Design for Learning

Public schools are generally overwhelmed with challenges, student performance is consistently disappointing, and school districts are risk averse and slow to change. What’s more, the dominant approach to school design in the United States is most responsive to nineteenth-century educational strategies and twentieth-century technologies. In designing the learning environment, we have a fundamental challenge. We now need to bring twenty-first-century ideas and technologies to support twenty-first-century educators and students.

Since 2003, AAF has worked closely with the leaders of urban school districts to convene design charrettes, sustainability workshops, forums, and other intensive collaborations. Through our program, Great Schools by Design, AAF collaborated with more than 100 urban school districts in every major American city, bringing education leaders, civic leaders, and design innovators together to improve learning environments and student outcomes.

No national non-profit organization currently provides elected officials, superintendents, school boards, and other civic leaders with a single place to turn for information, technical support, and inspiration when it comes to school design. Together with our partners, AAF intends to fill this leadership void through Design for Learning. Building on ten years of experience in school design, AAF’s Design for Learning builds on ten years of experience in school design, and works to create a stronger national leadership platform for AAF and our partners.

Joining us in this endeavor are our knowledge partners, representing some of the most transformative thinker-practitioners in school design:

Cuningham Group Architecture
DLR Group
FGM Architects
JCJ Architecture
Perkins+Will
Steelcase

Design for Learning has been generously funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation since 2014 to provide design and technical assistance to school districts around the country.