Design’s Westmark School is Designed for Learning Differences. The global firm’s Los Angeles–based studio worked with landscape architects SWA to create an education space dedicated to both physical and emotional well-being. The lower school campus of the Westmark School, a private academy in Encino, California, dedicated to supporting students with learning differences, is a model for charting a new direction. Not just for educational architecture, but for any type of building. Embracing research in neuroscience, education, and architecture, the facility addresses learning challenges from top to bottom, from incorporating nature and natural materials to encouraging multi-sensory learning to limiting stressors like excess noise and clutter. https://lnkd.in/eqz8ApSP

As education continues to evolve, so do the resources, tools, and technology used to best support it. Movable walls have long been a standard in educational design, and they too have changed with the times to best serve students. How could Modernfold movable walls change your educational space? #acoustics #aesthetics #performance

As education continues to evolve, so do the resources, tools, and technology used to best support it. Movable walls have long been a standard in educational design, and they too have changed with the times to best serve students. How could Modernfold movable walls change your educational space? #acoustics #aesthetics #performance

In the frame of their latest issue, "New Rules for School", Shumi Bose from KoozArch magazine asked me some questions about the research we are doing at the Voluptas chair at the ETH Zürich architecture department, and about my doctoral research in the frame of the The ETH Zurich - EPFL Joint Doctoral Program in the Learning Sciences. Was good fun taking some critical distance from the work done and a great feeling, once again seeing the quality of the projects done by the students! Here's the link, when you want to have a read:

Witnessing the sheer high-decibel onslaught of active school-age children engaging, shouting, laughing, and working together can be a daunting experience, even exhausting. Designing a wonderful educational environment presents many challenges. In this session, we will focus on the magic of educational acoustics. Architects often overlook this critical aspect of school design. As more and more schools adopt the emerging 4th generation Student Collaboration model it has become vitally important that Architects and designers understand  not only how to control sound and vibration in the learning environment but how to enhance intelligibility, and how to use acoustics as a real design tool to reinforce specific moods and enhance learning.

Our latest blog takes a deep dive into how important it is for students to enter design and visualisation competitions, and also the Domeble Symetri Student Awards. https://lnkd.in/e4PvNg5Y

Our latest blog takes a deep dive into how important it is for students to enter design and visualisation competitions, and also the Domeble Symetri Student Awards. https://lnkd.in/e4PvNg5Y

Over the past month it has been amazing showcasing 20 years of the practice's work in education with our 'School Stories' exhibition and film. The film below <sound on and grab a coffee!> captures why the Jestico + Whiles team involved in the learning sector are motivated to do what we do. The practice will soon be completing our 100th school. A milestone, building over 800,000m² of space, in schools of all different types: primaries, secondaries, special schools, UTCs, colleges in the UK and overseas. But most importantly providing quality learning environments to nearly 200,000 young people and their teachers. Personally I have enjoyed being involved in over 20 of these school projects, and have always been motivated by providing exceptional teaching and learning environments for the next generation. And that is what is important. Not the architecture. But what goes on inside it. The community and how it supports young people and teachers in their learning. We often talk about post-occupancy evaluation and the need to do more of it. Inherently this is usually metric-based, examining the physical performance of the building, the environment, the data. With School Stories we wanted to capture something different. Each year, each term, each day, there are thousands of experiences – stories – which play out inside the buildings which we have designed. Renewing our collaboration with filmmaker Dion Barrett and audio producer Flo Lines, we have recorded a fraction of those stories by revisiting a selection of our schools to hear directly from their communities in their own words. A vignette into the world happening every day inside each one. #architecture #schooldesign #educationdesign #education

The best thing about the Design School is our members. Tomorrow we have a special member-led offering by Chris Diehl, Ph.D. about how technology supports can help us weave regeneration to the scale of entire landscape systems. Here is how he describes the session: "How do our visions of the future change when complex, exploratory questions can be answered instantaneously? We are living through a profound acceleration of computational intelligence and now more than ever, it's imperative to harness these capabilities for planetary regeneration. In this session, I'll make the case for the need to advance the state of the art in sense-making and decision-making tools tailored to surface and pursue high-value opportunities for regeneration. I'll share the story of my own exploration in the context of landscape-scale rehydration and bring you up to the leading edge of the questions I'm holding as this work progresses. This is the first time I've publicly spoken about this work I've been pursuing over the last few years. I will demonstrate a prototype sense-making tool I built to explore U.S. public rangelands data, with a particular emphasis on the social layer within this context." Become a member of the Design School today and join us! https://lnkd.in/guvJkrgm

Neuroscientists and Architects Collaborate to Design More Inclusive Buildings A new initiative sees neuroscientists and architects working together in a state-of-the-art laboratory to study how building design impacts the human brain. The aim is to create spaces that enhance wellbeing, accessibility and inclusivity for all users. By understanding how design influences behaviour and comfort, this research could revolutionise the way we think about accessibility in the built environment. https://lnkd.in/erFADbag How can neuroscience-driven design improve accessibility and inclusivity in the built environment? #InclusiveDesign #NeuroscienceInArchitecture #AccessibleBuildings