Sean O'Donnell FAIA LEED AP

Often when presenting the finding of our research, including "Addressing a Multi-Billion Challenge" (see link below), I'm asked about how we can invest in such major research undertakings. This article describes how we built a research-based practice, step by step, and the positive impact that that has had for our practice and our clients.

The chapter I authored in this book marks one of the most proud moments in my career. Amos Rapoport was my master's thesis advisor, and as a mentor, one of the most formative influences in shaping my interest in environmental design research. Encouraged by him, my thesis focused on urban frameworks, adaptability and flexibility, topics that nearly 30 years later, continue to shape and influence my work. Accordingly, it was an honor to be asked by the editors to contribute to this book… Show more

The chapter I authored in this book marks one of the most proud moments in my career. Amos Rapoport was my master's thesis advisor, and as a mentor, one of the most formative influences in shaping my interest in environmental design research. Encouraged by him, my thesis focused on urban frameworks, adaptability and flexibility, topics that nearly 30 years later, continue to shape and influence my work. Accordingly, it was an honor to be asked by the editors to contribute to this book honoring his work and legacy.

From the publisher: "In this collection of essays, Theorizing Built Form and Culture: The Legacy of Amos Rapoport – a felicitation volume to celebrate the significance of Professor Amos Rapoport's lifelong scholarship – scholars from around the world discuss the analytical relevance, expansion, and continuing application of these contributions in developing an advanced understanding of mutual relationships between people and built environments across cultures.

Professor Amos Rapoport has espoused an intellectual and theoretical legacy on environmental design scholarship that explains how cultural factors play a significant role in the ways people create and use environments as well as the way environments, in turn, influence people’s behavior... This volume presents a hitherto-not-seen, unique, and singular work that simultaneously articulates a cohesive framework of Rapoport’s architectural theories and demonstrates how that theoretical approach be used in architectural inquiry, education, and practice across environmental scales, types, and cultural contexts." Show less

Over half of all U.S. public schools are in need of renovations, the cost of which is estimated at nearly $200 billion, and yet expenditures for both facility maintenance and renovation continue to fall dramatically short of the need. Funded by one of the industry's largest research grants, our new study is targeted to help make the case for increased investment in school modernization, and to provide guidance to designers and school districts to more effectively spend limited modernization… Show more

Over half of all U.S. public schools are in need of renovations, the cost of which is estimated at nearly $200 billion, and yet expenditures for both facility maintenance and renovation continue to fall dramatically short of the need. Funded by one of the industry's largest research grants, our new study is targeted to help make the case for increased investment in school modernization, and to provide guidance to designers and school districts to more effectively spend limited modernization dollars to achieve their core mission of better educating children for life in the 21st century. The product of an on-going partnership between Perkins Eastman and Drexel University's School of Education, “Addressing a Multi-Billion Dollar Challenge,” evaluated 28 schools, across two urban school districts, to demonstrate that modernized schools outperform non-modernized schools in a statistically significant manner across multiple factors. Click the link to access a summary of our findings, the full report, and the research tools available to reproduce our work. Show less

Bruce Levine, Clinical Professor, Drexel University School of Education and Sean O’Donnell, K-12 Practice Leader at Perkins Eastman, and their colleagues, share their ongoing research on Community Schools with the AIA NYC Committee on Architecture for Education through this facilitated panel discussion. Community school partnerships with a variety of organizations (health, food access and nutrition, and social emotional learning/support) in both rural and urban contexts were discussed and we… Show more

Bruce Levine, Clinical Professor, Drexel University School of Education and Sean O’Donnell, K-12 Practice Leader at Perkins Eastman, and their colleagues, share their ongoing research on Community Schools with the AIA NYC Committee on Architecture for Education through this facilitated panel discussion. Community school partnerships with a variety of organizations (health, food access and nutrition, and social emotional learning/support) in both rural and urban contexts were discussed and we came away with many valuable insights on school design in general. Show less

Sustainable design has had a dramatic impact on the design of educational environments. Communities, districts and associations across the country are actively engaged and committed to enhancing the performance of our school buildings. Impressive rigor, resources and effort are being leveraged to achieve ambitious targets like Net Zero Energy (NZE).

We now have the opportunity to leverage enthusiasm, new resources and tools associated with NZE to achieve an even broader set of goals… Show more

Sustainable design has had a dramatic impact on the design of educational environments. Communities, districts and associations across the country are actively engaged and committed to enhancing the performance of our school buildings. Impressive rigor, resources and effort are being leveraged to achieve ambitious targets like Net Zero Energy (NZE).

