How Do We Transform the Future of Learning?

Lead Polen Gökbuget cites a common misconception that ​“education can be transformed through a checklist: redesign the curriculum, adopt new tech, roll out training.” Education is a living, breathing ecosystem, and unless elements like culture, relationships, leadership, and shared purpose are considered and nurtured, Gökbuget argues that change remains surface level. She encourages clients to ​“listen deeply, move with integrity, and embrace education as an act of societal stewardship.” 

Gehl partner Blaine Merker also sees the consequences of simplistic problem-solving in clients solely focused on spatial design. ​“We need good buildings and spaces, but we have to understand the way people behave and experience their environment to get there,” he says. Gehl’s approach is to gather information about behavior, culture, and perception to help unlock what to design for.

Stanford University’s Doerr School, a climate and sustainability school — and the first school Stanford has established in 70 years — is just one example of how complex Gehl’s projects can be. Informed by almost a hundred interviews, walk-arounds, and focus groups with faculty, students, and staff, Gehl’s work sits at the intersection of space design, organizational transformation, campus anthropology, and climate. 

Understand the Point of View

Students, faculty, administrators, alumni, and donors all have different expectations and demands, and the goals of specific departments or schools within a single university also need to be considered. Digital design studio Upstatement has a long history of managing competing priorities in its rebranding, repositioning, and digital work for elite schools like Harvard, Vanderbilt, and MIT.

“Clients that prioritize bold decision-making through their own client organization are the ones that succeed,” says Chief Design Officer Scott Dasse. ​“If you invite everyone into the room, you’re going to end up with something that’s agreeable, not impactful.” For universities with centralized cultures, it’s easier to realize big creative changes; more decentralized organizations can often struggle. 

Upstatement’s approach to managing stakeholders is to listen, understand, and then simplify. To redesign Northeastern’s website, it ended up focusing on two audiences: those with content affinity and those with brand affinity. ​“The simplification of that complex audience matrix is always part of our formula because it’s really hard to act on an eight-tier matrix,” adds Dasse. 

Experience and an understanding of different audiences allow Dasse, senior design director and principal Nathan Hass, and senior design director Holly Copeland to weigh criteria. For example, an audience of prospective students is usually more valuable for a school website than current students who are already onboard and hearing from internal sources and social accounts.

It’s also important to understand how stakeholder timelines might affect a point of view. In its current work with Princeton managing the impact of campus construction projects, Gehl has had to balance the student perspective (projects that take a decade to complete may encompass an entire college experience) with administrators who might see the work as a temporary inconvenience.

“It’s about seeing things from each stakeholder’s subjective POV. That’s what makes it easier to balance,” says Merker. ​“It’s easy to disregard a stakeholder if you don’t have the information on their experience.”

Look Inward for Transformation

Climate change, a volatile global economy, changing technology and the rise of AI — any one of these generation-defining challenges is enough to upend an industry. It’s no surprise that education clients are currently grappling with questions of identity. 

ATÖLYE concentrates on the inner landscape of education, designing systems with integrity at their core that honor cultural context, regenerate communities, and prepare learners with wisdom and adaptability. Says Gökbuget, ​“Education must become a space where young people build not only skills but resilience, meaning, and a sense of responsibility to the whole.” The question of ​“How do we keep up?” becomes ​“How do we stay rooted while evolving?”

Gehl has been thinking deeply about how social isolation, exacerbated by technology and social media, is showing up in student bodies and on campuses. ​“This is about preparing young people to operate successfully in the public sphere, to feel supported, respected, and safe, and capable of interacting with ideas they disagree with,” says Meker. This dynamic is key to a Gehl framework that both bridges social differences and bonds affinity groups. 

Brand Building as a Key Differentiator

Higher education, especially in the U.S., is becoming more competitive. With a significant drop in applicants expected based on the falling rate of high school graduates, standing out is more important than ever. But that means more than offering a better meal plan; a focus on brand is where Upstatement sees things moving.

In the past five years, Upstatement has heard clients talk about a loss of faith in institutions and the need to revisit higher education’s value proposition. ​“There’s an appetite for true change, like deep, strategic change, in the way people operate,” says Dasse. 

Two of its clients, Northeastern and Vanderbilt, have grappled with this in their own ways. Northeastern turned to Upstatement to help it market its existing education program, while Vanderbilt, which engaged Upstatement to unify its design system, refocused its programming, buildings, and campus around a new core concept of collaboration, a deeper level of change. 

Hass has also had clients wary of fundamental brand moves. When working with one major, iconic institution, he found his team had more authority to push the boundaries when it came to redesigning the website versus working on brand positioning or logo changes. ​“Especially in higher ed, there is so much politics and so many feelings tied up in brand,” he acknowledges. 

Factor in Flexibility

A fast-moving world demands thinking that questions the status quo. Sometimes, that comes in the form of campus design. 

Purpose-built, monofunctional university facilities, such as lecture or dining halls, can lock an institution into operating for that specific moment in time. Flexibility ​“forces you to think about how spaces and buildings can do multiple things at once or throughout the day or week,” says Merker, who has seen clients embrace this expanded thinking.

Merker has seen Gehl’s clients move away from old siloes and towards an ​“interconnected ecosystem.” This new understanding of how space and work interact leaves room for serendipity and community building.

For all its immense challenges, working in the education space can ultimately be incredibly uplifting. ​“It’s where we think about the future in the form of people and who they’re becoming,” says Merker. ​“We often allow for and expect a gentler and kinder environment, and that’s inspiring.”