Designer and Client Perceptions of Openness in School Environments
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Nowak, Michael S.
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Abstract
There is a debate among school designers and educators as to whether a more visually open learning environment provides more or less safety from a range of threats, including everyday common occurrences, such as bullying, as well as extremely rare but catastrophic mass shootings. The term “openness” has multiple meanings, physically, socially, and psychologically, and this paper will define what openness means through a brief literature review. What some consider to be a logical design approach in response to one type of threat may pose problems in dealing with other types of threats. In order to understand where architects, interior designers, Accredited Learning Environment Planners, and others involved in school design stand on the issue of openness, a survey was conducted to gauge their perceptions of safety. This study asked designers to rate their perceptions and provide an explanation of what leads them to believe such spaces are more or less safe. Also, they were asked to rate their clients’ attitudes toward openness in school environments. The results indicate that school designers overwhelmingly believe that openness improves safety, security, a sense of community, and wellbeing, while indicating that their clients are generally ambiguous or conflicting in their belief. The most common theme found in the explanatory responses points to the ability to see oncoming threats (prospect) and to establish a sense of passive supervision that leads to accountability and connectedness to the school community, while noting the concern for providing refuge and escape opportunities. The study’s results help to identify why these school designers hold openness, as a design strategy, to be successful and where clients may lack understanding of its benefits. It also helps to identify conflicts between architectural strategies to pave a way to mitigate such conflicts.
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Date
2025-03
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Text
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Proceedings
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