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4 Lessons the Classroom Can Learn from the Design Studio

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Synopsis

Designers collaborate across disciplines, give and take constructive criticism, and embrace failure in the process of solving problems. Wouldn't children benefit from developing the same skills in school?

This article is co-authored by Steve Turckes and Melanie Kahl.

Earlier this year, we peered into the work spaces of some of the most inspiring companies working in the creative economy to glean design ideas for learning spaces. Instead of the tyranny of cubes and boardrooms, we found spaces for serious play, dynamic cross-pollination, and cultivated serendipity. It was easy to find inspiration from the Googles, Pixars, and IDEOs of the world; the grass is always greener. But as architects and designers, we need only to glance at our own proverbial backyard for further inspiration.

In his interview with the Carnegie Foundation, John Seely Brown, scholar and co-author of A New Culture of Learning, suggests that we look for education lessons in the architectural studio. In answer to the question of what could we do better in schools today, especially given the rapid pace of change, Brown responds by saying he's intrigued by the architectural studio. "All work in progress is made public . . . One of the things you learn in an architectural studio. . . is to accept critique [from your peers, from the master] . . . accept that, to appreciate that, and to learn from that. And that is one of the key platforms that you want for lifelong learning."

So let's examine the architectural studio-where we design the places in which we learn, live, heal, and work-to find out what the classroom can learn from these creative environments.

1. A culture of critical collaboration

From the everyday "Hey, can you take a look at this?" to the masters' critique, learning in a studio is constant and multidirectional, formal and informal. Collaboration means communicating concepts, critiques, and questions for the betterment of the individual designer and the entire team. Studio surfaces are notoriously littered with inspirations, precedents, concepts, and drafts. In the studio, the process-not just the product-takes center stage.

Classrooms, in contrast, typically only display completed assignments like final book reports and dioramas; seldom is the evolution of a concept evident. Implicitly, young learners are told that the final outcome-not the project's development-is most important. We are encouraged by school cultures and spaces that attempt to turn this on its head. The Blue School (started by the Blue Man Group) follows a constructivist methodology. On a recent tour, we saw a hallway project that transformed the squiggle into a vibrant mural by 3-year-old students (bonus points for the UV lights that illuminated it). This simple activity, doodling, was deconstructed, studied, and rebuilt. The evidence of this early childhood exploration convinced us that the school was cultivating young learners and designers, not just test takers.

A culture of healthy critique, full of mature and multidirectional insights, inspires confident, analytical learners. Let's cultivate a critical eye and language for constructive criticism in young students. They are, after all, our future designers, scientists, and businesspeople.

Image: Associated Press

2. Interdisciplinary problem solving, every day

In the words of the organizational theorist Donald Schön, "Architecture lives both in the world of art and the world of technological performance." Architecture can be viewed as the process of building structures around our social needs and values. A successful structure deftly balances the beauty of form and structure, the engineering of sustainability, the social politics of community, and the business of building. As such, interdisciplinary problem solving is fundamental to the high-stakes architectural design process.

This complex interplay means the studio must facilitate interdisciplinary cross-collaboration, a hallmark of project-based learning. Designers are problem-solvers and critical thinkers who find solutions through form. It shouldn't be surprising that some of the people working to solve our biggest problems trained or aspired to be architects.

Studio H in Bertie County, North Carolina, understands the importance of fostering this style of complex problem solving in the classroom. This public high school's battle cry--design, build, transform-not only helps remediate the basic math and engineering skills of high school students but spurs community development in their rural community. The skills and social lessons learned in the design-build process are ingrained in students and empower even those not destined for a career in the studio.

3. Tinkering with solutions and reclaiming failure

A culture of critical collaboration reframes the concept of failure. In the design studio, mini "failures" are endemic-but they are known by less pejorative names: prototyping, modeling, tinkering, discovery. The real secret of design is that (shh!) we never get it right the first time. The road to the answer you intend to implement is laden with schemes tried, and tossed aside, in an attempt to discover a better solution. Solutions are continuously revisited and improved until it's time to actually build something.

One problem with general education is that students are too often given assignments or projects that experience only one iteration. Our design practice thrives on making concepts tangible so that they can be rigorously studied, critiqued, and tweaked. Much of this tradition of critique comes from modern architecture's origins in apprenticeship (before the advent of formal training in the 19th century). This has created a studio environment in which there is constant feedback and a necessary balance between formal learning and learning by doing.

