The best school design ideas are rarely expensive. Most of the examples below are small, practical changes that solve an everyday problem: calculators that keep walking out of the room, litter on the floor, a noisy library, a dull corridor, pupils who never pick up a book unless they have to. Teachers, librarians, caretakers and students came up with them, and people photographed and shared them online because they are so easy to copy.
We have grouped twenty-two ideas by the job they do: keeping equipment where it belongs, encouraging reading, turning the building itself into a learning tool, keeping school tidy, letting students leave their mark, and adding a little movement and fun. For each one we explain what it is, why it works and what to think about before trying it at your own school.
A word of caution before you start: a clever photo shows an idea, not proof that it improves learning. Some of these, such as library noise meters and reading incentives, are widely used and well liked; others are one-off projects. The question to ask is always the same: what problem does this solve, and does it suit our pupils and our building?
Keeping equipment where it belongs
Calculators on wooden paddles
A university attached its shared calculators to long wooden boards, the same trick petrol stations use for toilet keys. Nobody slips a calculator the size of a cricket bat into a backpack by accident. It costs almost nothing and works for staplers, hole punches and other shared tools that tend to vanish.
A locking phone-charging station
Charging kiosks with small lockers and a personal four-digit code let students top up a phone without guarding it. Libraries and student unions often install them because a flat battery can mean missing a lecture change or a lift home. The instructions on the front show how simple they are to use.
A skateboard rack outside a middle school
Metal skateboard lockers do for boards what bike racks do for bikes. Pupils who skate to school have somewhere safe to leave them, and the boards stay out of corridors and classrooms. Schools that want more pupils to travel actively should think about storage as well as cycle lanes.
Multi-seat buggies for the nursery
A school with an infant room uses six-seat buggies to move babies around campus. Each child sits in a harnessed seat, so one or two adults can take a whole group outside or move them quickly in an emergency. Similar multi-seat strollers are common in day nurseries.
Getting pupils to read
Lockers painted as book spines
@RobinRoberts This project from Biloxi Jr. High is getting national buzz-check it out!! http://t.co/vke2383RdX pic.twitter.com/MvImk9jMUL
— BiloxiPublicSchools (@BiloxiSchools) July 3, 2015
In summer 2015, teachers at Biloxi Junior High in Mississippi painted a row of old, unused green lockers to look like the spines of famous books, from Watership Down to the Twilight series. They named the corridor the Avenue of Literature and hoped it would make pupils curious about the stories. The project was shared widely and copied by schools elsewhere.
A book vending machine
How cool ... the first book vending machine in one of our Buffalo Public schools. Kids earn tokens and get a free book! Hey, authors, anyone want to help keep it filled? #kidsneedbooks pic.twitter.com/pk4NYrH5lp
— Dee Romito (@writeforapples) November 27, 2018
In November 2018, children's author Dee Romito shared a photo of a vending machine in a Buffalo, New York, public school that gives out books instead of snacks. Pupils earn tokens for reading or good behaviour and choose a free book to keep. Owning a book, rather than borrowing one, is part of the appeal, and many schools have since installed similar machines.
Fahrenheit 451 on the fire extinguisher
A bookshelf mural places Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 exactly where the fire extinguisher hangs. It is a neat joke: Bradbury's 1953 novel is about "firemen" who burn books, and the title refers to the temperature at which he was told paper catches fire. The rest of the shelf includes titles such as Macbeth, To Kill a Mockingbird and Harry Potter.
Blind date with a book
Librarians wrap books in brown paper and write a few clues on the front, such as the genre or a hint about the plot. Readers pick one without seeing the cover, which nudges them past the books they would normally choose. It is a popular library display around Valentine's Day.
Traffic-light noise meters in the library
A sound sensor on each table glows green when the room is quiet and turns amber, then red, as voices rise. The sign beside it explains what each colour means. It gives students a neutral signal to lower their voices, instead of a librarian having to tell them again and again.
A reading tree in a school library
This "Tree of Knowledge" was designed by architects Savana Lazaretti and Roberta Jiraschek as the centrepiece of the library at the International School of Curitiba in Brazil. Children can sit, lie down, hide away or talk inside its curved wooden shelves. Spaces like this make the library feel like somewhere to spend time, not just a place to collect a book.
When the building teaches
A protractor doormat for the maths room
A semicircular mat marked like a protractor sits in front of a door, so the door's swing traces out an angle. Pupils can literally see what 90 degrees looks like every time someone walks in. It is a small joke for maths teachers and a handy visual for younger learners.
