Paula Cardellino

• PhD
• Reader in Design and Use of Educational Environments at Universidad ORT Uruguay

Children are entitled to equal access to education; this applies to the classroom setting. The classroom size, shape and layout are commonly taken for granted and little consideration is taken to how this affects the learning experience. This paper argues that the traditional classroom environment does not allow for equal interaction between teache...

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to illuminate the impact that the implementation of the Plan Ceibal imposes on the existing school infrastructure and how the use and upkeep of available facilities might need to be altered and changed to accommodate the new technology. Uruguay is, through the Plan Ceibal, the first country to provide every public...

The Building Schools for the Future programme has been established to ensure that English secondary schools are designed or redesigned to allow for educational transformation. The programme represents the biggest single UK government investment in school buildings for over 50 years. For this reason, it poses a major challenge to those involved in t...

The Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme represents the biggest single UK government investment in school buildings for more than 50 years. A key goal for BSF is to ensure that pupils learn in 21st-century facilities that are designed or redesigned to allow for educational transformation. This represents a major challenge to those involv...

In Western countries, school systems have employed modern school building designs as symbols for progressive and innovative educational change. Yet, how does this design symbolism change teaching and learning? To address this, we examine the challenges and complexities of innovative school design by drawing on case studies of preschool and primary-...

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to protracted school closures around the globe. As students transition back to the classroom, educators have grappled with how to ensure that classroom environments are not only sanitary, but also supportive in aiding children as they transition back to in-person learning. This chapter explores research on the utilizat...

This edited collection is a a reprint of the Special Issue, Learning Environment Design and Use, that was published in Buildings in 2021 and 2022 (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/buildings/special issues/Learning Environment). Amid the burgeoning international interest in the built environment of education, this Special Issue examines t...

Globalment, hi ha aportacions importants en l’àmbit de l’arquitectura escolar amb experiències destacades de vincle entre arquitectura i educació. L’Uruguai té instàncies que mostren relacions entre la resposta arquitectònica dels espais escolars i les tendències d’ensenyament, influïdes pels moviments educacionals. Aquest treball presenta les tend...

Reflecting a global trend of increased school construction, research into the built environment of education has multiplied over the last two decades [...]

Governments have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with social distancing measures, school closures and society lockdowns. The disruption in the functioning of schools have evoked a myriad of emotions among students including the pervasive fear of others and anxiety about a virus that cannot be controlled. As schools reopen, one immediate focus is...

This paper presents a system for participatory appraisal and idea generation by a school’s users to enable interdisciplinary collaboration between educators and architects, producing school designs appropriate to the needs of the school at the time and into the future. Our uses of this system in two contrasting educational settings in England and i...

School building design plays a central role in the creation of learning environments and can therefore support educational change. However, non-architectural elements must also be considered particularly when change is attempted. Material space, pedagogical and organisational practices, staff culture and student milieu are interconnected features i...

p>La arquitectura educacional es un soporte crucial para lograr educación de calidad. Sin embargo, su diseño actual presenta una uniformidad formal basada en condiciones constructivas de hace un siglo con escasas referencias a cambios sociales y particularidades funcionales. Esto es notorio en el espacio de aula donde forma y dimensión son parámetr...

La arquitectura educacional es un soporte crucial para lograr educación de calidad. Sin embargo, su diseño actual presenta una uniformidad formal basada en condiciones constructivas de hace un siglo con escasas referencias a cambios sociales y particularidades funcionales. Esto es notorio en el espacio de aula donde forma y dimensión son parámetros...

This paper presents an intervention that seeks to examine how changes to the spatial organisation of traditional classrooms affect the number of pupils able to interact with the teacher, as well as the quality of this interaction. The experimental design allows for investigation of variations between a ‘traditional’ and new classroom set-ups. This...

We argue that the traditional physical environment is commonly taken for granted and that little consideration has been given to how this affects pupil–teacher interactions. This article presents evidence that certain physical environments do not allowequal visual interaction and, as a result, we derive a set of basic guiding principles that could...

The aim of this work is to characterise the evolution of the classroom design in Uruguay and Costa Rica, to distinguish constants and differences that have influenced architectural development and start outlining its future in Latin America. This work is part of a larger research related to a critical analysis of school classroom implemented in Lat...

This paper presents a strategy for experiential analysis in the traditional classroom environment to determine architectural features to contribute to the understanding and improvement of the pupil – teacher interaction. The methodology includes the analysis of the following topical propositions: visual, proxemic and kinetic in four classroom envir...

RESUMEN El paradigma de educación escolar actual determina que los maestros y alumnos pasen la mayor parte de su día dentro del aula. En este espacio se lleva a cabo la enseñanza y el aprendizaje entendidos como un proceso de interacción entre alumno y maestro. Este aspecto le confiere al aula un papel protagónico entre las estructuras físicas de l...

The Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme represents the biggest single UK government investment in school buildings for more than 50 years. A key goal for BSF is to ensure that pupils learn in 21st-century facilities that are designed or redesigned to allow for educational transformation. This represents a major challenge to those involv...

Innovation continues to be high on the agenda in construction. It is widely considered to be an essential prerequisite of improved performance both for the sector at large and for individual firms. Success stories dominate the parts of the academic literature that rely heavily on the recollections of key individuals. A complementary interpretation...

The UK government are increasingly emphasising the importance of improving the school built environment. Recent studies have demonstrated the influence school architectural design factors have on pupils' achievement. Yet, the procuring mentality continues to be influenced by the legacy of short term decisions based on cost. The long term implicatio...

Over the past decade there has been significant growth in the facilities management (FM) sector resulting in a diverse and highly competitive marketplace. This marketplace engages contractors, in-house teams, suppliers, consultants and professional institutions. Many of these organisations have had to innovate to differentiate themselves from compe...

Purpose This paper seeks to examine the nature of “service innovation” in the facilities management (FM) context. It reviews recent thinking on “service innovation” as distinct from “product innovation”. Applying these contemporary perspectives it describes UK case studies of 11 innovations in different FM organisations. These include both in‐house...