The burgeoning trend in design-thinking education is embracing the F-word. One organization that embodies this empowering education model is Public Workshop. This June, we saw a group of Chicago Architecture Foundation "teen design heroes" work with Public Workshop to take over Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin and reclaim failure as a heroic feat. Described as a "summer design camp on steroids" and "a 'doing' boot-camp," it challenged teenage designers to design and build a sensitive, functional structure in only five days. Chicago Public high-schoolers, typically bound by the formal pressures of "making the grade," used large-scale rapid prototyping, exploration, and thoughtfully led play (mapping capture the flag, anyone?) to discover their design problem and reveal their solution. It was this freedom to test and scrap ideas that paved their path to a final product and empowered a new perspective on learning. In the words of a young designer, Jeisson Apolo: "Prepare yourself to build, tear down, build, tear down, and build again so that finally you can have what you may call your first draft. Sound tough? You're telling me! Thankfully, while it is challenging, it's also one of the best experiences I've ever had."

4. The shared power of the pencil and pixel

Just as the educational technology discussion heats up with compelling challenges and defenses, the architecture world has gone through its share of high-tech growing pains. But even as computer modeling evolves to support incredible feats of engineering and sustainability, the analog tools of the practice--the pencil, pen, trace paper, cardboard, glue, Exacto knives-are irreplaceable. Not just romantic, these tools of conceptualization, communication, and critique are integral to how a designer works through ideas individually and in groups.

The educational dialogue surrounding technology is often oversimplified. Digital solutions are frequently seen as a silver bullet for education challenges. But the true art of design (and teaching today) is the thoughtful balance between the digital and analog. An interactive whiteboard might as well be a regular whiteboard unless the mode of interaction is fundamentally rethought. The journey to that fancy iPad app senior project was probably paved in notebook sketches and sticky-note mind maps.

Conclusion: The tension of design and learning

Design is a beautiful collection of tensions. There is a constant pull between thinking and doing, the collective and individual, digital and analog, problems and solutions, artistry and engineering. At the heart of this lies creativity. The same is true in teaching and learning. It takes a teacher both artistic and exacting to navigate a diverse group of young minds through an "aha" breakthrough. It seems our policies and structures are forgetting that.

Perhaps the lexicon of education is broken. While the traditional construct of "classroom" may limit how we interact within our spaces, the labels of "teachers" and "students" (not to mention the conflation of authentic learning) may paralyze our progress as well. What would happen if classrooms operated more like studios? What if teachers were empowered to collaborate with one another as designers? Maybe teaching (and architecture) would then move closer to its role in effecting social change. On IDEO's new site Design Thinking for Educators, Karen Fierst, an educator, reflects on this power: "If teachers viewed themselves as designers, if teachers believed that they could effect change-if they really believed in themselves-I think a much better system is possible."

As designers, we believe that a much better education system is possible. And we think the inherently collaborative, critical, and empowering characteristics of the design professions offer lessons for this change. While we can help rethink the physical spaces of classrooms and campuses-infusing them with a studio ethic--the real change will happen when we rethink the system itself.

Steve Turckes leads Perkins+Will's global K-12 practice and is the director of the K-12 Education Group for the Chicago office. In his 24-year career, Turckes has focused on the programming, master planning, and implementation of nearly $1 billion of K-12 projects across the nation and abroad. An avid reader and strategic thinker about the evolving nature of our global society and economy, he assists schools in navigating change to create flexible environments that help to prepare students for success.

Melanie Kahl is an educational design researcher and knowledge manager in Perkins+Will's global K-12 Practice with a background in social policy and organizational development. She tweets at the intersection of design and learning at @perkinswill_edu and is a contributor for The Creativity Post.

This article originally appeared at Fast Company Design

Tags: architecture, creative professionals, creativity, design, design thinking, education, education reform, innovation, learning, spaces, studio

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
4 Lessons the Classroom Can Learn from the Design Studio

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Designers collaborate across disciplines, give and take constructive criticism, and embrace failure in the process of solving problems. Wouldn't children benefit from developing the same skills in school? This article is co-authored by Steve Turckes and Melanie Kahl.

