Following the 1902 and 1903 Balfour Acts, and the later Butler (Education) Act of 1944, local borough and county councils took responsibility for the statutory provision of formal education and the subsequent organization, funding and construction of the great majority of the state’s school buildings. As the public agency responsible for the maintenance of essential […]
Category: Children’s Spaces
Young people’s collaboration in the architectural process
In the UK, the idea that schoolchildren could contribute to an architectural design process in a meaningful way has at last been tested through practice. As we will see below, a few young people of both primary and secondary school ages have been given the opportunity to investigate the architecture of their school, analyse the […]
Architecture and education: a national context
Running in parallel to these ground-breaking developments was the establishment of a national network of architecture centres, in London (The Architecture Foundation, RIBA Gallery and The Building Exploratory, Hackney), and in Kent (Chatham), Glasgow, Bristol, Plymouth, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle, Leeds, Hull the East Midlands and Cambridge.33 Whilst each of these centres is unique and […]
Architects as educators
At the forefront of this educational ‘crusade’ was architect Richard Rogers. As architectural advisor to both New Labour and (later) Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, Rogers is now as famous for being the public voice – and face – of British architecture as he is for his practice’s iconic, high-tech buildings. Passionately committed to the […]
A brief history of built environment education in the UK
At the time of the original ‘The School I’d Like’ competition in 1967, young people in Britain had virtually no contact with architects. However, in the early 1970s, somewhat lagging behind built environment education in Denmark and the USA, the Royal Institute of British Architects’ traditional Christmas children’s lectures (in London) were reinvented to give […]
The schools we’d like: young people’s participation in architecture
Ben Koralek and Maurice Mitchell Editor’s introduction The view that children’s perceptions of space are different to those of adults is the central premise of Chapter 7. What follows is the proposition that children and young people have a democratic right to be heard about the make up of their education, and most importantly the […]
The evolving classroom landscape
A classroom is not finished when it is finished, far from it; its life is just beginning. We would like to carry on charting the progress of Ballifield over the next few years to see how the landscapes inside and outside change. New agendas and ideas will inevitably mean changes to the plans as they […]
Using the consultation and designing the building
It was often the informal issues and incidental remarks that had the most lasting influence in the design of the classrooms. More than anything it was the realization that the classrooms were places children had to be inspired by to have fun in; places of wonder and surprise, somewhere for children to explore, both formally […]
The process of consultation
Before the design stages of the project began a programme of consultation was devised. This was carried out by diploma architecture students at Sheffield6 with us, the architects. The intention was to make this consultation a key part of the briefing process for the classrooms and to involve the children in designing the process of […]
The inside and the outside
The very nature of Sheffield as a city of hills and valleys means many schools in Sheffield enjoy great long views. Ballifield is no exception. The exterior space around the classrooms has the potential to provide different experiences on different levels. We reflected this in the design of the external spaces. Working with a landscape […]