ABSTRACT
Participation is vital to the process of school design in all its forms - creating, inhabiting and transforming learning environments. Collaboration begins in this place of exchange: design is as much about building partnerships and learning from one another as it is about shaping physical spaces together. This chapter provides a framework for exchanging ideas and experiences about school environments. More recently we have seen that academic institutions, businesses and public sector organisations are valuing cross-disciplinary approaches to learning and working. Buildings and technology are playing a powerful role in influencing cultural change. Building control was located in the statutory circle by the school designers, but in the design and construction circles by the teachers. When working with schools that a diversity of perspectives can be representative of a vibrant, dynamic, ever-changing school - that to impose one rigid idea would miss the opportunity to embrace the essence of the wider learning environment, and perhaps the reality of modern education.
