Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment

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This issue looks at sustainability and reports on how young people can learn about it through the spaces and places around them.

A teacher's guide to using the local built environment at KS 3 and 4 art and design.

Green day is a one-day event for schools about climate change, sustainability and the built environment. It is a fun and flexible way to integrate these themes into lessons and schoolwide activities and aims to make schools more sustainable in the long term. It is promoted by CABE, as part of its education work. This activity kit provides ideas, activities and resources for holding a green day in your school, making it a more sustainable place in which to work, play and learn.

When it comes to understanding architecture and the built environment, there is no substitute for first-hand experience. How places work offers thousands of school children the opportunity to discover the excitement of new buildings and spaces for themselves, guided by some of the UK’s most knowledgeable and passionate advocates for good design. This guide offers teachers advice and ideas for making visits stimulating and informative.

The built environment is all around us, made up of the cities, towns and villages in which we live and work. These buildings, and the spaces between them, form a rich learning resource, full of clues about our past and challenges for the future. Taking as its subject a single street this book is intended to promote visual awareness and understanding of the built environment at key stage 2. Using the activities described, pupils will learn to identify and interpret the built environment that they see every day, by looking closely and analysing their experiences.

A teacher's guide to exploring the key concept of place.

How can we judge the design quality of spaces and places? Which places work? provides teachers at key stage 3 and 4 with a unique set of resources designed to address this complex question.