Blogs

Letter from the Chair 2023

By Olivia Rose Graf Doyle Assoc. AIA posted 02-01-2023
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The Committee on Architecture for Education (CAE) is a Knowledge Community of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). We are a large and active group of over 10,000 architects and allied professionals concerned with the quality and design of all types of educational, cultural, and recreational facilities that promote lifelong learning in safe, welcoming and equitable environments. The CAE’s mission is to foster innovative and collaborative design of educational facilities and to heighten public awareness on the importance of learning environments. I am honored to be this year’s CAE Chair and eager to share the programs, content and insights we have in store. ...
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Learning By Design Magazine spring 2022 edition

By Carolyn Perricelli posted 04-26-2022
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Learning By Design Magazine publishes its spring 2022 edition Learning By Design recognizes the nation’s preeminent architectural firms by publishing outstanding pre-K to 12 and college/university projects. The spring 2022 edition contains over 58 awarded new university and school facilities and numerous thought-leader editorials on issues pertinent to the future of campus planning. View Learning By Design Magazine spring 2022 edition > View Reflections on the Future of Learning > by Judy Hoskens, AIA and Irene Nigaglioni, AIA Learning By Design Magazine
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Reimagine America’s Schools: A Blueprint for Equity and Opportunity

By Kerry Leonard AIA posted 01-19-2021
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On January 26, 2021, the Reimagine Schools National Summit will begin to lay out a blueprint for the future. The summit will focus on designing schools for equity and inclusion, including Community Schools 3.0, learning at the intersection of technology and design, and active learning as strategies for greater student achievement. Based on Reimagine America’s Schools work throughout 2020, we invite you to join us in creating a forward-looking vision to build learning communities, implement active learning, better integrate technology and inform a national strategy to design our schools for the future. Date: January 26th, 2021 Time: 12:00-2:00pm (ET) Location: ...
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Join CAE at EDspaces 2020

By Brian G. Minnich AIA posted 10-09-2020
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The AIA Committee on Architecture for Education (CAE) would like to invite you to participate with us at our Fall Conference at the EDspaces Digital Experience . Our events have always been about innovation, content, connections, and community. This is especially true and needed in today’s COVID environment. Together we can face uncertainties and overcome challenges successfully. ​ We’re inviting all architects and designers (AIA, CAE, or not!) to experience a conference that is a unique collaboration encouraging networking while giving attendees an opportunity to forge meaningful professional connections throughout the education sector. ​ ​ The ...
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Update on 2020 CAE Spring Conference

By Maggie Brown posted 03-18-2020
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COVID-19 and CAE Spring Conference Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the AIA Committee on Architecture for Education has made the difficult decision to cancel the 2020 Committee on Architecture for Education Spring Conference, April 26-29 in Minneapolis. Your health and safety are paramount, and CAE feels compelled to cancel its spring conference to minimize the risk to all concerned. By making this decision now, we hope to minimize any stress or inconvenience. If you are a registered attendee of the conference, your registration will be automatically refunded within 30 days to the credit card we have on file. The hotel has cancelled all reservations made ...
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2019 Spring CAE Conference Travel Scholarship Recipient

By Noah Meier posted 06-08-2019
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Education is the foundation of human society as we know it today. Education leads to personal edification, scientific and artistic innovation, technological development, and the ability to transcend what we previously considered to be impossible. It develops in us an ability to better evaluate, dissect, and interpret the world around us from entirely new perspectives. Education is the beginning of knowledge, and along with it wisdom, but more importantly it instills an integral desire to dig deeper, to push harder, and to make something “more”. Architecture, I would argue, is a direct result of this desire for learning, for something “more” in our built ...
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Seeking Examples: Adaptive Reuse Projects

By Jenine S. Kotob AIA posted 06-06-2018
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Hi all, I'm hoping the individuals on this blog can share some precedent examples of adaptive reuse projects of former non-academic buildings into learning environments. These can be in either urban or suburban areas, small or large, national or international, etc. Thank you! Jenine Kotob
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Small Education Spaces Designed for Big Impact

