By Mary RuppenthalĚýĚý

Creating safe environments is the top priority when it comes to designing schools. From an architectural standpoint, addressing both physical and psychological factors when it comes to safety is vital. After all, security isn’t simply a matter of creating a safe and secure campus perimeter and single point of public entry. It’s about fostering community and placemaking, empowering ownership and promoting positive interactions—all of which serve as a foundation for student and staff safety. Effective school design practices nurture belonging, flex to adapt to evolving learning styles and, of course, establish physical security.Ěý

Belong: Safeguarding Openness and Inclusivity

Building community starts with framing schools as student-centered spaces. By minimizing secluded and isolated areas and maximizing passively supervisable open spaces for a variety of large and small group gatherings, designers can craft places that enhance positive connections while reducing stress and anxiety. Conversely, dark corners and unsupervised spaces tend to increase the potential for bullying and disruptive behavior. Clear sightlines matter, so that teachers, staff, and students can observe or engage across adjacent spaces.Ěý

While students need to be seen in the literal sense, they also need to feel seen. Students are less likely to slip through the cracks when their learning environment delivers options for a variety of learning styles, including smaller gathering and break-out sessions, contemplative spaces and room to gather on a larger scale. Therefore, weaving collaborative spaces of different sizes throughout the environment is key to nurturing a sense of connection.ĚýĚý

Architects are also finding ways to shift teacher-student interactions from purely occurring in the classroom to more organic encounters throughout the campus. For example, by building administrative offices at the back of the student union, teachers and students naturally and informally interact as teachers pass through the communal space.Ěý

On larger campuses, the idea of creating a school within a school is gaining traction. Designing educational environments to accommodate cohorts of 250 students or less can help nurture a sense of belonging. If students feel engaged and welcome in part, through a campus’ layout that’s an important step toward building pride of place. Technical elements, like comfortable seating and warm colors, help create an inviting atmosphere. Leaning into flexible spaces is also an excellent path to supporting a strong, inclusive culture.ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý

Adapt: Enhancing Flexibility for Maximizing Learning and CommunityĚý

Accommodating different learning styles requires flexibility in terms of classroom and campus configurations. For example, kinesthetic learning requires ample space for movement and collaboration, ideally with plentiful wall and even interior window space for whiteboarding and wallboarding. Without losing connection to the main classroom, break-off spaces for varying levels of small-group lessons or contemplative study require passive supervision.ĚýĚýĚý

The average 960-square-foot classroom can flex in a variety of ways to meet students where they are. For example, operable partitions can help reconfigure a classroom, creating smaller spaces or opening to a larger collaborative environment. Beyond the classroom itself, glass walls and windows to common areas allow visible connections to adjoining learning and gathering spaces. In the case of indoor-outdoor layouts, a glass garage door connection could provide a supervisory link to an exterior space where louder, messier or larger projects can take place.Ěý

At the high school level, creating a multi-use, dynamic space rather than a siloed building not only enhances efficiency, but also checks all the boxes of a safe environment: passive supervision, pride of place and interconnectedness. For example, HED’s Yerba Buena High School’s new performing and fine arts classroom and theater building completely re-envisions and revives the visual and performing arts community on the campus. The design of multipurpose classrooms and stage space (divided by an operable partition as needed), replaces what was once a stagnant and rarely used theater at the end of its useful life and will, when complete, be dynamically full of student life with space to gather throughout the day, visual and performing art classes and display, performances, and community events.ĚýĚý

Mary Ruppenthal is an architect and Education Market Sector leader at Ěý

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Today’s teachers and students aren’t tethered to a wall by technology. Nor do they embrace a traditional, one-sided classroom. New pedagogies and learning styles — i.e., visual, kinetic, contemplative and collaborative — are shaping not only the way teachers teach, but the way we design the spaces in which education flourishes. The freedom and challenge of creating forward-thinking and effective school design involves understanding and incorporating a range of teaching styles and priorities into each reenvisioned classroom. Of course, administrators must also navigate the funding hurdles of building or renovating these spaces. As pedagogies, technologies and funding requirements evolve, here’s what’s trending in the K-12 school design landscape for 2025 and beyond.Ěý

Flexible, Resilient SpacesĚý

Every corner, wall and inch of today’s classroom has the potential to be functional. Designing four-sided classrooms that allow for collaborative projects as well as individualized learning (in all its forms) requires flexibility. In terms of today’s layout, that may mean creating breakout spaces for quiet moments where students can read and focus while retaining visible connectivity for teachers to observe what’s happening in those areas. Another option to shape learning spaces differently involves clustering classrooms (while still meeting square-footage requirements) and dividing that larger space into both contemplative and collective learning environments.Ěý

