The 2003 Awards for Innovative Learning Environments

Referring to the Oak Valley Aboriginal School in a remote part of South Australia, awards review team member John Mayfield writes, "The school’s aim is to provide ‘ngapartji ngapartji,’ which is the Anangu concept of equal and reciprocal giving and sharing for everyone’s benefit." I was struck by the wisdom contained in this expression-a philosophy that could sustain our planet. Global sustainability is a key theme throughout the 2003 awards, with registrations for 112 projects from 17 countries, representing an enormous range of ideas and concrete solutions. Seventy-one earned awards.

The concept of sustainable, ecologically sound schools can be read on many levels: at its broadest level, ecology is a science of relationships, encompassing natural, human, building, and pedagogical systems. The Aboriginal school is a useful place to start when exploring ecology and school design from a broad perspective. The project was rejected by most of the 13 review team members upon first review-why? Because its presentation lacked power and finesse. I’m reminded of Robert Kagan’s essay "Power and Weakness" (Policy Review, June-July 2002), in which he compared the United States and Europe to two men confronting a dangerous bear, one armed with only a knife, and the other with a rifle; the European with the knife observes cautiously from a distance, while the American with the rifle tries to shoot the bear.

The Aboriginal school’s awards submittal is presented with rough sketches and the construction budget was tiny-comparing it with a $50 million school in the United States is like comparing a knife to a rifle. But large, well-funded schools do not guarantee an optimal learning environment, and may be the least sustainable model. In contrast, the Aboriginal school embodies a highly a sustainable approach, with its small, simple structure, "a refuge, a place where people sleep and eat and shower and sit on the ground and talk."

Low-budget Aboriginal models aside, perhaps the awards program’s greatest strength is not that it focuses our attention on a single best approach, but the broad range of ideas and practical solutions it offers.

Two new features in the award program this year included an educator narrative for all submittals and an optional learning environment assessment. The assessment is a process by which a school facility is systematically assessed to the degree that it supports the expressed mission, goals, and activities (related terms for a learning
environment assessment include post-occupancy evaluation, educational adequacy assessment, and building performance appraisal). Together, the educator narrative and assessment add a significant breadth of information for planners, researchers, and all members of the school planning community to better understand the ideas and solutions represented in the awards database, and to apply these principles in their own projects.

Seven of the top awards this year are in the reviewer category. The review team includes 13 of the most innovative planners from around the world, and any program that does not include their work would be missing some of the most innovative ideas for planning tomorrow’s schools. In most of these projects, the review team member was a planning consultant; in the case of the Surkis Elementary School in Israel, reviewer Gavriela Nussbaum was also the architect. Reviewer projects are listed in a separate category. All projects are reviewed anonymously, and reviewers abstain from voting or commenting on their own projects.

Twenty-seven of the 71 awards went to countries outside the United States, including Austria, Australia, China, Denmark, Finland, Honduras, Israel, India, Japan, Kenya, Norway, Singapore, United Kingdom, and Zimbabwe. If we in the school planning community can embrace the Aboriginal concept of ngapartji ngapartji of learning from each other-in a spirit of equal and reciprocal giving and sharing for everyone’s benefit-we can go a long way toward living with a dangerous bear without stabbing or shooting it. Truly sustainable schools will embrace the bear, and make its observation and its habitat a part of the school’s pedagogy.

The DesignShare Awards program, co-sponsored by School Construction News and the C/S Group, now in its fourth year, has become the most comprehensive international database of innovative school designs in the world. All four year’s worth of information, including cost data, site plans, floor plans, photographs, educator narratives, and review team commentary is available at DesignShare.com. Learn, enjoy, and share your ideas with your learning community.

Randall Fielding, AIA, is the founder and editorial director of DesignShare.com, and a partner in Fielding/Nair International, providing planning and design consultation for innovative schools. He can be reached at: fielding@designshare.com.