Prakash Nair

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Prakash Nair
OccupationSchool architect
Known forAdvocate for open classrooms in schools
Websiteprakashnair.com

Prakash Nair is an American school architect, entrepreneur, writer and public speaker who advocates for open classrooms in schools.

Nair is the founding president of Education Design International (EDI) and a former founding president of Fielding Nair International (FNI), now known as Fielding International. FNI designed or redesigned public and private schools and colleges across the globe.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] Some of those projects won industry design awards for excellence, including the James D. MacConnell Award — the highest award conferred by the Association for Learning Environments, A4LE — for Dr. Phinnize J. Fisher Middle School in Greenville, South Carolina (2015)[9][10] and for the Reece High School in Tasmania, Australia (2003).[11]

Nair has written extensively about school design and authored three books, Blueprint for Tomorrow: Redesigning Schools for Student-Centered Learning, Learning by Design: Live Play Engage Create, and The Language of School Design: Design Patterns for 21st Century Schools. His opinion on educational design issues has been sought by news media[12] and by boards of education.[13][14][15][16][17]

References[]

  1. ^ "Welcome to My Projects". Prakash Nair's Personal Website. Retrieved 8 December 2019.
  2. ^ Gilpin, Donald (March 14, 2018). "Architects Present Preliminary Designs For New 5/6 School, PHS Renovation". Town Topics Newspaper. Witherspoon Media Group. Archived from the original on 6 Aug 2020. Architects from Fielding Nair International and Spiezle Architectural Group presented their preliminary designs for a 5/6 school and the transformation of the Princeton High School (PHS) building at a special meeting of the Princeton Board of Education at the Valley Road administrative building last night.
  3. ^ Greenberg, Thomas (March 1, 2018). "Input sought on school building plan". Cranston Herald. Beacon Communications. Archived from the original on 9 Aug 2020. Cranston’s school department, in its quest to eventually renovate or rebuild schools, which are in some cases almost 100 years old (Briggs Building), has hired an outside company, Fielding Nair International (FNI), to come up with a long-term plan to do so.
  4. ^ Mandell, Josh (December 14, 2017). "Albemarle School Board approves final recommendation for high school expansion, modernization". Charlottesville Tomorrow. Archived from the original on 31 Dec 2019. The Albemarle County School Board on Thursday voted 5-2 to accept a consultant’s recommendation to create one or two new centers dedicated to project-based learning for high school students while modernizing academic spaces at the county’s existing high schools. The total cost of the recommended projects is estimated at $87.9 million. ... Fielding-Nair’s prototype for a larger 90,000-square-foot center would be able to hold 600 students. It would contain an “Innovation Core” — with a café, digital media labs and project studios that could accommodate new specialized academies — and two academic wings featuring differently designed spaces for group work.
  5. ^ Fung, Ginn (1 Dec 2017). "Yew Chung International School's new middle school programme seeks to ease transition from primary to secondary". South China Morning Post. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. Archived from the original on 11 Jan 2020. Designed by the American architectural firm Fielding Nair International, the project started in 2016 and it is scheduled to finish in 2018. ... The school is integrating its Year 7 to Year 9 curriculum into a new Middle School programme, in which “Learning Communities” is the DNA.
  6. ^ "YCIS Beijing's Learning Communities visited by educational specialists". Re:locate magazine. Profile Locations. 12 September 2018. Archived from the original on 31 Dec 2019. Ms Farah Sun, Vice-Principal/Head of Secondary, tells ... Our Learning Communities in ECE, Primary and now Year 1 are at the very forefront of educational innovation. They have been specially designed to meet the requirements of the 21st century – promoting key skills such as collaboration and creativity and preparing students for the future of office spaces and work culture. We partnered with Fielding Nair International (FNI), a leading educational space design firm, to develop these spaces which are entirely bespoke and enable a very diverse range of learning to take place within a single day.
  7. ^ Barquero, Karla (16 March 2018). "Instalaciones de Texas Tech University Costa Rica con 95% de avance". LaRepublica.net (in Spanish). Republica Media Group. Archived from the original on 2 Nov 2020. La conceptualización del campus fue responsabilidad de Fielding Nair International (FNI), grupo global de arquitectos y docentes dedicados a la creación de instalaciones educativas orientadas a mejorar ambientes para el aprendizaje. En el país, las instalaciones fueron diseñadas por Marlo Trejos Arquitectos.
  8. ^ Cowart, Jen (July 31, 2019). "A new way to go': As school year nears, innovative changes taking shape at Eden Park". Warwick Beacon. Beacon Communications. Archived from the original on 31 Dec 2019. Since just before the conclusion of the school year, construction has been proceeding on the intermediate wing of Eden Park Elementary School. According to Ed Collins, chief of facilities management and capital projects for Cranston Public Schools, the Eden Park project was chosen by education planning and architectural design firm Fielding Nair International, or FNI, as one that could serve as the Pathfinder Project for the school district – a model home of sorts, and a blueprint for how Cranston should proceed with improvements to its school buildings.
