Andrew Wickham’s 2017 article for LPA begins with a visit to a prominent Bay Area technology company, where he noticed extensive employee amenities and green space. That observation raises a useful design question for schools—but the accessible excerpt does not identify the article’s complete recommendations. The practical answer is to treat technology workplaces as prompts for investigation, then translate any useful idea against student learning, safeguarding, inclusion, maintenance and local constraints rather than importing an office model unchanged.
What the 2017 article actually establishes
Educational design taking lessons from tech firms was written by Andrew Wickham and listed in LPA’s archives on April 7, 2017. The opening preserved in an ASID Eye on Design syndication describes Wickham visiting his brother at a high-profile technology firm in the Bay Area. He noticed a variety of amenities and green space provided for employees, and that experience prompted him to investigate whether technology-industry workplace design could inform educational environments.
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That is the verified premise. The available excerpt does not provide a complete list of spaces, products, case studies, measurements or recommendations from the rest of the article. It also contains no attributable statistics or full quotation suitable for use as evidence. Any detailed programme described below is therefore a decision framework for school projects, not a claim about what Wickham ultimately prescribed.
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A technology office and a school may both need collaboration, concentration, informal gathering and access to outdoor space, but their users and duties differ. Employees generally control their schedules and can choose where to work. Students move through supervised timetables, have different physical and developmental needs, and require spaces that support teaching, safeguarding and accessible participation. A workplace can tolerate a degree of personal choice that would create supervision or security problems in a school.
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Schools also serve a wider public and operate under education, building, fire, accessibility, safeguarding and procurement requirements. A lounge that works for an adult team could become an unsupervised corner, a circulation obstruction or an inequitable privilege when placed in a school. The useful transfer is not a sofa, café or games room by itself; it is the underlying question: what conditions help people do their work well, and how can those conditions be made educationally purposeful?
Start with needs, not fashionable features
Before drawing a workplace-inspired space, the project team should document the problem it is trying to solve. Include pupils, teachers, support staff, facilities personnel, families and relevant safeguarding or accessibility leads. Ask each group what currently prevents learning, collaboration, quiet work, belonging or safe movement.
- Learning activity: Which activities need conversation, making, performance, silence, movement or direct instruction?
- Age and ability: How will younger pupils, neurodivergent pupils, disabled users and students with medical needs use the space?
- Supervision: Where must staff see and hear pupils, and where are controlled-access boundaries required?
- Operations: Who opens, cleans, repairs, resets and books each area, and when can those tasks occur?
- Equity: Can every class and user group access the benefit, or does the design favour a small programme or club?
- Evidence: What baseline observation, attendance record, feedback or performance measure will show whether the change helped?
This process prevents an amenity from becoming a decorative object. It also gives the client a defensible reason to retain, modify or reject a feature when budget, planning or maintenance reviews begin.
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The following translation table separates a broad workplace idea from the school function that might justify it. The functions are prompts for briefing and testing; they are not features reported in Wickham’s accessible excerpt.
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| Workplace idea | Possible educational function | Questions to resolve |
|---|---|---|
| Varied settings | Offer pupils and teachers a mix of instruction, small-group, individual and practical-learning settings. | Can staff supervise all settings? Are acoustics, furniture and power suitable for the activity? |
| Informal gathering areas | Support tutoring, peer discussion, pastoral meetings or project work outside a formal classroom. | How are privacy, noise control, bookings and safeguarding handled? |
| Green space | Provide outdoor learning, restoration, biodiversity, movement or quiet reflection. | Who can use it, in which weather, with what boundaries, drainage, planting and maintenance? |
| Amenities near work areas | Place water, storage, display, preparation or support resources where they reduce unnecessary travel. | Does proximity improve learning, or create congestion, hygiene issues or unequal access? |
| Flexible furniture | Allow a room to shift between teaching, collaboration, performance and independent work. | Can users move it safely, store it quickly and reset the room without losing teaching time? |
Use green space as part of the learning environment
Green space is the only specific environmental feature named in the accessible opening, so it deserves a careful rather than aspirational treatment. A school landscape can include a planted courtyard, an outdoor classroom, a shaded seating area, a habitat zone, a garden or simply a route with trees and planting. The correct choice depends on curriculum, site, climate, security and maintenance capacity.
Define the activity
Write the intended use before selecting a landscape element. A science team may need durable observation points and water access; an early-years class may need secure, legible zones; a pastoral programme may need a calm place within staff sightlines. “More greenery” is not an operating brief.
Design for year-round access
Provide firm, step-free routes where required, shade and shelter, seating at different heights, weather-resistant surfaces and storage for teaching materials. Check glare, heat, mud, drainage and winter darkness. If the area is unusable for much of the year, it should not be counted as the project’s main learning accommodation.
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Plan supervision and safeguarding
Maintain clear sightlines from supervised positions, control entry points and avoid planting or structures that create hidden pockets. Establish rules for class use, unstructured time, visitors and emergency access before construction. The landscape architect, safeguarding lead and facilities team should review the same plan, not separate versions.
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Budget the living system
Planting has recurring costs: irrigation, replacement, pruning, litter removal, pest management and surface repairs. Assign ownership, a seasonal task schedule and a replacement budget. A smaller landscape that a school can maintain is more educationally valuable than a larger installation that deteriorates and is closed.
