Education projects get judged on a longer timeline than almost any other category on this site. A restaurant can refresh its look in a year; a school building has to serve students, in some cases, for decades, under constant daily use from people who were not consulted on the design and will not treat the space gently.
Safety and durability are not optional extras
Rounded corners, non-toxic and low-VOC materials, slip-resistant flooring, clear sightlines for supervision, and finishes that can survive thousands of hours of daily use by children or young adults are not upgrades in a school project, they are the baseline. Budget and design decisions that would be reasonable shortcuts in an office or retail project are not appropriate here, and a design partner who has not worked in education before may not know where those lines sit.
Design around the academic calendar
Unlike most commercial fit-outs, school and university construction usually cannot simply follow the fastest possible schedule. Major works are typically planned around summer and other academic breaks to avoid disrupting classes, which means the design and permitting phase often needs to be well ahead of the actual construction window, not running in parallel with it. Phased handover, so that part of a building can open while another part is still under construction, is common on larger campus projects for the same reason.
Acoustics and daylight affect learning outcomes, not just comfort
A lecture hall, a collaborative studio and a library reading room have almost opposite acoustic needs, and getting this wrong has a real cost: research on learning environments consistently links poor acoustics and inadequate daylight to reduced concentration and performance, not just discomfort. Different learning spaces within the same building need to be treated as genuinely different design problems, not variations on one classroom template.
Every curriculum has its own space requirements
An IB or Cambridge international program, a STEM-focused curriculum, and a maker-space or innovation-lab model each carry their own specific space and equipment requirements. Our work with RMIT University’s Ho Chi Minh City campus, including a dedicated maker and innovation space, has meant designing for exactly this kind of program-specific brief rather than a generic classroom, and that experience carries directly into how we plan any new education project.