  9. ^ Cary, Nathaniel (October 27, 2015). "Fisher Middle wins international design award". The Greenville News. Retrieved 2 November 2020. A team assembled to plan the curriculum, design, technology and energy-efficiency. That team included school district representatives, education architecture firm Fielding Nair International and Greenville-based architectural firm McMillan Pazdan Smith. The $30-million school was split into learning communities with flexible spaces for each separate community. Classrooms, or design labs, have movable walls and large windows to let in sunlight. Most have garage-style doors that roll up and down and can open classrooms into larger collaborative spaces.
  10. ^ "2015 James D. MacConnell Award Winner Selected". School Construction News. December 18, 2015. Archived from the original on 31 Dec 2019. Dr. Phinnize J. Fisher Middle School in Greenville was recently honored with the 2015 James D. MacConnell Award, presented at the Association for Learning Environments (A4LE) LearningSCAPES conference in San Diego. ... The team included school district representatives, the design team of Greenville-based McMillan Pazdan Smith and educational programming consultant Fielding Nair International with offices throughout the U.S.
  11. ^ "Past MacConnell Award Winners". Association for Learning Environments. Archived from the original on 6 October 2019. Retrieved 8 December 2019.
  12. ^ Ryu, Jenna (Jul 29, 2020). "Round 2 of online school: How to get your remote learning act together for fall". USA TODAY. Archived from the original on 29 Jul 2020. You don't want your kid to take a class from bed. Prakash Nair, an expert in the design of modern learning spaces, suggests setting up a desk with room for a laptop, writing area and comfortable ergonomic chair. Parents can also help kids decorate their space with their favorite photos and posters.
  13. ^ Newhouse, Kara (Dec 22, 2014). "Classroom makeover: how schools are rethinking what learning looks like". LancasterOnline. Archived from the original on 9 Jul 2018. A 21st-century education, school leaders say, should be "student-centered," meaning teachers bring questions and problems to class, and students are given autonomy to find answers and solutions. In a school like that, "Students seem to want to be there," Nair said. "At the end of the day, students are not looking to go home. There's not a rush to the door."
  14. ^ Yuhas, Daisy (October 2, 2018). "Lessons from a school without walls". The Hechinger Report. Archived from the original on 15 Aug 2020. Prakash Nair, an architect and president of the school-planning firm Fielding Nair International, called Hellerup “an adventure in change.” Nair, who has helped design many open-plan schools, explained that these buildings resemble contemporary working environments, but also enhance student autonomy and teacher collaboration.
  15. ^ "An end to "the dark side" at Porirua College". SchoolNews - New Zealand. Multimedia Publishing Limited. May 27, 2012. Archived from the original on 26 Jan 2020. Before any key decisions were made, the decision-makers attended a Ministry of Education seminar, addressed by Prakash Nair from Seattle-based Fielding Nair Associates, a global leader in educational facilities planning and architectural design.
  16. ^ Bellano, Anthony (Jan 24, 2018). "Town Hall Meetings On Princeton Schools Referendum Set For Feb. 8". Patch Princeton, NJ. Patch Media. Archived from the original on 31 Dec 2019. The meetings will be led by Fielding Nair CEO Prakash Nair and renowned educator Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs. Fielding Nair is one of the architectural firms the school district has contracted with to develop a plan for the referendum. It is considered a global leader in 21st century school design, according to the district. Nair and Hayes Jacobs will discuss 21st century trends in learning and share best practices from around the world in school design.
  17. ^ Lewis, Shawn D. "Architect's vision sparks Hillel school transformation". The Detroit News. Archived from the original on 10 Oct 2016. Nair said the project began in mid-December 2013. He reiterated his philosophy that it's not about architecture, it's about education, and there needs to be a paradigm shift in how educators think about teaching students. "When students are sitting in a classroom for long periods of time, they are limited in the kinds of learning they can do," said Nair. "So rather than give them a rich and authentic experience, we trap them in boxes and seat them in cheap plastic chairs for six hours a day." He added, "Kids should be active, engaged and should be working on things that excite them".

Works[]

  • Nair, Prakash (October 1, 2014). Blueprint for Tomorrow: Redesigning Schools for Student-Centered Learning. Harvard Education Press. ISBN 978-1612507040.
  • Prakash Nair; Roni Zimmer Doctori; Richard F. Elmore (April 15, 2019). Learning by Design: Live Play Engage Create. Education Design Architects. ISBN 978-0976267065.
  • Prakash Nair; Randall Fielding (September 30, 2009). The Language of School Design: Design Patterns for 21st Century Schools (3rd ed.). Designshare, Inc. ISBN 978-0976267003.

External links[]

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