The Department of Education produces detailed guidelines for designing schools. These address some of the behavioural issues that can be influenced by design. There are specific directives on the design of the amenities to ensure they are not entirely closed, for example, to frustrate attempts at bullying, yet still offer the requisite privacy. However, this relationship between design and behaviour has not been fully explored in the directives. It’s assumed that the aura in schools designed to these guidelines will be optimal for educational activity and the development of pupils. But aura is not planned across the whole school design. 

That means opportunities to address problem behaviour, such as bullying, or sub-optimal behaviour, such as distraction during classes, aren’t always incorporated in the design brief. Design to support optimal behaviours and attitudes, such as kinship, school pride and calm, may be specified or implied in the detail. However, even in the hands of a good design team the design solutions don’t always work as hoped and the school community can be disappointed by the final outcome.

Examples of these frustrations are found in the pursuit of economy and efficiency that promotes double sided internal and dark corridors probably needing constant artificial lighting and ventilation. Similarly, low ceilings in the teaching space economises on the area of external cladding and internal partitions. But the aura from the light, sound and air that are key to the atmospheres needed for learning environments can be compromised. Another typical frustration is the way the school building is secured in its community. Aggressive designed security fencing and prison style gates fail to emanate the aura of a welcoming threshold for the students at the key moment of transition from outside world to school world. 

 

Aura Planning aims to avoid these problems by working back from the Aura people want rather than towards an Aura that’s assumed will result from good design. Aura Planning provides tools for describing what the Teachers, Pupilsusers and school management want for their school. It manages to identify the desired feeling wanted from the built environment for the different situations pupils and staff are in throughout the day - teaching, learning, socialising, participating in sports activities, movement between classes, whole-school gathering etc. The Aura Planning research process helps the different groups involved to share perceptions and to define their needs of the permanent school building design - the different atmospheres or moods the design needs to support at different times of the day.