Education building trends

A new school of thought for education spaces

Just as the new world of work is demanding a new take on traditional office fitouts to enhance the employee experience, the education sector is also prioritising the student and teacher experience in their builds. To enable this, education spaces seek to be flexible, inspiring, and technological.

Equally as important as embracing technology to ‘keep up with times’ in ways that enhance learning, a rising trend is seeing us ‘get back to basics’ and embrace the natural environment in ways that enhance wellbeing.

As a result, many of our projects are seeing a prevalence of outdoor learning and informal breakout areas to suit different learning styles and help students connect with nature.

Here are some of the key school building trends we have had the privilege of turning into built solutions in recent times.

Prioritising wellbeing in school builds

Even pre-pandemic, we spoke about workplaces being new mental wellness hubs. And as a precursor to entering the workforce, the same emphasis on wellness and wellbeing is filtering down to our education projects, too.

Wellbeing comes in many forms; the NSW Government and many other sources consider physical, psychological and cognitive wellbeing as those most pertinent to the education sector.

A common way we have seen it in the built form is through indoor greenery and outdoor learning spaces. Smaller breakout pods, lounge seating and spaces to take ‘time out’ from the traditional classroom are also increasingly making their way onto our projects.

Outdoor learning areas

The calming effects of nature are well known, especially for children. Gone are the days of learning being restricted to the classrooms and outdoors reserved solely for sports and play. Today’s learning environments offer a range of indoor and outdoor break-out spaces to inspire the imagination and refresh the mind.

When the South Australian Department for Education bought back an old unused school building in the regional town of Goolwa, they engaged our construction team for a complete refurbishment including the addition of covered outdoor learning areas (COLAs). These COLAs now provide teachers with a dedicated space to conduct learning in an open natural setting rather than having to improvise and ‘make-do’ should they wish to take learning outside.

Similarly, Aberfoyle Park High School in South Australia incorporated a host of interconnected indoor/outdoor learning areas to make the most of the school’s vast outdoor greenery and offer an alternative learning environment to the traditional classroom for their students.

Nature can be featured, instead of removed or hidden in a combination of large-level open spaces and more secluded areas for children to retreat to for some quiet.
Outdoor learning space design, SA Department for Education

In Victoria, our construction team was engaged for the refurbishment of De La Salle Catholic College for boys. To facilitate inside-outside learning, the build incorporated windows opening to cantilevered stainless steel benches outside so that classes may continue externally.

Fostering creativity in the built learning environment

We’ve been involved in several education projects that embody a new education philosophy centred around creativity and collaboration.

Aberfoyle Park High School prides itself on the arts and so its new buildings incorporate a host of contemporary learning spaces and collaborative areas to enhance the student experience and promote creativity. In addition to high-tech classrooms, the refurbishment included a new state-of-the-art Performing Arts Centre with an auditorium and music facilities engineered to be acoustically sound using glasswool fibre insulation in the walls and ceiling.

Catering to different learning styles through flexible modular spaces

The Victorian School Building Authority (VSBA) is committed to building innovative new spaces for students to learn, play and grow in. New flexible ‘learning communities’ are designed to cater to a wider variety of learning styles.

“We design the new spaces with principals, teachers, educational experts, and architects. While the new spaces may be unfamiliar, they cater for the learning needs and abilities of all students,” says the VSBA.

The VSBA defines learning communities as larger buildings made up of multi-purpose spaces that educators can use in different ways. This might mean using doors, movable walls or modular furniture. One trend we are seeing are more full length glass sliding doors to trasform the space and of course flood the classroom with natural light.

De La Salle Holy Eucharist Campus in Victoria utilises contemporary teaching styles. Our construction team was engaged in a Design & Construct capacity for the campus design based on core principles of flexibility and a range of informal learning spaces. Where required, formal teaching rooms were repurposed to be as open and transparent as possible.

The campus now features open and contemporary classrooms, staff rooms, dedicated science rooms with new plumbing infrastructure, and specialised technology rooms with additional ventilation systems and ample natural light.

Upholding the same principles of flexibility, the De La Salle Catholic College for boys makes use of mobile workstations and alternative breakout zones that accommodate modern and evolving learning and teaching methods.

Digitisation for tech-savvy students

The World Economic Forum Education 4.0 Framework talks about shifting learning experiences to mirror the future of work more closely; taking advantage of opportunities offered by new learning technologies. That is, preparing students for their debut in the workforce.

Creating learning ecosystems that are personalized and self-paced; accessible and inclusive; problem-based and collaborative; lifelong- and student-driven can help unlock, for example, the interpersonal and innovation skills needed for the future.
Schools of the Future, The World Economic Forum

Goolwa Secondary College seized the opportunity to embrace technology in its complete refurbishment. The buildings now feature high-tech classrooms and science labs in addition to separate fully equipped home economics and woodworks rooms for learning practical skills that will set students up for the future.