Architects of learning.
Designers of what comes next.
Education Design International is the world's leading firm dedicated exclusively to the planning and design of innovative learning environments — bringing evidence-based research together with award-winning architecture across 59 countries and six continents.
A firm built on a single conviction — that the spaces where children learn shape who they become.
EDI is not a conventional architecture firm. We are a global team of architects, educators, and researchers united around one purpose: to help school communities translate their educational vision into buildings that actually deliver on it.
Founded by Prakash Nair, AIA — a globally recognized architect, Harvard edX instructor, and recipient of the A4LE MacConnell Award, the highest international honor in school design — EDI was created as an umbrella organization to bring together the very best of school architecture with research drawn from education, neuroscience, environmental science, psychology, and child development.
The premise is simple but uncommon in our industry. Buildings are pedagogy. Every space is also a teaching space. Learning studios teach, and student commons areas teach. The arrangement of light, sightlines, social spaces, and quiet corners teaches every bit as much as the curriculum written on the board. When that environment fights the pedagogy, even the most gifted teachers struggle. When it supports the pedagogy, ordinary learning spaces become extraordinary.
For more than two decades, our team has worked alongside school leaders in 59 countries on six continents — from district schools in the United States to international academies in Dubai, Singapore, and Bangalore — to replace the outdated "cells and bells" model with agile learning communities grounded in 28 evidence-based design patterns.
Our work has been published by Harvard Education Press, recognized with the industry's highest awards, and co-authored with the late Dr. Richard Elmore, Harvard Professor Emeritus. Our Healthy School Assessment Tool (HSAT) and proprietary suite of apps for measuring learning-space quality earned founder Prakash Nair the A4LE Kelly Tanner Award — making EDI the only education architect worldwide with this caliber of measurement infrastructure.
Four ideas that quietly run through every project we touch.
"The most important thing about a school building is not what it looks like, but what it teaches the children who learn inside it."
From educational vision to architectural reality.
Educational Visioning & Master Planning, Architectural Design, Feasibility Studies, and Learning Effectiveness Evaluation — four practices, one discipline. See how each one works and where it fits in your project.