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Clever Classrooms

Summary report of the HEAD Project (pg. 40-43)

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What Schools Can Learn From Google, IDEO, and Pixar

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Synopsis

The country's strongest innovators embrace creativity, play, and collaboration - values that also inform their physical spaces.

This article is co-authored by Steve Turckes and Melanie Kahl.

A community about to build or rehab a school often creates checklists of best practices, looks for furniture that matches its mascot, and orders shiny new lockers to line its corridors. These are all fine steps, but the process of planning and designing a new school requires both looking outward (to the future, to the community, to innovative corporate powerhouses) as well as inward (to the playfulness and creativity that are at the core of learning).

In many ways, what makes the Googles of the world exceptional begins in the childhood classroom -- an embrace of creativity, play, and collaboration. It was just one year ago that 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the number-one leadership competency in our complex global marketplace. We can no longer afford to teach our kids or design their schoolhouses the way we used to if we're to maintain a competitive edge. In looking at various exemplary workplaces such as IDEO, Google, and Pixar, we can glean valuable lessons about effective educational approaches and the spaces that support them.

Learning from IDEO: A transparent space where projects take the spotlight
The design and innovation firm IDEO tacitly understands how office environments help or hinder the creative process. Every decision made in its Chicago design office reveals and nurtures its culture, with an open layout that spurs collaboration. Here, team project rooms frame an open studio for the interdisciplinary work of designers, business strategists, and programmers. A café/forum area, prototyping workshop, Chicago-gazing roof deck, and community garden support the studio's evolving life, without being too prescriptive.

What would it mean for schools to have a culture centered on design thinking and interdisciplinary projects instead of siloed subjects? What if the process of education were as intentionally crafted as the products of education (i.e., we always think about the book report or the final project, but not the path to get there). What if teachers were treated as designers?

There are some schools out there that are doing just that, including High Tech High, an innovative collection of charter schools in Southern California led by lawyer-cum-carpenter-cum-education innovator Larry Rosenstock and a diverse team of adult learners. The model is deeply rooted in project-based learning (PBL), whereby students learn academic knowledge while picking up real-life skills such as collaboration and critical thinking. With this pedagogical foundation and supportive spaces, students can produce meaningful and integrated projects -- from a conservation book series on the San Diego Bay to a bilingual cookbook. Such interdisciplinary work is supported by a thoughtful facility design that displays flexibility, ownership, transparency, and originality. On its website, High Tech High notes that guests "remark that it looks and feels more like a high-performance workplace than a school."

The Blue Valley Schools Center for Advanced Professional Studies (BVCAPS) takes a similar approach. This district-wide program for 11th- and 12th-graders is an example of what happens when educational curricula and spaces are designed in tandem by a powerful team of community and business partners. A 2011 Edison Award winner, BVCAPS structures real-world training around four high-growth industries in Overland Park, Kansas. With lessons devised by partners such as Garmin and Cisco, BVCAPS is anything but a typical school. Its instructors are more like program managers and its curriculum is created through a patented rapid-prototyping process. Next year, it will even launch a business accelerator, prompted by four patent-seeking students.

[Photo by James Steinkamp]

BVCAPS left some space raw in their new building, with the notion that its purpose would be determined by the activity and interest of its students. The poise, enthusiasm, and maturity of the students testify to the benefits of an environment where students take ownership over projects and spaces.

Playing with Pixar: The art and science of spontaneity and story
Pixar, arguably the greatest digital storyteller of our time, is an easy source of school-environment inspiration: Its studio is a place where magic results from a potent blend of art and science, work and play, digital and analog. In Melena Ryzik's tour of Pixar Studios for The New York Times, one catches a glimpse of the whimsy, transparency, recreation, and technology on campus. But listening to Steve Jobs's philosophy behind the design reveals something deeper -- that its layout was designed to foster "forced collisions of people," because "the best meetings were meetings that happened spontaneously in the hallway."

Imagine what could happen if the advanced physics student and the photography student had meaningful collisions in the average American high school. What if they did by design -- if their classwork wove together diverse content and skills intentionally and elegantly? What would young people see as possible? They might come to understand that the lines between music, math, physics, and art are much blurrier than textbooks make them appear. Schools could be the breeding ground for a new millennium of Renaissance young men and women where creating something trumps memorizing it.