We now have the opportunity to leverage enthusiasm, new resources and tools associated with NZE to achieve an even broader set of goals that specifically target our client’s core mission, education. What if, in conjunction with resource conservation, we focused the same intensity and rigor on demonstrably enhancing educational outcomes through environmental design? This more expansive, ambitious goal, could be called Net Positive Education(TM)...
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In 2016, the 21st Century School Fund, the Center for Green Schools and the National Council on School Facilities issued an updated report on the “State of our Schools.” They found that over the last 20 years, more than 100,000 of our existing schools had become “woefully inadequate and even unsafe.” Their call to action pointed toward facilities that could positively impact health and wellness, conserve resources, and reconcile inequity in facilities investment. Most importantly, taking action… Show more

In 2016, the 21st Century School Fund, the Center for Green Schools and the National Council on School Facilities issued an updated report on the “State of our Schools.” They found that over the last 20 years, more than 100,000 of our existing schools had become “woefully inadequate and even unsafe.” Their call to action pointed toward facilities that could positively impact health and wellness, conserve resources, and reconcile inequity in facilities investment. Most importantly, taking action would positively impact educational outcomes.

In responding to this call, we cannot rely solely on new construction. Most of the 21st century’s school inventory already exists and accordingly, the greatest facilities impact on children’s education can be realized through strategies that ensure the continued success of buildings that were built 50, 75 and even 100 years ago. Often written off as hopelessly programmatically and technologically obsolete, many of these buildings can instead transform into exciting and forward-thinking 21st-century learning environments that — as noted architectural historian Vincent Scully — “can inspire a conversation between generations, across time.”

Roosevelt Senior High School in Washington, D.C., is a perfect example...
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Perkins Eastman in Washington, DC. examines how local influences like culture, climate, and community influences the design of schools in this interview with Metropolis magazine.

How can the goals of Net Zero Energy (NZE) school design be broadened to achieve the central goals of our school clients? By considering Net Zero Energy as a contributing factor in what I am calling “Net Positive Education” (NPE). This article discusses two ways that NZE design can become NPE design.

Global forces of change are acting upon our schools, our communities, our ecosystems, our economies, our institutions - affecting our everyday lives, our future, and the future of our children. To equip students with the skills to succeed in life in a century where the only constant is change, education in the 21st Century has become more: social, collaborative, connected, creative, and experiential.

As schools around Latin and South America endeavor to support new ways of learning, they… Show more

Global forces of change are acting upon our schools, our communities, our ecosystems, our economies, our institutions - affecting our everyday lives, our future, and the future of our children. To equip students with the skills to succeed in life in a century where the only constant is change, education in the 21st Century has become more: social, collaborative, connected, creative, and experiential.

As schools around Latin and South America endeavor to support new ways of learning, they can look to best practices and creative responses developed by others responding to these same questions. To truly succeed however, schools should not simply adopt prototypes for learning environments from around the world. Responses to these more global educational needs must be complemented by responses to local factors including climate, context, and culture... (see newsletter page 77 for more) Show less

Created to inform and inspire schools that want to foster Blended Learning through the design of a supportive school environment, this report reviews the many types of Blended Learning in practice today, develops design principles that respond and support these emerging pedagogies and, creates a prototypical design for a pair of rotational classrooms for Ingenuity Prep PCS to illustrate the principles and guidelines.

Created to provide inspiration and guidance to schools considering the development of an environment that fosters active, project based learning, these design guidelines explore what STEM is, how it manifests in activities and, how those activities can best be supported by the environment. It also includes a prototypical design to illustrate the concepts.

What is a 21st Century school? Through globalization, technological advancement, pedagogical and curricular evolution and climate change, this TEDx Talk explores that question and discusses one uniting common theme, community, and how it can enhance the design of high performance places to learn.

Assessing energy performance is one of the most common ways to benchmark school building performance, but health and comfort conditions are just as important. As the green building movement gains traction and more green K–12 buildings are built each year, the movement as a whole must thoughtfully addresses the question: What do we do with the 133,000 existing schools in the U.S.? The CHPS Operations Report Card (ORC) delivers a report card of total building performance in the four indoor… Show more

Assessing energy performance is one of the most common ways to benchmark school building performance, but health and comfort conditions are just as important. As the green building movement gains traction and more green K–12 buildings are built each year, the movement as a whole must thoughtfully addresses the question: What do we do with the 133,000 existing schools in the U.S.? The CHPS Operations Report Card (ORC) delivers a report card of total building performance in the four indoor environmental quality areas discussed in this article, and also uses U.S. EPA’s ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager to deliver an energy benchmarking score.
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Here's a summary: ...Conceptually, achieving net-zero energy is simple — reduce energy consumption and generate power to provide for the remaining demand. ...Here are 5 NZE ideas that can help every school conserve energy and educate the next generation.

1. Pursue daylight autonomy: Research has shown the benefits of natural light in the learning environment and, representing 20% or more of a school’s energy load, daylight is also key to reducing energy consumption. With daylight… Show more

Here's a summary: ...Conceptually, achieving net-zero energy is simple — reduce energy consumption and generate power to provide for the remaining demand. ...Here are 5 NZE ideas that can help every school conserve energy and educate the next generation.

