The Library · White Papers

Research briefs on the questions schools are asking now.

Concise, evidence-based papers from our in-house research department on outdoor learning, biophilic design, neuroarchitecture, and student health and wellbeing. All of them were published in collaboration with the Association for Learning Environments (A4LE).

Short enough to read in a sitting. Grounded enough to build on.

Our white papers translate twenty-six years of post-occupancy work into focused arguments a school leader, board, or design team can act on. Each one takes a single question — How should children learn outdoors? What does the brain need from a room? Why did the open-plan office fail, and what does that teach schools? — and answers it from evidence, not fashion. The selection below is drawn from a library of 29+ briefs, several co-published with the Association for Learning Environments.

Cover of the Outdoor Learning white paper by Education Design International

Outdoor Learning: Leave the Classroom Behind.

The case for treating the outdoors as a primary learning environment — not a recess afterthought.

Drawing on post-occupancy evidence from EDI schools across continents, this brief argues that outdoor and threshold spaces measurably improve attention, regulation, and wellbeing — and that most campuses are designed as though the outdoors begins where learning stops. It lays out the patterns that make outdoor learning genuinely usable: shelter, sightlines, materials, and a curriculum that expects to be taught outside.

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The full library

Selected briefs, by question.

A selection from 29+ papers · new briefs published on a rolling basis

Cover of the Biophilic Design white paper

Biophilic Design 2023

The Biophilia Effect

How daylight, greenery, natural materials, and views to nature measurably lower stress and lift attention — and the design moves that bring them into your school.

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Cover of the Neuroarchitecture white paper

Neuroarchitecture 2022

The Learning Brain

What neuroscience tells us about how space shapes memory, focus, and emotional regulation — and why "neutral" environments are rarely neutral for a developing brain.

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Learning Environments 2021

The Design of Learning Environments

How school design can actively promote children's health rather than merely avoid harm — a salutogenic approach distilled into 27 design guidelines and a Healthy School Assessment Tool.

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A4LE⁺

Association for Learning Environments

Several of our papers are written, reviewed, or published in partnership with A4LE — the field's leading professional body for learning-environment design.

Why it matters

Work that can be checked is work worth standing behind.

We publish our briefs openly, name our methods, and put several through the peer community of the Association for Learning Environments. That means our claims about daylight, acoustics, the outdoors, and wellbeing are not house opinions — they are arguments other architects, educators, and researchers can read, apply, and challenge. It is the same standard we hold our buildings to.

A note on our methods: we publish our research protocols, our assessment instruments, and the evidence behind every brief — so the reasoning is as available as the conclusion.

Go deeper

The briefs are where it starts. The books are where it's argued in full.

Explore the books See all our research