By Nicole D. Nichols AIA posted 05-16-2018
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Large new construction projects on collegiate campuses typically generate buzz amongst students and faculty alike. The impact on the campus fabric, from construction noise to safety fencing, becomes an unavoidable but intriguing occurrence that can generate quite a bit of excitement. The financial scope of these project types can reach tens- to hundreds-of-millions of dollars and, although large projects are important to the viability of a college or university, sometimes even small investments can have a big influence on the student experience. Beyond the immediate student body, they can lead to big returns for institutions, communities, and the economy. An ...
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Reinventing the School Experience

By Taryn Elyse Kinney AIA posted 04-26-2018
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What does reinventing the school experience mean to you? Is it related to modern facilities, new pedagogies, community partnerships, or is it a combination of all three? At Austin Independent School District (AISD) in Austin, Texas, the answer to reinventing the school experience comes from district leadership, community input, and expert teams creating a vision to guide the district to success for generations to come. It incorporates a long-term facilities master plan and new educational specifications that ensure Austin will continue to operate at the leading edge of education for its learners and the surrounding community. This reinvention comes on the ...
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Three Tips for Safe and Secure Schools

By Christopher J. Gibbs posted 03-19-2018
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​There are many tragedies related to the recent string of school violence in our communities. The fact that we are spending our valuable time and limited resources struggling to keep our children safe rather than being able to spend it on learning is both sad and disturbing. I do not, for one moment, want to suggest that the children and adults in our neighborhood school buildings should not be safe—of course they should. But the degree of steps we now need to take to keep schools safe is unfortunate, to say the least. The task of providing safe and secure environments in which our children can learn is both complicated and far-reaching. There are no easy answers, ...
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Guns and Schools: Hard or Soft?

By John W. Clark AIA posted 03-12-2018
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In the wake of the Parkland shootings, the NRA has called for immediate hardening of schools, while NPR responded by saying they should be softened, and architects are caught in the crosshairs of the argument. Especially architects who are involved with school design must now choose how, or whether, to address guns in schools. Guns and schools don’t mix. But it is currently doubtful that the strong gun control laws needed to help curb this problem will soon be enacted. Architects, as the professional group tasked with designing education environments to meet standards of health, safety, and welfare, must now make sense of conflicting demands and viewpoints. They ...
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Education Design Awards

By Brian D. McLaren AIA posted 12-31-2017
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The CAE Design Awards is an Internet-based marketplace of ideas. Through this forum the committee disseminates quality ideas on educational facility planning and design to clients, architects, and the public. As how we educate ourselves continues to evolve, we must evaluate and measure our successes, and have an arena in which to test ideas. This awards program is an opportunity to engage in critical evaluation and experimentation, not as an end in itself, but always in the context of our clients and their needs. See the award recipients for 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 , or previous award recipients from 2005-2015 . 2019 book: Free ...
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CAE Conferences

By Brian D. McLaren AIA posted 12-31-2017
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CAE’s conferences explore a variety of learning environments for students from Pre-K to Higher Education. Attendees have the opportunity to participate in the latest dialogue about the environment's effect on learning--as well as being able to network with peers in the education design space. We have 2 conferences, one in the spring, and one in the fall. Mark your calendars now and join us at the next conference! 2019 Spring conference: May 1-4 CAE’s Spring conference in Los Angeles explores a variety of learning environments for students from Pre-K to Higher Education, ranging from the privileged to the under-served and disadvantaged, under the theme of: ...
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Education and Culture - 2017 ED Spaces / CAE Fall Conference Reflection

By Laurie A. Hoffman AIA posted 10-31-2017
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Last week was the 2017 EDspaces Conference in Kansas City. As a first-time attendee, the combination of designers / end-users / vendors coming together to discuss the state of education today and how collectively it can be improved upon for the future, was a different experience. Working from the designer perspective, in the (by comparison) minimal experience I’ve had very rarely do I get to see all three of these groups come together to evaluate or discuss a project. At EDspaces it was a constant, every presentation provided a complete view from start to finish of what projects are going on around the country, it was invigorating and provided a rejuvenation ...
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Kristen Houghton I 2017 CAE Scholarship Recipient