1. Pursue daylight autonomy: Research has shown the benefits of natural light in the learning environment and, representing 20% or more of a school’s energy load, daylight is also key to reducing energy consumption. With daylight modeling, we can now design to achieve daylight autonomy... Properly orienting the building, using clerestory windows, sunshades... occupancy sensors... we can optimize for daylight, reduce energy consumption, enhance views and reduce glare.

2. Organize the program to support conservation: Many of our schools also serve as community centers. By organizing the plans to define areas of the building available to the community after hours relative to other spaces that can be closed off ...we can create discrete HVAC zones that allow us to provide heating and cooling only where it is needed.

3. Reduce plug loads & enhance education: Since NZE performance is measured by actual utility bills, it can inspire students and teachers to conserve energy and use the building differently. Today’s building systems can provide real time feedback on energy usage allowing users to understand how their actions influence conservation...

4. Tap the earth’s energy for heating & cooling: In many locations combining a Ground Source Heat Pump System (“geothermal”) with an energy efficient HVAC system can enhance thermal comfort, while conserving energy...

5. Generate energy: After all of the efforts have been taken to reduce consumption, a NZE building needs to generate power to balance the energy demand... With a smart tie power meter the building’s systems can be configured to draw power from the grid during the winter months, and provide energy to the grid during the balance of the year.
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Like the evolution of educational theory from the 19th- and 20th-centuries — where students were seen as passive receivers of learning — to 21st-century education with its emphasis on creativity, critical thinking, communication, character and community — where learning is more active, engaging and collaborative — students and teachers are recognizing that their buildings are not passively sustainable; but that they are, instead, opportunities to actively learn. As designers, we can collaborate… Show more

Like the evolution of educational theory from the 19th- and 20th-centuries — where students were seen as passive receivers of learning — to 21st-century education with its emphasis on creativity, critical thinking, communication, character and community — where learning is more active, engaging and collaborative — students and teachers are recognizing that their buildings are not passively sustainable; but that they are, instead, opportunities to actively learn. As designers, we can collaborate with the users to engage opportunities ranging from the landscape to building systems and, even, the curriculum. Show less

The marks of a 21st-century education—creativity, critical thinking, communication, and character –the means to acquire these skills - more active, student-centered and collaborative learning - and the “flattening” of the world on issues ranging from the economic and political to the environmental, have changed our expectation for the learning environment. For example, we know that learning occurs not only in the traditional, formal settings of a school—classrooms and labs—but also that much… Show more

The marks of a 21st-century education—creativity, critical thinking, communication, and character –the means to acquire these skills - more active, student-centered and collaborative learning - and the “flattening” of the world on issues ranging from the economic and political to the environmental, have changed our expectation for the learning environment. For example, we know that learning occurs not only in the traditional, formal settings of a school—classrooms and labs—but also that much is learned outside of the classroom, in “informal” settings and from one’s peers.

Whereas the near exclusive focus of school design in the 19th and 20th Centuries had been on the classroom and the lab, we now look to design the entire campus as a system of settings to learn. This point of view transforms circulation into “extended learning spaces,” media centers and cafeterias into “learning commons” and the outdoors from the sole domain of recess and physical education to places where the humanities, sciences and physical activity intermingle and converge with social and emotional learning to help educate the whole person.

This richer understanding suggests that we can now conceive of our schools as a diverse “learning landscape,” comprised of an array of indoor and outdoor places that afford a wide range of educational activities. While our new 21st Century learning landscape extends from inside and out, in this article we will focus on those outdoors, on places that encourage students to build community, perform, socialize, collaborate, cultivate, play and create.
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Schools across the nation are struggling with aging HVAC systems, the results of which can lead to uncomfortable learning environments for students. Ground source heat pump systems (aka: geothermal) provide an energy efficient and cost effective alternative that can contriute to the creation of high performance learning environments. In this recorded seminar, a multi-disciplinary design and construction team address how geothermal systems can have broad ranging and positive impacts on school… Show more

Schools across the nation are struggling with aging HVAC systems, the results of which can lead to uncomfortable learning environments for students. Ground source heat pump systems (aka: geothermal) provide an energy efficient and cost effective alternative that can contriute to the creation of high performance learning environments. In this recorded seminar, a multi-disciplinary design and construction team address how geothermal systems can have broad ranging and positive impacts on school environments.

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21st-century School Design has fully embraced sustainability. The marks of a modern education—creativity, critical thinking, communication, and character—so fully engage the central ideas of sustainable design, from conservation to health and wellness to broad integration across a curriculum for future stewardship, that it is difficult not to design a sustainable, high-performance school today.

