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The aim of this paper was to examine current learning styles and teaching methods in order to suggest a new form of learning environment for young students. Features such as different activity settings and small group activities aimed at enhancing learning resulted from the participation of students, teachers and parents in the design of the Gibsonville Elementary School. Teachers, working in small groups, compared different classroom arrangements along with criteria to compare and evaluate each alternative and unanimously selected an “L” shape classroom, which became the basis for the design of the school. Another critical design feature that emerged from the teacher workshop was direct access from each classroom to the outdoors, allowing teachers to create outdoor classrooms that could enhance student's ecological awareness. The final design featured four academic houses of six L shaped classrooms each around an open courtyard to provide a resource for students, parents, and teachers to collectively explore and maintain outdoor environmental themes. A post occupancy evaluation was conducted several months after completion of construction and revealed a high level of satisfaction; however, the findings pointed to the need for a subsequent workshop to focus on the effective arrangement of furniture in L shaped classrooms. The participatory process was identified by the students and teachers as the key factor contributing to the design, which of one of the first schools of its type in the United States.

The educational process in schools involves many activities that ultimately aim at testing students' motivation, knowledge assimilation, academic performance, and teachers' productivity. How these activities are accommodated in a responsive environment is a critical issue that deserves special attention especially from users' perspective. This paper analyzes emerging understandings of learning environments. Reactions of teachers and students to classroom and cluster prototypes, among other aspects, against a number of spatial requirements and educational objectives are analyzed and discussed based on two mechanisms. The first is a comparative analysis of reactions of teachers from three elementary schools within Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District. The second part is a case study of a pre-design phase undertaken for redesigning some buildings of North Carolina School of the Arts. The results of this investigation support the assumption on how the school environment has a direct impact on the way in which teaching and learning takes place. A conclusion envisioning the need for going beyond adopting prescriptive measures to address the quality of the learning environment is conceived by highlighting the need to utilize knowledge generated from research findings into school design process, to pursue active roles in sensitizing users about the value of the school environment in reaching the desired academic performance while increasing teachers' productivity.

Whether in school buildings or university campuses the educational process involves many activities that include knowledge acquisition and assimilation, testing students' motivation and academic performance, and faculty and teachers' productivity. The way in which we approach the planning, design, and our overall perception of learning environments makes powerful statements about how we view education; how educational buildings are designed tells us much about how teaching and learning activities occur. Concomitantly, how these activities are accommodated in a responsive educational environment is a critical issue that deserves special attention. While it was said several decades ago that a good teacher can teach anywhere, a growing body of knowledge-derived from knowledge on “evidence-based design” suggests a direct correlation between the physical aspects of the learning environment, teaching processes, and learning outcomes. In its commitment to introduce timely and pressing issues on built environment research, Open House International presents this special edition to debate and reflect on current discourses on sustainable learning environments.

The process of educating future architects and designers around the world varies dramatically. However, there is one striking similarity - the dominance of the design studio as the main forum for knowledge acquisition and assimilation, and for creative exploration and interaction. Such a setting encompasses intensive cognitive and physical activities, which ultimately result in conceptualizing meaningful environments proposed to accommodate related human activities. The design studio is the primary space where students explore their creative skills that are so prized by the profession; it is the kiln where future architects are molded. It has occupied a central position since architectural education was formalized two centuries ago in France and later in Germany, the rest of Europe, North America, and the rest of the world.

The topics “environment,” “environmental design” and “environment and behavior studies” are important and promising in architectural discourse. The academic culture of the global west plays a unique role in the development of the knowledge within the field of environmental design research (EDR), from which these concepts originate. This paper examines the western names, works and ideas related to EDR that have spread into Russian architectural discourse. The purpose of this paper is to consider the status quo of Russian knowledge of EDR and its connection with the western EDR tradition.

The method of research in this paper is the analysis of references and keywords of architectural publications from the largest Russian academic online library – e-library.ru.

The origin, evolution and current state of environmental architectural knowledge in Russia are discussed. Its segmentation including the presence of several self-organized spheres within the EDR domain and the variety of “dialects” of environmental language are illustrated. The connections of each segment of Russian knowledge with western authors and sources are traced. Further, conclusions are drawn regarding the similarities and differences between Russian and western knowledge in the field of EDR.

The relationship of Russian architectural theory with western EDR knowledge has not previously been the subject of a comparative scientometric study.

The aim of this paper is to present an approach for comprehending affordable housing. The approach is based on a new paradigm of research: trans-disciplinarity; a form of inquiry that crosses the boundaries of different disciplines. An argument on the impact of trans-disciplinary thinking on understanding affordable housing is developed, then is placed within the perspective of how lifestyle theories and their underlying concepts can be integrated into a comprehensive investigatory process. In turn, a framework of inquiry is developed while reflected on affordable housing knowledge types. An interpretation of the framework into a survey tool is conceptualized. The tool is introduced in the form of a questionnaire to be implemented in different contexts. The testing of the questionnaire as a tool of inquiry reveals its validity, corroborates the value of integrating trans-disciplinary knowledge into affordable housing research, and accentuates the value of introducing lifestyle theories as a new form of knowledge necessary for future inquiry on affordable housing.