Trigonometry on the stair risers
Each step on this staircase shows a formula, from the tangents of common angles to the area of a triangle and a rectangle and the sine rule. Students who climb the stairs several times a day see the same facts over and over, a light form of repetition. Stair stickers are cheap, but they need to be hard-wearing and must not make the steps slippery.
Walk, run and text lanes on the stairs
Painted lines split a staircase into three lanes labelled walk, run and text. The idea is tongue-in-cheek, but it makes a real point about crowded stairways: people moving at different speeds get in each other's way. Running on stairs is still a bad idea, so most schools would probably prefer simple up and down lanes.
A mirror above the cookery demonstration
An angled mirror over the teacher's hob lets everyone in a cookery class see what is happening in the pan, not just those in the front row. Television cooking shows and medical lecture theatres use the same principle. A camera and screen does the same job today, but a mirror needs no power and never crashes.
Interactive touch tables
A large touchscreen built into a table lets several pupils work on the same task at once, such as sorting, drawing or playing a learning game. They encourage group work in a way a single tablet does not. They are expensive, though, and like any technology they are only as useful as the activities teachers build around them.
Keeping school tidy and stocked
Basketball hoops above the bins
A small hoop and backboard fixed above a bin turns throwing away rubbish into a quick game. Making the right behaviour fun is a well-known nudge; similar experiments with musical stairs and talking bins have been popular in public spaces. Expect a few missed shots, so the floor around the bin still needs a sweep.
A vending machine for school supplies
Instead of crisps and fizzy drinks, this machine sells pens, highlighters, rulers, glue and other stationery. A forgotten pencil case no longer means an awkward start to an exam. Prices should be kept low, and many schools keep a free spare supply for pupils who cannot pay.
Spaces students made their own
A painted corridor at Parkside Junior High
This post from Parkside Junior High shows a plain hallway transformed with large painted designs. Murals like this are often planned with art teachers and painted by students, which gives them a sense of ownership of the building. Pupils tend to treat spaces they helped create with more care.
A path of painted stones
The art department at Sharon Elementary shared a garden path lined with stones that pupils painted themselves. Every child contributes one small piece, and together they make something that lasts long after they leave. It is a simple project for a class, a club or a whole school.
Whiteboard tables
Tables and desks coated with whiteboard surface let students sketch, solve problems and brainstorm right where they sit, then wipe it all away. They are especially useful for group work in maths and design. Some schools paint whole walls with whiteboard paint for the same reason.
Movement, comfort and a little fun
Flexible seating in a primary classroom
(The Instagram post originally embedded here is no longer available.)
A second-grade teacher shared her new wobble seats, which work a bit like stability balls but cannot roll away. Flexible seating, from wobble stools to floor cushions and standing desks, lets children move slightly while they work. Teachers who use it often say it helps restless pupils settle; the research is still limited, so it is best seen as one option among several.
The parabola slides at the Technical University of Munich
Two steel slides run from the third floor down to the ground-floor hall of the Mathematics and Informatics building on TUM's Garching campus. Designed by the Munich artists Brunner/Ritz after a competition, they opened in December 2002 and start 13 metres up; their shape follows a parabola, a fitting nod to the maths department. Users need a slide mat, and children must be at least 11 years old and 1.20 metres tall.
How to borrow these ideas
Most of the ideas here share three things: they solve a specific annoyance, they cost little, and they involve the people who use the building. Before copying one, check it against your school's needs. Is it safe, especially anything on stairs? Is it accessible to pupils with disabilities? Will it survive a year of daily use? Who will keep it stocked, cleaned or repaired?
Many of the most successful projects, such as the Biloxi lockers or a painted stone path, were started by a few teachers over a summer or by pupils in an art club. Start small, ask students what they would change, and keep what works.
Sources: Open Culture: Biloxi teachers' Avenue of Literature; TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology: Parabola Slide; Wikipedia: Fahrenheit 451. Photos credited under each image: Reddit users Sn4p77, qwerty12qwerty, pjfrank, Oltarus, thenewyorkgod, WrittenTwig, Cali21, AlexsDoritos and theycallmemop; imgur users reppikselttil and HolliePocket; posts by BiloxiPublicSchools, Dee Romito, Savana Lazaretti, Parkside Junior High and Sharon Elementary Art.
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