When Douglas Cardinal, Canada’s eminent architect, spoke to a conference of architects in Vancouver in the early 1990s, he began by saying “buildings speak to people,” meaning that the building itself, its design and the functional relationships of its components deliver a powerful message to those who occupy it every day of its life.But the more I listened, the more I wondered about a school building needing to say more to its occupants than “open your text at page 45.
For kids, their world is school-centric. It’s where their work is. It’s also where their peers are and where their relationships happen. It’s at school where kids begin to shape their individual identities, values and beliefs about what’s important and, with any luck, begin to figure out for themselves how to deal with the demands and values of adult life.
A good question at a time when the B.C. Ministry of Education has more that 30 capital projects ranging from design through renovation to new building projects on the go. As a single example of the change in thinking about school architecture, it was not so long ago that a dominant belief about school design was that windows in classrooms simply provided a distraction from learning. Now, 40 years later, it is not surprising that some provincial governments here in Canada and some state governments in the U.S.
Another study conducted by the Sorbonne University covered 13 European countries with a total of 2,387 children participating. It concluded that academic performance can increase by up to 15 per cent when students work in classrooms with larger windows — due both to increased daylight and a better view to the outside world.
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