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School Design Patterns

Design Patterns for Creative Learning Environments

School Design Patterns is a free tool that allows communities to co-create vision-aligned learning environments. A learning environment can be designed to foster things like creativity, collaboration, well-being, innovation; or it can act as a barrier to achieving them. Accessible at http://www.SchoolPatterns.com, the patterns give communities a shared design language to turn dreams into reality.

Shortlisted

Overview

HundrED shortlisted this innovation

HundrED has shortlisted this innovation to one of its innovation collections. The information on this page has been checked by HundrED.

Web presence

2021

Established

5K

Children

27

Countries
Target group
Community
Updated
April 2023
Design Patterns help schools create learning environments that foster creativity, collaboration, wellness, and belonging.

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

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.

What does your innovation look like in practice?

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.

How has it been spreading?

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.

If I want to try it, what should I do?

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.

Spread of the innovation

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