Make amenities support teaching rather than consumption
The phrase “variety of amenities” does not identify which amenities the article discussed. For a school brief, classify every proposed amenity by the educational or operational need it serves. A hydration point, equipment store, kitchenette for food technology, charging provision or staff workroom may be justified when its location and specification remove a real barrier. A feature that exists only because it resembles a technology campus needs stronger evidence.
- Access: Set a timetable or booking rule that gives classes, clubs and support services predictable use.
- Inclusion: Check reach ranges, seating, sensory load, language access and mobility routes.
- Safeguarding: Define supervision, visitor control, data privacy and cleaning responsibilities.
- Durability: Specify finishes, fixtures and replacement parts for school-level intensity, not office showroom appearance.
- Learning link: State the lesson, routine or student service that the amenity enables.
Separating staff wellbeing facilities from pupil learning amenities is also important. Both may be worthwhile, but they have different users, access rules, funding arguments and success measures. Combining them in one vague “amenities” allowance makes later decisions harder.
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Technology workplaces often experiment with settings rather than one fixed desk type. A school can explore a comparable range while preserving classroom identity and teacher control.
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Focused learning
Provide acoustically controlled places for reading, assessment, one-to-one support and work that requires sustained attention. Avoid locating these areas beside loud circulation routes or social hubs. Include visual access for supervision without forcing every learner into a fully exposed position.
Collaboration and making
Use robust tables, writable surfaces, display capacity, power and nearby storage. Plan the movement of materials and the reset between groups. If a room changes layout daily, the storage and reset time are part of its capacity calculation.
Connection and presentation
Informal steps, forums or shared tables can support assemblies, exhibitions and peer explanation, but they need safe edges, accessible routes, appropriate acoustics and a clear relationship to teaching spaces. A visually impressive stair is not automatically a usable learning forum.
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Restoration and pastoral support
Quiet rooms and calm outdoor areas can help pupils regulate, meet a trusted adult or return to learning. Their purpose, staffing and referral process must be explicit; otherwise they risk becoming unsupervised holding spaces or inaccessible privileges.
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A practical process for a workplace-informed school project
- Frame the brief. State the educational outcomes, users, site constraints, statutory requirements and five-year operating assumptions.
- Map current behaviour. Observe arrival, transitions, teaching, breaks, storage, outdoor use and points of conflict. Record time, location and user group rather than relying on general impressions.
- Generate options. Test several levels of intervention—from furniture and scheduling to refurbishment, landscape or a new building—against the same needs.
- Prototype safely. Use temporary layouts, sample furniture, taped routes or a limited outdoor trial. Gather feedback from the people who will clean, supervise and teach there.
- Cost whole life. Include construction, furniture, technology, planting, utilities, cleaning, inspections, replacement and staff training.
- Review compliance. Have the design checked for accessibility, fire strategy, acoustics, safeguarding, security, ventilation, hygiene and local planning requirements.
- Set an evaluation plan. Record baseline conditions, define a small number of indicators and schedule reviews after occupation.
- Adapt after use. Treat post-occupancy changes—furniture moves, planting adjustments, signage or booking rules—as normal stewardship, not project failure.
Measure whether the design helped
A school should decide in advance what improvement would look like. Useful measures can include the number of classes using an outdoor area for planned learning, time lost during room resets, reported noise disruption, accessibility issues, equipment retrieval time, attendance at a support space, or teacher and pupil feedback collected through a consistent survey. Pair counts with observation: a heavily booked room may still be unsuitable if users cannot hear, see or move safely.
Disaggregate feedback by age, disability, language, timetable and user group. A design that improves average satisfaction while excluding a smaller group has not met an inclusive brief. Review results at an agreed interval, document changes and identify who has authority to act.
Common mistakes when borrowing from technology firms
- Copying appearance: Exposed services, bright furniture or a café-like space do not establish a learning benefit.
- Confusing choice with flexibility: Multiple settings require supervision, storage, acoustics and operating rules.
- Underfunding maintenance: Green space and movable furniture need recurring labour and replacement budgets.
- Ignoring the timetable: A room that looks flexible but takes ten minutes to reset may reduce usable teaching time.
- Designing for a showcase: A high-profile workplace may have resources, staffing and security conditions that a school does not.
- Assuming one user model: Pupils, teachers, families, cleaners and visitors experience the same space differently.
- Skipping evaluation: Without a baseline and review date, enthusiasm can be mistaken for impact.
How to use Wickham’s article responsibly
The article is best treated as a 2017 prompt to examine the relationship between workplace design and educational design. LPA’s author archive and outdoor-educational-spaces archive confirm the author and April 7, 2017 date; the available ASID Eye on Design excerpt confirms the Bay Area workplace visit and its references to amenities and green space. Those sources do not establish the article’s full design programme.
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For a specification, planning report or academic citation, obtain the complete text before attributing a particular classroom arrangement, material, statistic or recommendation to Wickham. Until then, describe the verified opening accurately and identify later design decisions as the project team’s own analysis. That distinction protects the historical record and produces a stronger school brief.
The decision test
Adopt a workplace-inspired idea only when the team can answer four questions in writing: what educational or operational problem does it solve; who can use it and under what supervision; what will it cost to run and renew; and how will the school know whether it worked? If those answers are unclear, retain the idea as a hypothesis, prototype it at low cost or remove it from the brief. The enduring lesson is not that schools should resemble technology campuses, but that design should be examined through the daily experience of the people the building is meant to serve.
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