Where Children Learn Best

Reggio Emilia educators call the environment the 'third teacher,' after parents and instructors. The best educational architects have taken this literally. In these projects, the building teaches — through transparency, through scale, through the way light enters a room at different times of day.

The shift is visible across every scale. Primary schools replace corridors with learning streets. Universities dissolve the boundary between laboratory and commons. Libraries become the social heart rather than the quiet periphery.

What the A+ Awards data reveals is that the jury consistently favours educational projects where the architecture creates agency. Students choose where to learn. Teachers can reconfigure space. The building adapts to the pedagogy, not the other way around.