Abstract

In 2020-21 Covid-19 rolled over the school landscape as a pressure wave. Elementary schools had to push through ad hoc changes in their physical structure to succumb to the safety regulations issued after the first lockdown in the Spring of 2020. These physical alterations influenced the organizational structure of schools and the wellbeing of protagonists. Through all the negative, also positive sparks were noticed, as some changes were appraised positively, inveterate ideas were abandoned for an open minded view and teachers at home overthought their functioning and searched for meaning in their profession. This relevant momentum can be viewed as an opportunity to critically question the rather cumbersome design type of elementary schools, and to provide more attuned spatial affordances to teachers and pupils. The aim of our study was thus twofold: first, to get a grip on the values and needs that teachers and pupils had (re)attached to the functioning, and positively appraised changes in the school organization and environment. Second, we aimed to combine the gathered data and explore design strategies to design wellbeing related affordances inspired by the “natural experiment” caused by Covid-19. To conclude, the paper discusses the ‘flourishing affordance’ in school architecture.

Keywords

architecture, design for wellbeing, psychological needs, programming, learning environments

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Research Paper

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Sep 24th, 9:00 AM

Unlocking wellbeing-affordances in elementary schools initiated by a ‘natural experiment’ caused by Covid-19

In 2020-21 Covid-19 rolled over the school landscape as a pressure wave. Elementary schools had to push through ad hoc changes in their physical structure to succumb to the safety regulations issued after the first lockdown in the Spring of 2020. These physical alterations influenced the organizational structure of schools and the wellbeing of protagonists. Through all the negative, also positive sparks were noticed, as some changes were appraised positively, inveterate ideas were abandoned for an open minded view and teachers at home overthought their functioning and searched for meaning in their profession. This relevant momentum can be viewed as an opportunity to critically question the rather cumbersome design type of elementary schools, and to provide more attuned spatial affordances to teachers and pupils. The aim of our study was thus twofold: first, to get a grip on the values and needs that teachers and pupils had (re)attached to the functioning, and positively appraised changes in the school organization and environment. Second, we aimed to combine the gathered data and explore design strategies to design wellbeing related affordances inspired by the “natural experiment” caused by Covid-19. To conclude, the paper discusses the ‘flourishing affordance’ in school architecture.

 

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