ABSTRACT
In Quebec, Canada, 85 percent of the province's 2,158 primary schools were built before 1970, two-thirds between 1950 and 1970 to serve the baby boom. Most of these buildings have reached the end of their first life cycle, estimated as 50 years in architecture. To inform the renovation of the schools in a relatively limited timeframe, it is essential to make intelligent use of the best knowledge available to support decision-making. This requires combining scientific evidences from different disciplinary horizons with local information on local organizational and material contexts or practice-based evidences. Inside the school, gymnasiums are traditional places for performing physical activity. The low involvement of designers in this field of studies where health-related researchers dominate is alarming. In Quebec as elsewhere in the world, the ongoing renovation of postwar schools represents a unique opportunity to adapt these buildings to answer new challenges.