Ogling Google: Holistic environments and a playful culture
This $30 billion game-changing technological company realizes that valuable innovations are born from serious play, deep teamwork, and a holistically engaged (and cared for) staff. A tour of Google's Chicago office we took with a group of educators and educational architects revealed many things, such as the power of allowing employees to control their spaces and expressing local character in a global company.

A playful strain runs through Google's office culture. In particular, we remember " Bloxes," a type of giant interlocking cardboard boxes used to stimulate brainstorms and create ad hoc work spaces. The solo software engineer holed up in a cubicle has been replaced by an affable crew of makers of digital software and physical sculpture. In fact, Bloxes were the product of an art project by the Apple innovator Jef Raskin.

Imagine what might happen if students had this same power to edit and make their own spaces within the school environment. A tree fort in younger years might be the precursor to a dorm room venture, entrepreneurial hub, or Bloxes project room.

The work of play and the play of work
There is much to learn from our innovative corporate giants, and some schools are already taking note. But ironically, the true genius of these work spaces is how they've been inspired by lessons from children. (The ability of top executives to incorporate playfulness and internal strategy has even become a topic of discussion for major corporations.) Yes, school designers and leaders should make learning environments that reflect dynamic workplaces. But school leaders would be remiss if they didn't critically re-examine (and support) the power of play and creative arts that these leaders have gleaned from them.

As we've learned from some of our most innovative companies, the creation of new spaces is truly an exploration of culture. What are the school environments in your community telling you? Telling your young people? It is time to re-imagine and invest in schools and spaces ripe for creativity and cross-pollination.

Steven Turckes leads Perkins+Will's global K-12 practice and is the director of the K-12 Education Group for the Chicago office. In Steven's 24-year career, he has focused on the programming, master planning, and implementation of nearly $1 billion of K-12 projects across the nation and abroad. An avid reader and strategic thinker about the evolving nature of our global society and economy, Steven often assists schools in navigating change to create flexible environments that help to prepare students for success.

Melanie Kahl is an educational design researcher and knowledge manager in Perkins+Will's global K-12 Practice with a background in social policy and organizational development. She tweets at the intersection of design and learning at @perkinswill_edu and is a contributor for The Creativity Post.

This article originally appeared at Fast Company Design

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. blog comments powered by

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Schools Can Learn From Google, IDEO, and Pixar

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The country's strongest innovators embrace creativity, play, and collaboration - values that also inform their physical spaces. This article is co-authored by Steve Turckes and Melanie Kahl. A community about to build or rehab a school often creates checklists of best practices, looks for furniture that matches its mascot, and orders shiny new lockers to line its corridors.

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11 Ways You Can Make Your Space as Collaborative as the Stanford d.school

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The Stanford d.school, which opens officially on May 7, is a space whose design has been refined over the course of six years to maximize the innovation process. Every wall, every nook, every connecting gizmo, every table, every storage cabinet, has been created with a grand, collaborative vision in mind.

Nice for them. But what about the rest of us, out here in standard-issue cubicle land? Are we all destined for subprime collaborative work lives because our office spaces and furniture are so numbingly left brain?

Not so, says George Kembel, the executive director of the school. Even if your company doesn't have a few million to throw at making your space more innovation-friendly, there are things you can do to optimize what you've got. The d.school team sat down and brainstormed 11 great ways to transform your digs into a little hive of bubbling creativity-or at least a place that manages to capture the occasional good idea.

1. Start with what you have. "We started in a trailer," Kembel points out, "with the 'd.school' as a sign on the table." Kembel's advice: Claim a space and label it.

2. Go to the people who are interested first. Form a crack team of true believers to spearhead your campaign. Revolutions start from the bottom up.

3. Empower your team to change their space. Somebody high enough up the food chain needs to defend this activity against facilities managers who may not be amused. Then, be willing to keep changing things. Try out different ways to configure space to see what works best.

4. Watch the behavior of the group and take notes. Have somebody in your band of innovators own this task. What's working, what isn't? "Try, reflect, modify," says Kembel.

5. Develop group-sized artifacts. Whaa? In short, forget the spreadsheets with the tiny type. "Get your ideas up in big enough form so that others can see and add to them."

6. Keep any prototypes, sketches, or idea-jam artifacts low-rez and not precious. "Don't get too formal too fast," says Kembel. Making things precious locks them in too soon, short-circuiting potential improvements.

7. Show your work in progress. "Put your underwear up on the line and let people comment. But keep it safe," Kembel says. No rude comments allowed.