The aim of this study is to understand classroom settings desired by high school students and teachers in an active learning classroom. The research question is whether students and teachers will differ from each other when designing an active learning classroom.

In an effort to design a learning environment for an advanced placement programme, action research methodology was followed by conducting a participatory workshop in a real active learning classroom with future users. Working in isolation from one another, students and teachers designed their own classrooms by forming different learning centres. During the study, two groups, made up of ten high school students and seven teachers, respectively, were asked to arrange the furniture in an active learning classroom. The groups were free to form as many furniture arrangement configurations as they wished and were asked to write about their workshop experiences afterwards. Once they had completed both tasks, their plan layouts were examined.

All of the plan layouts were found to fall into one of three categories: a traditional layout, a small group layout or a single large group layout. The written texts were also analysed, which revealed different perspectives of each participating group. As students and teachers explore different learning opportunities, they appear to be driven by different kinds of experiences when they endeavour to organize their classrooms.

Never before has an active learning classroom been the site for a participatory furniture arrangement workshop that employs teachers and students.

Commemorating the 15th year anniversary of discourse, knowledge dissemination in architecture and urbanism through the contributions published in Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, since March 2007, this article aims to capture, unpack and categorize the key content of published research outputs during the last five years into knowledge spaces.

While referring to key statistics of various recognized databases in order to highlight the journal growth, development and performance, the approach to the analysis is inspired by Crysler's Writing Spaces: Discourses of Architecture, Urbanism and the Built Environment. This is established through a preliminary conceptual content analysis that enables the development of specific content categories representing knowledge spaces based on the overall contributions to the journal since its inception in 2007 and then mapping the recent contributions, developed over the past five years (2017–2021), to these knowledge spaces. The thrust of the analysis is to instigate a structured understanding of Archnet-IJAR role in the development and dissemination of knowledge in architecture and urbanism.

The examination of the content and the analysis reveal two broad categories of knowledge spaces: established and evolving. Established knowledge spaces are recognized in terms of theorizing architectural and urban production; the public realm and assessment of designed environments; housing, the informal and the vernacular; urban heritage and historic environments; and architectural and urban politics. Evolving knowledge spaces were acknowledged in terms of architectural education and design pedagogy; collaborative planning and community design; architectural and urban sustainability and resilience; health, wellbeing and engaging with nature; and COVID-19 spatial and pedagogical implications. Characterized by clear definition and at the same time transparent borders, the identified knowledge spaces have the potential of generating further possibilities for future knowledge spaces.

In addition to a holistic analysis based on the scrutiny of contributions as they progressed from submissions to reviews to publishing, future work would involve more systematization, in-depth engagement with metadata and should benefit from IT applications and data mining software packages.

This article is regarded as a cognizance platform and an enabling mechanism for researchers and future contributors to identify the unique particularities of their research, the nature of the content they aim to develop and the way in which that content may contribute to one or more knowledge spaces.

Establishing an understanding of the knowledge spaces which represent contributions published in Archnet-IJAR, the knowledge spaces identified demonstrate diversity and plurality; diversity in ontological interpretations of the nature of reality and plurality and pluri-epistemology in terms of how methods are pursued and the way in which such interpretations are developed, recorded, documented and communicated. These are knowledge spaces of possibilities and anticipation of growth, evolution and development.

The current fast track urban development process is an important characteristic of the city of Doha. No exploration or examination of its urban spaces, however, has been done before. This paper offers an experiential assessment of three key urban open spaces by examining their spatial and physical characteristics while implementing direct systematic observation and behavioural mapping procedure. Assessment results reveal important outcomes that include absence of physical aspects amenable for effective use while offering a pleasant experience for visitors. The findings contribute to an in-depth understanding of the qualities of the three spaces and the resulting use, activities, and behaviour representative of the inhabitants' spatial experience in those spaces. While the overall experience of users appear to be satisfactory, the results convey that there is an absence of landscape features and a dearth of green spaces and appropriate outdoor furniture, absence of adequate shaded areas and shading devices and a lack of children's facilities or specially designated areas for children. Addressing the lack of features that enhance people's activities and use of these spaces would contribute to making the spaces more conducive for use by different types of users and at different days and times.

The purpose of this study was to examine faculty and student satisfaction with classrooms in a university teaching facility in the Midwest, U.S.A. The two-story, 95,000 square foot (79,429.5 square meter) building cost 13.5 million dollars to build and was dedicated for use by the entire campus with no college or department given permanent classroom space. The facility's classrooms were designed to incorporate state-of-the-art communications technology including television monitors, DVD and video cassette recorders, overhead projectors and slide projectors, video presenters, and hook-ups for computers and CD, tape and other audio equipment. A post-occupancy evaluation (POE) survey of 125 faculty and 5,048 students using the facility indicated that the majority of faculty and students were satisfied with the classrooms (overall satisfaction: faculty, 65.3%F students 73.0%). However, problems were cited including: difficulty in using equipment, uncomfortable room temperatures and seating, and a sterile environment (all but three classrooms are windowless).