A Framework for Implementing Sustainable Design Strategies in Romanian School Buildings Projects

Abstract

All debates on the Romanian educational system should consider the need to create a sustainable built environment. However, as long as educating our younger generations is one of society’s core purposes, building new schools remains one of our essential challenges. Over 80% of the existing Romanian school buildings were built before 1970. Box type buildings, designed to restrain learning experiences to indoor environments hardly meet the needs of today’s generations, already compromising the needs of future ones. Almost every rehabilitation or extension project of a school building aims minimal safety or comfort, while restricting to a minimal budget. Schools’ users are completely absent from any dialogue with the design teams and educational architecture practice in Romania is not grounded on research. Research is a dynamic phenomenon, providing complex and sometimes contradictory data, which encourages the continuous testing of new ideas. Beside healthcare, education is the most important architectural program that should be approached through Evidence-based Design (EBD). This paper emphasizes the necessity of adapting our building legislation based on systematic Post-Occupancy Evaluations (POE). The primary objective is creating evidence: what works, what should be avoided, what and how could be improved in planning and designing sustainable educational facilities. One of the main results consists in proposing a framework for implementing the POE method in Romanian schools. School should not be a capsule where education takes place. Our public school buildings should transform into community landmarks, which can provide significant learning experiences and promote sustainable ways of understanding education.