Intellectual Incarceration

Intellectual Incarceration

As the landscape of education in America is constantly changing so too should the schools. Innovative and flexible school designs are paramount in the American educational reform conversation. School buildings are the tangible realizations of such reform concerns. Initially concerned with the quality of the learning environment, access to daylight and fresh air were the catalyst in a movement to improve the overall quality of education. While the reform movement has evolved to focus primarily on the student and their varied ways of learning, our schools are required to reflect such theories. As students have moved out of the one room school houses and into more populated school campuses, the environment in which they were to learn in changed vastly as well.

Over the course of the reform movement, certain necessities, such as access to the outdoors, fresh air, and the utilization of daylight, have been identified and required to achieve a highly successful educational setting. The polarizing force in school design reform has been the collaboration of educational professionals and the architect. The importance of the architect in school reform cannot be overlooked but he is powerless to exact some lasting impact without input from those who utilize his work put every day. As education has grown by leaps and bounds there are still many avenues that can be traveled to ensure positive reform lasts. Until now educational reform has relied on the flexibility of new school designs, and collaboration between teachers and gifted designers. Now more than ever architects must be willing to go one step further and glean every ounce of insight from the one person who has the most to gain from him s...

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