There is a critical misalignment between what we, in the 21st century, want out of our schools, and what 20th-century learning environments were designed to do. Design Patterns have helped innovative schools worldwide create vision-aligned learning environments for nearly two decades, so we at Fielding International decided to make them freely accessible in an online library.
Design Patterns are most useful when a community (individual school or school district) is looking to build a new school, renovate/expand at an existing site, create a school-within-a-school, add outdoor learning spaces, or go through a Master Planning process. For these communities, Design Patterns serve as a tool and a shared language to align physical spaces to the goals and vision of the project.
There are over 70+ Design Patterns at SchoolPatterns.com. Each Design Pattern aims to solve a common problem encountered by schools. Each pattern includes an annotated sketch, a problem and solution statement, illustrating photographs, and links to research & support for implementation.
Randy Fielding's original set of 28 Design Patterns were published in the 2005 book, "The Language of School Design." This seminal work helped launch a practice that has created innovative schools in over 50 countries, each leveraging the power of Design Patterns.
A larger scale and more significant impact comes by openly sharing best practices, so in 2021 Fielding International launched SchoolPatterns.com so anyone, anywhere could freely access and use the patterns.
For a self-guided tour, go to http://www.SchoolPatterns.com. There you can explore all 70+ Design Patterns to see what sparks your imagination.
