海角大神

The spaces in which we live, work, and play have profound effects on our productivity, creativity, and well-being. For those who can afford the upfront costs of transforming their built environments, this notion has become part of the mainstream.

In the workplace, the design firm Morgan Lovell helps clients such as聽听补苍诲听听肠谤别补迟别听聽Practicing what they preach, Morgan Lovell鈥檚 own workers enjoy an office in which anyone can work in virtually any space, enjoying a sense of autonomy and flexibility rather than being walled in by cubicles.

In the world of hospitality,聽, incorporating elements of nature into their buildings. The global design and architecture firm HOK uses energy recovery ventilation, energy-use dashboard displays, and other innovative systems to play up sustainable design and enhance the guest experience at high-end hotels.听聽

Young children, with their impressionable minds and unyielding curiosity, may actually have the most to gain from an engaging built environment. But the traditional school space is divided into rigid domains, with the classroom strictly for learning, the playground for play, and most other spaces built to serve utilitarian purposes.

In response, architect聽seeks to maximize the value of space in India鈥檚 schools by creating unified, enabling environments across school grounds, to facilitate a continuous learning process. Vajpeyi鈥檚 firm Vinyas, which he co-founded in 1996 with his wife Preeti, has helped spread the methodology of BaLA 鈥� Building as Learning Aid 鈥� to thousands of preschools and elementary schools across India.

Just as education experts recommendthe BaLA framework offers guidelines for a holistically enriching built environment that feeds organically into formal instruction. Installing numbers, colors, maps, and units of measurement in a play yard, for example, encourages more peer learning and constructive engagement among schoolchildren, with a corresponding decrease in the incidence of conflicts and fights.听

Rather than being confined to a classroom, 鈥渢he learning is happening across, and is not bounded by time or space. In other words, it lets the children interact with those elements at their own free will,鈥� Mr. Vajpeyi says.

BaLA is designed to spur frugal innovation in both new schools and retrofits through a few broad themes:

Measurement

Vajpeyi advocates incorporating units of measurement 鈥� visible markers of distance and angles 鈥� throughout the school building and yard to help ground theoretical concepts in reality. He especially likes the idea of labeling pieces of furniture with their weight.

鈥淐hildren across the world throw furniture, irrespective of where they come from,鈥� he says. 鈥淪o if we write the weight on furniture, they鈥檒l know that they鈥檝e just thrown a stool that was 5 kilograms or a table that was 20 kilograms. It gives them a sense of measurement.鈥�

Movement

Through BaLA, the built environment should encourage children to move in ways that boost their development. Vajpeyi says many schools have begun transforming the iron bars in their window grills into colorful, undulating shapes that children can trace using small toys. This activity boosts hand-eye coordination and mimics the wrist, arm and shoulder movements required for writing.

Nature

Just as office workers and hotel guests appreciate the incursion of the outdoors into their interior spaces through increased natural light and ventilation, schoolchildren likewise are inherently drawn to nature. In the classroom, BaLA encourages windows be kept curtain-free and placed low to the ground so small children can see outside. In the yard, planted trees have branches low to the ground, encouraging children to climb.

鈥淟oved Spaces鈥�

Just as nature abhors a vacuum, an architect abhors 鈥渄ead space鈥� in a building that people avoid. BaLA seeks to maximize 鈥渓oved spaces鈥� that invite children to fill them and accommodate a range of peer group sizes and activities, much as Morgan Lovell strives for offices replete with spaces conducive to working and collaborating.听

Such BaLA principles appear at home in Google鈥檚 new Bay View, California, campus, with spaces connected by a bike track and several landscaped 鈥渙utdoor rooms鈥� intended for contemplation and creativity.

Projects like Google鈥檚 need not be viewed as expensive extravagances inspired by a passing design fad. The proof of effectiveness will come in the form of lower energy costs, higher employee morale, and increased productivity.听

The BaLA methodology has been implemented in 30,000 schools, affecting more than 2.5 million children across India, Vajpeyi estimates. Unlike Google, India may never be able to quantitatively measure the economic effects of this shift in design philosophy. But seen up close, the effects of BaLA on children 鈥� who become more engaged in their education and more empathetic toward each other 鈥� make it seem like a common sense approach to a new generation of built spaces.

This article originally appeared on the聽聽blog, published by the Start Empathy project from Ashoka.听This post was written by Dan Schiff, a global project manager for the聽.听