ĚýĚýWhen looking at the big picture, the focus on flexibility isn’t a short-term design commitment. Today’s buildings need to be designed so that they can be inexpensively renovated 50 years from now. To that end, today’s designers are focusing on the following:Ěý

• Creating flexible floor plates where load-bearing walls don’t stand in the way of reconfiguring future spacesĚý

• Implementing HVAC and technology systems that are designed with an eye for change over timeĚý

• Feeding the underground infrastructure and utilities to a location within the building that can be an easy point of connection and allows for future reconfigurationĚý

Building with resilience in mind is not only forward-thinking but also cost-effective. Often a new build is not in the budget, so designers can look to current structures to determine if the existing infrastructure can support new educational goals. To repurpose or modernize a building, we look for good bones, robust building materials and, of course, ways to flex the space, either by adding partitions or removing non-load-bearing walls. For example, HED’s redesign of Discovery Building incorporated potentially demountable interior walls among other highly adaptable elements. Given that technology paves the way for much of the evolution of learning, upgrading Wi-Fi and creating space for IT infrastructure is a key component in current and future school design.Ěý

Leveling up the CTE ExperienceĚý

Particularly at the high school level, career technical education (CTE) is seeing a huge resurgence. At HED, we’re designing everything from robotics labs and metal, wood and autobody shops to electrician spaces and agricultural facilities. In terms of design, this resurgence doesn’t just involve the hands-on mechanics of CTE learning, but also an elevated, integrated design that allows students to hone these skills in a forward-looking setting.Ěý

Working with one’s hands involves having technology at one’s fingertips, which means building labs that combine all of these elements. For example, a drafting lab incorporates the fundamentals of learning how to draw and design, plus a computer software component and a fabrication element. Students start with the basics, get a feel for the technology and, ultimately, their drawings come to life through 3D printing or implementation through the use of a CNC machine.Ěý

By leveling up the CTE experience, students get real world experience in a range of areas of expertise. For example, at the , students learn not only the theory and practice of how to humanely raise animals, but also how to bring them to market.Ěý

Embracing Sustainability and the OutdoorsĚý

As stewards of the environment, educators and architects have a common goal of creating learning spaces that are healthy, energy efficient and sustainable. Therefore, both old-school and innovative eco-friendly design elements are trending in school buildings across the nation as we work toward net-zero, carbon neutrality and American Institute of Architects’ 2030 goals.Ěý

On the back-to-basics side of the equation, we’re seeing tried-and-true design elements, such as a reinvention of the passive heating and cooling techniques of the past. Daylighting, in lieu of energy-heavy artificial illumination, is also making a comeback. Innovations, such as displacement ventilation, which delivers slow-velocity air in a low-to-high manner, creates healthier and more efficient ventilation than traditional HVAC systems. Photovoltaics (PVs) are being implemented into shade structures as well as rooftops, particularly in states like California where PV is required on new builds per the state code.Ěý

In mild climates, a move toward indoor-outdoor classrooms is also gaining traction. When deliberately integrated into the learning experience, this design shift goes well beyond connecting a classroom to a patio via a garage door. These outdoor spaces, such as HED’s Jefferson Elementary School Outdoor Learning project (part of the San Francisco Unified School District), are both functional and comfortable. Depending on what’s being taught in the space, different tools and design elements, such as tables, shade, shelter from the wind or a weather-resistant whiteboard, may be part of the outdoor classroom. These spaces can also provide collaborative areas for louder and messier projects than indoor classrooms.ĚýĚýĚýĚý

Student Wellbeing and Safety without FencesĚý

Students need to be able to come and go without feeling like they’re imprisoned. As architects, we are discovering ways to build safe learning spaces without just putting up bars and eliminating windows. We must ask: Can a building have a single point of entry when students are in class? Could we design windows so that there’s always visibility from an entry point? Can classroom doors be lockable from the inside? Are we able to design refuge at the rear of the classroom or underneath windows? In the landscape between classrooms, are there ways to create spaces that provide duck-and-cover shelter, such as shrubbery or benches? Thinking beyond fences is important. It’s our job to create spaces where kids feel like they can learn while also ensuring their safety.ĚýĚýĚý

