The Design of the Academic Classroom: Evolution and New Perspectives

Abstract

The design of the academic classroom is in constant evolution and responds to the needs that education and society constantly demand. The growing interest in classroom design promises to offer ideas and solutions to current challenges faced by university communities and their teaching-learning environments. This work aims to analyse the evolution and design perspectives of the classroom from its architectural experience, identifying the challenges and standards it must meet. To this end, it evaluates how the classroom and architectural practice have been shaped by different approaches: (1) from its pedagogical experience, its spatial use and influence on teaching-learning; (2) from the perceptual dimension and its impact on emotional and cognitive processes analysed by environmental psychology and neuroarchitecture. The work describes how architects and their classroom designs have been agents of constant change, progressively adding complexity until becoming today a space-instrument of interdisciplinary study. This holistic nature entails a series of limitations that make it difficult to translate into architectural practice. The challenge that classroom design faces, in addition to providing innovative and flexible pedagogical practices, is to respect the psychological and neurophysiopsychological impact of its users and, therefore, promote their well-being and academic excellence.