21st-century education is becoming more active and collaborative and our education spaces must… Show more

21st-century School Design has fully embraced sustainability. The marks of a modern education—creativity, critical thinking, communication, and character—so fully engage the central ideas of sustainable design, from conservation to health and wellness to broad integration across a curriculum for future stewardship, that it is difficult not to design a sustainable, high-performance school today.

21st-century education is becoming more active and collaborative and our education spaces must readily allow for multiple modes of learning, which requires consideration of many interrelated elements—light, space, furniture, thermal comfort, air quality, technology, color, display, and acoustics, among them—in order to provide a proper and inspiring setting for learning today.

This article further discusses the design of the acoustical learning environment. Show less

Despite shrinking school budgets, growing security concerns, and skyrocketing transportation expenses, we still need to provide high performance, forward thinking educational environments for our children and communities.

The case studies in this webinar illustrate that many of our older school buildings are capable of offering just such an environment with the proper investment. And when considered within a broader context of educational and societal goals, these older facilities may… Show more

Despite shrinking school budgets, growing security concerns, and skyrocketing transportation expenses, we still need to provide high performance, forward thinking educational environments for our children and communities.

The case studies in this webinar illustrate that many of our older school buildings are capable of offering just such an environment with the proper investment. And when considered within a broader context of educational and societal goals, these older facilities may even exceed the performance of a new "green field" school.

Starting with an outline of the challenges faced with renovating an older school in the 21st century, the speaker then moves through the details of specific renovations. Creative solutions to the challenges are showcased.

Learn how the continued contribution of these existing school buildings is not only practical, cost effective and sustainable, but as Vincent Scully, a widely revered architectural historian, once said it is also "a conversation between the generations, carried out across time."

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Beginning on page 58: Creating schools that are the center of our communities is one of the key factors in creating 21st century schools. As an amenity for all ages, performing arts facilities are able to engage the larger community - as audience, performer and producer - and accordingly, good planning and design will help ensure that the school and community both can reap the benefits of their investment in these facilities.

This article builds upon "From Auditorium to Theater"… Show more

Beginning on page 58: Creating schools that are the center of our communities is one of the key factors in creating 21st century schools. As an amenity for all ages, performing arts facilities are able to engage the larger community - as audience, performer and producer - and accordingly, good planning and design will help ensure that the school and community both can reap the benefits of their investment in these facilities.

This article builds upon "From Auditorium to Theater" published in School Planning & Management in August 2012. Show less

Rather than limiting programs to conform to the traditonal auditorium, today's secondary schools are designing performance spaces that can support ever more sophisticated theatrical and music programs that enable young performers to learn within a professional quality setting. This article identifies several design criteria that define great educational performance settings.

This chapter summarizes essential, research based design principles and ideas on the design of elementary schools. The book is the product of a conference held in Santiago, Chile where the IDB gathered innovative educators, school facilities leaders and designers from around the world to inspire the design of better places to learn throughout Central and South America and the Caribbean. As the content is derived from best practices from around the world, many of the ideas are applicable to… Show more

This chapter summarizes essential, research based design principles and ideas on the design of elementary schools. The book is the product of a conference held in Santiago, Chile where the IDB gathered innovative educators, school facilities leaders and designers from around the world to inspire the design of better places to learn throughout Central and South America and the Caribbean. As the content is derived from best practices from around the world, many of the ideas are applicable to the design of schools worldwide. Show less

This article describes how the design team and the school community at Stoddert Elementary School and Community Center collaborated to create an innovative elementary school curriculum that engages the sustainable design attributes of their new LEED-S Gold school into the students' education and empowers the students to teach others about environemental stewardship.

School districts across the country are seizing the opportunity to not only amend their educational standards but to step back and comprehensively reevaluate their educational specifications, the documents that describe how architecture should suport education. This article describes five keys to leading a successful process.

While developing a concept for a large, urban high school we developed six strategies that could be employed to achieve a building that consumes "Net Zero Energy." This article describes these strategies and includes a "Net Zero Checklist" comparing code, LEED and Net Zero criteria.

While budgets that affect educational design and construction continue to bear the brunt of declining revenues, escalating construction costs and skyrocketing transporation expenses, the need for high performance, forward thinking educational environments remains constant. This article desribes how to overcome obsacles and leverage resources in existing school sites and buildings to create schools that are centers of community .

Like great theaters, the best learning environments inspire incredible journeys, both metaphorical and real. Within these settings, teachers and students readily adapt the environment to create the “sets” and choreograph the on-going “play of learning.” This theatrical metaphor has arisen from our research to identify the long-term fixed attributes of the environment—the “stage”—that foster the continuous change and evolution of the space and the activities within the classroom: the “set.”

Twenty to thirty percent of our school buildings is typically allocated to circulation. This article describes how to tranform that space into valuable educational space that supports social/emotional learning.