The Takeaway for School Decision-makersĚý

No matter how flexible, resilient, innovative, sustainable and safe a learning space may be, communication is the key to unlocking the best school design. When designers are given direct access to teachers, our number one job is to listen. If we can garner a clear understanding of how an educator teaches and what their goals and passions are, we can design a space that enhances the learning experience exponentially.Ěý

For example, in conversations with a woodshop teacher about his dreams for his classroom, our team was able to tap into his desire to teach a sustainable curriculum and build a sense of community for his students outside of class time. So, with a nod to sustainability, we modernized the building while highlighting curriculum-related elements, such as putting up plexiglass over exposed wood studs or opening up the ceiling to reveal duct work and conduits. The building became a teaching tool. We also removed outdated ductwork in the mezzanine to create a cyber café where students could hang out, study and socialize. That initial conversation transformed what would have been a good space into a great learning environment.

Jennette La Quire is a principal and serves as pre-K-12 business leader at .Ěý

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Campus safety could not be a timelier topic, from elementary school and high school to college and university campuses. Larger issues like gun control will take time to address as students arrive on college campuses. Underlying and growing in parallel on our campuses is stress among students that have seen the unthinkable happen time and time again, continuing to feel unsafe and needing safety in every way. They crave clarity, predictability and peace. They need well-being.

Last year, I covered ways to improve safety through design strategies like Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED). But we can expand this toolkit in other ways, taking a view on campus safety of broader dimensions. Studies dating back to 2001 show well-being design strategies reduced mental fatigue, hostility and outbursts of anger. In one study — titled “Environment and Crime in the Inner City: Does Vegetation Reduce Crime?” — greener buildings resulted in 52 percent fewer felonies, with 7 to 8 percent linked to increased access to nature, which is also strongly tied to increased calm, ability to focus, reduced absence and greatly improved school retention rates. Stress inhibits situational awareness, the conscious observance of one’s surroundings that alerts to health and safety threats, and we miss leakage, the term for the hints disturbed people leave that forewarn catastrophic behavior.

Environmental Stressors

Environmental stressors affect our bodies without our knowledge or volition, constantly affecting our well-being. New understanding of our physiological and psychological relationship with our environment applied to campus planning, design and architecture can improve daily experience, well-being and support individual resiliency. At our disposal are:

• Experience Design, the process of identifying, designing, delivering and maintaining meaningful experiences over time;

• Biophilic Design, the process of design that stems from understanding the inherent human inclination to affiliate with nature; and

• Multi-Sensory Design, the process of design based on the application of scientific study of sensory perception and its effect on well-being.

These strategies contribute to the Settings Approach to design.

Settings Approach

The term Settings Approach refers to health and well-being stemming from the settings of daily life. As discussed by Dr. Mark Dooris, leader of the United Kingdom’s Healthy Universities Model and Framework Project and a founding contributor to the Okanagan Charter, this holistic model is concerned with making the actual places where people spend their time — the physical reality of our campuses — supportive of well-being.

The Settings Approach is at the core of the Okanagan Charter. It was created in 2015 by more than 380 researchers, practitioners, administrators, students and policy makers from 45 countries, including representatives from the World Health Organization; Pan American Health Organization; and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on the territory of the Okanagan Nation in Kelowna, Canada. The charter is being adopted by increasing numbers of institutions nationally, setting a commitment and process for well-being on all campuses.

The charter includes two Calls to Action — embed health into all aspects of campus culture, across administration, operations and academic mandates, and lead health promotion action and collaboration locally and globally. Four sub-goals pertain particularly to physical planning, design and maintenance of campus facilities, landscape and infrastructure.

• Include health, well-being and sustainability in all planning and decision-making of campuses and communities, with practices integrated and coordinated across all campus programs.

• Identify opportunities to study and support health and well-being as well as sustainability and resilience, in built and natural academic and learning environments.

• Proactively and intentionally create empowered, connected and resilient campus communities.

• Use cross-cutting approaches to embed understanding and commitment to health, well-being and sustainability in every aspect of campus life, thereby providing both healthful experience and habits that students will carry into life after graduation.

Two of the charter’s key principles directly address school construction and infrastructure: a focus on settings and whole system approaches and emphasis on comprehensive, campus-wide approaches to development and implementation plans for campus communities.

What More Can We Do?