8. Do something simple to surprise people. At the d.school, they painted the women's restroom lipstick pink, and hung disco balls. "That makes people realize that somebody cares about your experience," Kembel says.

9. Invest more in "we" spaces than in "I" spaces. Cozy nooks for teams, not plush corner offices for the alpha dogs.

10. Mix up seating options. Take the table out of the room and sit on the floor. Vary seat heights. Change customary positions at meetings. For example, put the group leader in the middle, instead of at the head of the table. Try holding a meeting where only standing is allowed. In general, work to lower status markers.

11. Make idea generation and capture easy. Any non-porous surface can be a whiteboard, says Kembel. Buy a sheet of sheer acrylic at Home Depot and mount it on a wall as a writing space. Keep markers handy. Put prototyping tools out where people can grab them when an idea strikes.

"Creativity follows context," says Kembel. The main idea, he says, is not to segregate creativity from other activities. "You don't need to be fancy to do it," he says.

d.school principals (l to r): d.school founder David Kelley, Environments Collaborative co-directors Scott Witthoft and Scott Doorley, academic director Bernie Roth, and executive director George Kembel.

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11 Ways You Can Make Your Space as Collaborative as the Stanford d.school

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Stanford d.school, which opens officially on May 7, is a space whose design has been refined over the course of six years to maximize the innovation process. Every wall, every nook, every connecting gizmo, every table, every storage cabinet, has been created with a grand, collaborative vision in mind.

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The Evolution of the Modern Classroom

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Preparing the

Class of 2030

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The Most Important Leadership Quality for CEOs? Creativity

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For CEOs, creativity is now the most important leadership quality for success in business, outweighing even integrity and global thinking, according to a new

study by IBM. The study is the largest known sample of one-on-one CEO interviews, with over 1,500 corporate heads and public sector leaders across 60 nations

and 33 industries polled on what drives them in managing their companies in today's world.

Fast Company's annual list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business just took on a whole new depth. And this year's list will be revealed later this month.

Steven Tomasco, a manager at IBM Global Business Services, expressed surprise at this key finding, saying that it is "very interesting that coming off the

worst economic conditions they'd ever seen, [CEOs] didn't fall back on management discipline, existing best practices, rigor, or operations. In fact, they

[did] just the opposite."

About 60% of CEOs polled cited creativity as the most important leadership quality, compared with 52% for integrity and 35% for global thinking. Creative

leaders are also more prepared to break with the status quo of industry, enterprise and revenue models, and they are 81% more likely to

rate innovation as a "crucial capability."

Other key findings showed a large disparity between views of North American CEOs and those from other territories.

For example, in North America, 65% of CEOs think integrity is a top quality for tomorrow's leaders, whereas only 29-48% of CEOs in other territories view it

as such.

Ironically, while company leaders in North America will bring more integrity to the job, they also expect far more regulation than foreign heads - both

presumably reactions to negative public perception and heavy government intervention following the recession. A full 87% anticipate greater government oversight

and regulation over the next five years - only 70% of CEOs in Europe hold this opinion, and 50% and 53% in Japan and China, respectively. Meanwhile, nearly

double the amount of CEOs in China view global thinking as a top leadership quality, compared with Europe and North America.

The area of focus the regions can all agree on is customer focus: 88% of all CEOs, and an astounding 95% of standout leaders, believe getting closer to the

customer is the top business strategy over the next five years.

IBM will be holding a Web dialogue with experts to discuss the study's findings. You can find a link for the Web cast here, and a schedule as follows:

Creative Leaders Webcast - 8am-9am EDT

Connected Customers Webcast - 1pm-2pm EDT

Dexterous Organizations - 8pm-9pm EDT

What do you think of the findings? Is creativity the most important leadership quality today? Don't forget to sign up for our Most Creative People in Business conference, which is sure to provide excellent insight on the topic.

[Sidebar image via LitReview]

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The Most Important Leadership Quality for CEOs? Creativity

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For CEOs, creativity is now the most important leadership quality for success in business, outweighing even integrity and global thinking, according to a new study by IBM. The study is the largest known sample of one-on-one CEO interviews, with over 1,500 corporate heads and public sector leaders across 60 nations and 33 industries polled on what drives them in managing their companies in today's world.

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The Nature of Learning: Using Research to Inspire Practice