Learning by Design: Visual Practices and Organizational Transformation in Schools

Abstract

Introduction Design of an organization usually takes place through incremental and ongoing processes of re-design,1 however occasionally there are moments when more radical changes and re-framings become possible. From a ”practice-based” perspective, we investigate the crucial roles that visual practices play in these moments of organizational transformation, observing how people manipulate, combine, and use visual representations as part of their discussions about the future of organizations. In particular, we draw attention to the circulation of images and to how icons and exemplars are used in the design of both physical environments and organizational forms. Our empirical study is located within the UK’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) program—a deliberate attempt to transform organizational practices across the publicly funded (state) schools in the UK by re-building the physical environments that house those schools. In this setting, Gil2 notes the tension between the rhetoric of innovation, with strong commitments to design features such as rationalized science labs, open spaces, and community clusters; and the participatory intentions, with a focus on inputs from users, head-teachers, staff, pupils, and other stakeholders. Acting as consultants, architects are central to the negotiation of the tension between innovation and participation and have significant input into the design quality of new schools. Starting from our theoretical interests in design, we approach the data with the research question: what are the roles that visual representations play in organizational transformation? In the next section, we discuss visual practices and design and further articulate the rationale for this research question. The subsequent sections describe the Building Schools for the Future program and the methods used in the study. We then describe two vignettes from practice in this context: 1) the enrollment of the user-brief in an architect-bid; and 2) the presentation to a school entering the program. These vignettes are discussed in the following section, which highlights the circulation of visual representations and the salience of iconic exemplars in the discussion of organizational design and its physical forms. The paper concludes by suggesting directions for further research.