First and foremost, central to the charter is defying silos and working with campus colleagues who may have only participated peripherally or incidentally in the development of campus facilities and master plans in the past. The National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) has been at the forefront of educating student life administrators to the Settings Approach and aspects of campus planning and design that affect well-being. Get to know the student life administrators at your institution. Engage them in the development of new projects beyond the cursory initial focus groups. They want to be your partner and will be there to monitor success through the life of the facility.

Don’t wait for a major project to begin. A great success story from Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Vancouver, an early adopter of the Okanagan Charter, started with a simple renovation of a tired study area completed in-house by Facilities Services. Together, Rosie Dhaliwal, acting associate director of Health Promotion, and Marcos Olindan from Facilities Services began to expand the typical process, engaging students in deeper, more meaningful and continuous ways and focusing on features that improve the social, mental and physical health and well-being of space users.

The renewed area was so successful that the process was repeated many times in other areas throughout SFU’s Academic Quadrangle. Principles for Enhancing Well-Being Through Physical Spaces at SFU, guidelines developed from these projects, are now part of SFU’s Healthy Campus Community initiative, and are used in tandem with existing design procedures and standards such as WELL Building Standard, Whole Building Design Guide, LEED and CPTED.

Students are standing up, demanding greater response to campus safety. We are all on a learning curve, but with a more comprehensive attitude, we have tools and strategies available to meet this challenge.

Celine Larkin, AIA, LEED AP, is an architect, urban designer and campus planner with a passion for improving educational settings, currently focused on research into Gen Z and strategies that increase well-being and learning in all built environments. Formerly head of Urban Design/Master Planning at HGA Architects, Engineers + Planners and Gensler Los Angeles, she now consults internationally, based in Doha, Qatar.

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The study assessed the safety resources by first compiling a list of the 100 most-attended universities in the nation as well as the largest college in every state that wasn’t represented on the list — totaling 113 schools. Then, the CollegeStats.org team found each college’s security information or campus police webpage to identify emergency phone numbers, safety tips, crime statistics and reports, and sexual assault procedures. Each university was rated based on how easy it was to access this information.

University of Hawaii at Manoa (UH Manoa), which ranked No. 7 on the list, included a variety of resources and information in the redesign of the UH Manoa Department of Public Safety’s website last year. It features online sign-up for training sessions and workshops, including Active Shooter Awareness & Response, Safety & Wellness and Hurricane Preparedness. It also features safety tips and sexual assault resources in five languages, a downloadable Emergency Response Guidebook and download links for a campus safety app.

Another factor that played into the study was the campus police department’s presence on social media platforms. The CollegeStats.org team ranked each account using analytics such as the amount of followers, likes, and daily activity or involvement. For instance, the No. 1 school on the college campus safety page list was the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Its police department has more than 4,800 followers on Twitter.

Using data analysis for all of the criteria, CollegeStats.org determined the top 50 list, which included these top 10 colleges and universities:

• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Ill.
• University of Washington, Seattle
• University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wis.ĚýUniversity of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pa.
• University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Lincoln, Neb.
• University of Missouri, Columbia, Mo.
• University of Hawaii Manoa, Honolulu
• University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.
• West Virginia University, Morgantown, W.V.
• University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

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The intersection at 29th Avenue and 12th Street North serves more than 14,000 vehicles a day, and is a main pathway to school for both students and staff. This is a bad combination, considering the intersection is missing a crosswalk button on the school side of the street, according to . Pedestrians instead depend on the green traffic light to be alerted of when to cross.

As part of the school’s Community Problem Solving (CmPS) team, Grace Fischer and Caleb Dirckx, both 12, came up with a detailed action plan to solve the problem. The plan included asking for intersection improvements, recruiting neighbors to serve as crossing guards and meeting with city officials to voice their concerns.

At the May 4 city council meeting, the St. Cloud City Council approved $16,000 in improvements at the intersection. These include creating a school zone within one block of both directions of the school, installing flashing lights on the pedestrian sign, painting zebra stripes in the intersection, replacing the crosswalk button and installing a countdown timer, reported . All improvements will be completed by the time school starts this fall.

Council Member Carol Lewis told that one of her classmates died at a similar intersection along 29th Avenue when she was attending North Junior High School, so she is glad the council finally approved the safety upgrades. Mayor Dave Kleis was so impressed by the students’ initiative that he made Dirckx an ex-officio member of the Transportation Infrastructure Advisory Board.

North Junior High School is one of two schools in St. Cloud Area School District 742 that are actively involved in the CmPS program, which was founded in 1974 to encourage critical-thinking skills, help students develop a vision for the future and stimulate creative problem-solving skills.

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