ABSTRACT
Throughout this book I have been exploring how we can investigate what is distinctive about teaching and learning in post-compulsory education, and what it is that matters about the design of its material (and virtual) spaces. I have suggested that universities and colleges are complex and contested communities of practice, continually bringing new entrants into processes of knowledge creation and development across different disciplines; and that this has in-built tensions in combining learning, teaching and research as a means to develop subject and practitioner expertise (for use beyond the academy), and as a means to enable the growth and change of the academy-as-a-centre-of-knowledge itself. In this fi nal chapter I want to return again to the level of the educational institution to explore how accepting and engaging creatively and constructively with these tensions can help us re-think the architectural design of post-compulsory education.