By Kristen Houghton posted 10-16-2017
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I am a graduate architecture student at Norwich University and also work as a substitute teacher’s aide for disabled children in the Saratoga City School District when my schedule allows. Through the classroom experience, as well as my own experiences with bullying, have helped develop my thesis topic related to creating safe, empowering educational spaces. I am determined, flexible, and eager to expand my knowledge regarding Architecture for Education and am excited to share this knowledge not only with classmates, but also online through AIA KnowledgeNet's discussion forum and blog, Twitter, and Facebook. This conference intersects with my Master’s thesis ...
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2017 CAE Conference Travel Scholarship Recipient

By Laurie A. Hoffman AIA posted 10-10-2017
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When decided to apply to a K-12 Architectural firm; that decision helped me define who I want to be as an architect. An Architect, to me, means more than just designing a building; it’s been to redesign the way our communities interact. Education is at the core of that re-design. We learn, we ask questions, and from those questions spark new ideas and through those new ideas our society evolves. The architecture of educational facilities therefore is one that should be ever evolving. As the architectural profession starts moving towards more all-inclusive design processes, where the lines between schematic design and design development begin to blur, our ability ...
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Call for contributions - Cities and Climate Change Science Conference Edmonton, Canada March 5-7, 2018

By Bardhyl Rama posted 09-26-2017
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Dear All, The partner organizations of the "Cities and Climate Change Science Conference: Fostering new scientific knowledge for cities based on science, practice and policy" are pleased to announce a call for proposals for sessions and abstracts. The conference will take place between March 5-7, 2018 in Edmonton, Canada (for more info please email info@citiesipcc.org ). The conference aims to inspire the next frontier of research focused on the science of cities and climate change. The primary goal of the conference is to assess the state of academic and practice-based knowledge related to cities and climate change, and to establish a global research ...
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From Garage to Big Apple: Could Apple have been created in its amazing new headquarters, or did it somehow need the garage?

By John W. Clark AIA posted 08-07-2017
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Apple Computer started in the garage of Steve Jobs’ parents’ house, where Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne developed the first Apple computer, based on Wozniak’s prototype. Apple's garage startup was preceded many years earlier when Hewlett Packard set up their first workshop in a garage, and thus launched “Silicon Valley." Could Apple have been created in its amazing new headquarters, or did it somehow need the garage? Will MIT’s new STATA prove to be as creative an environment as its earlier Building 20? What are the best places for creativity and innovation? How can architecture help, and when does it hurt? And what are the implications for other ...
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Place & Pedagogy | How Pedagogy Becomes Place - #CAEportland

By Christopher D. Blessen AIA posted 05-31-2017
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Coming into the #CAEportland conference I had been exposed to a host of learning environments, mostly on the east coast, that communicated various messages about their goals, purpose and WHY they were built in the first place. Of course there is often a basic need for new facilities which address overcrowding, run-down buildings and lack of accessible routes for every person. Most of these new buildings are well designed places for learning but in 10 years of practicing architecture I have only heard one person use the term pedagogy to connect the place with the function. When I was invited to be a scholar at the Portland conference, I was excited to see what ...
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From Our House to Bauhaus: Crafting the Creative Curriculum

By John W. Clark AIA posted 05-30-2017
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Tom Wolfe, in his book From Bauhaus to Our House , had it backwards: The Bauhaus, rather than being alien to the United States as Wolfe suggests, was originally home grown. The Bauhaus, established by architect Walter Gropius to promote a powerful fusion of art, technology, and craft, has renewed relevance now, when people are looking at ways in which education can stimulate creativity and innovation through learning that is more “hands on.” The Bauhaus (German for “build house”) was a “makerspace” par excell ence. Far more often, architects shape the spaces in which learning occurs rather than the learning curriculum itself. Yet architects, since they straddle ...
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