School: The Latest Architecture and News

Going out twice per month, our curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture submitted by our readers highlights inventive conceptual approaches and designs. Showcasing projects from all over the world, this article puts together several programs, from houses to master plans. Moreover, it presents winning proposals from international competitions, buildings in progress, and creative concepts.

In the housing category, the roundup features an underground bunker-like house plan in Ukraine, a suspended glass structure cabin in Portugal, a complex of residential units in France, and a site-less, style-inclusive reinterpretation of the vertical housing block. In addition, a playful commercial building in Iran, a WWI memorial in Serbia, and an extension for the Glasgow School of Art join the selection, with their imaginative architecture and out of the box ideas.

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Valentino Gareri has proposed a sustainable and modular educational building for the new post COVID-19 era. Entitled Tree-House School, the project reinforces the relationship with nature, with connected outdoor and indoor spaces.

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Architects are mobilizing their efforts, to help schools around the world reconsider their design in order to guarantee sustainability, emotional wellness, and physical health. CetraRuddy, Cooper Robertson, and WXY are amongst those proposing an increase in outdoor programming and a rearrangement of classrooms, for post-pandemic school design.

The architectural scene has been witnessing lately a growing focus on indoor/outdoor functions. Discover 3 different interventions from 3 different practices, tackling one common issue, and focusing on outdoor space as a major programming element.

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The Reggio Emilia Approach was created in the post-WWII period at the initiative of widowed mothers and under the coordination of journalist and educator Loris Malaguzzi. In a time of postwar urban reconstruction, the group's primary concern was the formation of new schools, where they wanted to create a peaceful, welcoming, and cheerful environment, with a domestic atmosphere where children could stay while their mothers worked. Understanding the children's interests and providing a suitable environment for exploration and experimentation is one of the focal points of this pedagogy. The creation of a safe and stimulating environment is so fundamental that, in much literature, it appears as a third teacher.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has just released strategies, illustrations, and 3D design models in order to help reduce the risk of COVID-19 in schools. In an effort to assist education officials with reopening schools during the pandemic, the design guidelines are part of the AIA’s initiative “Reopening America: Strategies for Safer Buildings”.

Curl la Tourelle Head Architecture has built the first socially distanced tent, a pop-up school proposal in London. Located at Manorfield Primary School in Tower Hamlets, the project aims to maximize social distancing measures among students and teachers, during this post COVID-19 period.

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Curl la Tourelle Head Architecture (CLTH) has imagined a new design approach for classrooms when schools reopen as the lockdown eases in the UK. The architecture practice based in London has released an innovative concept “to help mitigate restricted circulation routes within schools and maintain the necessary social distancing among pupils and staff”.

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Throughout human history, the movement of populations–in search of food, shelter, or better economic opportunities–has been the norm rather than the exception. Today, however, the world is witnessing unprecedented levels of displacement. The United Nations reports that 68.5 million people are currently displaced from their homes; this includes nearly 25.4 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of eighteen. With conflicts raging on in countries like Syria and Myanmar, and climate change set to lead to increased sea levels and crop failures, the crisis is increasingly being recognised as one of the foundational challenges of the twenty-first century.

While emergency housing has dominated the discourse surrounding displacement in the architecture industry, it is critical for architects and planners to study and respond to the socio-cultural ramifications of population movements. How do we build cities that are adaptive to the holistic needs of fluid populations? How do we ensure that our communities absorb refugees and migrants into their local social fabric?

This World Refugee Day, let’s take a look at 5 shining examples of social infrastructure from around the world–schools, hospitals, and community spaces–that are specifically directed at serving displaced populations.

The Patio Vivo Foundation seeks to promote active free play, positive and healthy relationships, wellbeing and contact with nature by articulating space, community and the culture of kindergarten and school playgrounds. In the following article, they describe their working methodology in their own words.

Topotek 1 was selected as the winner of the open architecture competition for the extension of School Champagne in Biel, Switzerland. The winning proposal suggests the integration of an additional building with the existing campus and new outdoor spaces.

Christensen & Co Architects have designed with the participation of Kjaer & Richter Architects, the Nordøst Amager School, a school in Copenhagen that offers new types of spaces for an innovative learning experience. The facility also doubles as a center for after school activities for adults and children.

Archstorming, an architectural platform that organizes international competitions, has released the results for the Tulum Plastic School contest. In fact, participants were challenged to design a school made of recycled plastic, tackling the current issue of pollution in Mexico.

In Brooklynn New York, ODA created new stacked functions for a school for girls in Crown Heights, in a highly dense urban fabric. Starting with a compact shaped cube, the design of the Beth Rivka School merges the benefits and the creative constraints of a vertical building.