School Architecture as Community

Photo by Ashton Bingham on Unsplash

A school district in Rockford, Illinois has recently debuted a school designed to imitate a town hall with an open, pragmatic spatial layout.

The prototype, designed along with students, features a central “town hall” surrounded by classrooms targeted to students based on their age groupings from kindergarten to fifth grade. It unites the school’s gym, cafeteria, art classrooms, library, and its other public spaces. Workshops were conducted with students to develop new ideas based on how the students view their surroundings, leading to the unique design. The architecture directly engages children and is both stimulating and educational. Each space contains geometric, colorful windows, movable furniture, and more development behind the prototype’s spatial reasoning.

​Experts have long worried about keeping a new generation of students focused in school, and new technologies have arisen to address the issue. But Rockford takes a different perspective by communicating with students directly and changing the spaces they see daily into something engaging and beneficial. Learn more about this innovative school prototype.