Learn Better - Rephrasing education through architecture

Description

PREMISE

Children are sent to school with the best intention, with the belief that formal education is the road to a happy lifestyle. Meticulously, parents gauge different schools based on their rankings, curriculum, faculty, their infrastructures etc, this ideology conveniently boils down to expensive schools as best options.

There might be several similar questions raising by time as the society moves ahead, but their contribution to today’s world cannot be disregarded without evaluating the shortcomings. Logically, schools have been the best models of education in a time when dissipation of knowledge was at its least. Setting up institutions were taken to make set standards of education to ensure learning reaches the mass. Standards, which enable the model of school could scale from a cult to a more universal entity spreading knowledge. But what if these benchmarks are threatening a school’s relevance, with no concrete solution that questions how a school should be?

With a growing world population, the K-12 education market has become a lucrative business opportunity - where all it matters is to churn out a faster number of students - and make them ‘succeed’. The fundamental driver of this innovation is led by a market force – it’s difficult to find out what is the right way.

Challenge

There are various reasons why traditional school models are battling for relevance today. A few of them are laid down below:

The top-down, teach-and-test method, in which learning is motivated by a system of rewards and punishments rather than by curiosity or by any real desire to know, is the first place to begin the inquiry. What follows this inquiry, is the curriculum, questioning their usefulness to the vast amount of children who cannot question the authority/board. Lastly is the competitive environment that the children have to be molded into, which is eroding creative thinking.

Design brief: Devise a new form of a model school, where valuable learning and life skills could be imparted with newer forms of built environment.

Design questions:

• How existing schools can be made friendlier to these essential life skills through smaller retrofits?
• How to prepare our children with much dependable thought process that work in tandem with our changing societies?
• How existing perceptions of pedagogy can be shaken up so schools are compelled to evolve?
• As most cities are mitigating problems with density how can schools be stacked but still not lose their means of imparting a holistic education?

Timeline:

Launch March 26, 2019

Advance Registration closes: May 25, 2019.

20$ Students, 30$ Professionals, 80$ Institutional Access

Early Registration closes: July 9, 2019.

30$ Students, 50$ Professionals, 120$ Institutional Access

Standard Registration: August 23, 2019.

40$ Students, 70$ Professionals, 160$ Institutional Access

Submission Deadline: September 2, 2019.

Public Voting begins: September 3, 2019.

Public Voting ends: October 3, 2019.

Result Announcement: October 13, 2019.

Prizes:

Prize pool of worth 4000$

First Prize: 1500$ (For students and professionals)

Runner up: 800$ (For students and professionals)

People’s Choice: 450$ (For students – Most appreciated project wins this)

People’s Choice: 450$ (For students – Most appreciated project wins this)

Honorable mention x 2 (Students): 200$ Each

Honorable mention x 2 (Professionals): 200$ Each