How can we design learning environments in a world of constant access to knowledge?

Knowledge: From Scarcity to Abundance

For centuries, educational institutions served as the primary gateways to knowledge. Knowledge was mainly transmitted by a teacher to students whose role was, above all, to receive and assimilate information. This was reflected in traditional lecture-based teaching, with classrooms where rows of stationary students faced a teacher positioned on a raised platform. The advent of the internet marked the first wave of a learning revolution. It opened unprecedented access to a vast amount of knowledge through specialized websites, professional networks, MOOCs, and a multitude of digital platforms. Users could access knowledge from around the world from the comfort of their desks.

From knowledge accessible everywhere, we then moved to knowledge accessible at all times with the rise of smartphones: this was the second wave. No longer confined to a desk to consult information, users now have it permanently at their fingertips. Smartphones not only provided access to an immense database of information, they also fueled the rise of social media. As a result, exchanges, debates, and knowledge sharing are no longer limited to the classroom but continue continuously across interconnected digital spaces.

A third major transformation is now taking shape through the rise of artificial intelligence. It has further shortened the time between a question and an answer. While the internet and smartphones made knowledge available everywhere and at all times, AI makes it conversational and instantly actionable. It enables immediate access to summaries, explanations, and resources tailored to an individual's level, profoundly changing the way knowledge is acquired.

New Challenges for Educational Spaces

In a context where knowledge is abundant and accessible everywhere at all times, the value of a learning environment no longer lies solely in access to content. In an era shaped by notifications, constant information flows, and highly engaging digital content, one of the primary challenges for learning spaces is their ability to create conditions that foster concentration, reflection, and engagement. Added to this is the need to identify which information is relevant, as users increasingly experience a form of cognitive fatigue linked to information overload. As a result, both pedagogy and learning environments are expected to help people select, understand, question, verify, cross-reference, and make use of information.

Another challenge lies in the ability of educational institutions to accommodate diverse audiences. The idea of studying for a few years before entering the workforce is becoming less and less suited to today’s rapidly changing world. Skills evolve more quickly, and individuals are increasingly required to learn throughout their lives, whether as part of a career change or to pursue personal interests. As a result, campuses, schools, and universities are evolving toward open infrastructures capable of supporting a wide variety of uses, schedules, and user profiles.

Teaching Methods Are Being Reinvented

In this context, teaching methods have already begun to evolve. The challenges surrounding learning have led it to become a collective process rather than content that is simply transmitted. Learners experiment, test, collaborate, challenge one another’s perspectives, and produce knowledge themselves. This is reflected in project-based approaches, collaborative workshops, hands-on experimentation, flipped classrooms, and other forms of active and interdisciplinary learning.

One might assume that the ubiquity of digital tools diminishes the importance of physical spaces. Yet the opposite is true. The more knowledge becomes dematerialized, the more strategic the physical environment becomes. Spontaneous interactions, debate, collective stimulation, hands-on experimentation, mentoring, and interdisciplinary encounters are forms of learning that digital technologies cannot replace. In fact, they extend and build upon the knowledge resources that digital tools provide by putting them into practice and challenging them.

As a result, physical places of learning are increasingly expected to serve as spaces for connection, experience, and collective creation. While knowledge can now be accessed anywhere, learning remains profoundly spatial, collaborative, and experiential.

How Can Architecture Support These Transformations?

Hybridization

To respond to these profound changes, learning environments are becoming increasingly hybrid. Within a single space, users must be able to study, experiment, create, present, meet, reflect, and collaborate. The fit-out project for the Aivancity School in Villejuif was designed to accommodate a variety of teaching methods. Modular furniture can be reconfigured according to needs and projects, allowing users to appropriate the space in different ways. Variations in table heights and orientations naturally encourage the formation of small working groups. The school features a circular arena with a removable central lectern, supporting dynamic and flexible presentations. It is complemented by meeting rooms and interactive spaces that provide an ideal setting for collaborative projects, hackathons, and brainstorming sessions. At the same time, acoustic pods and alcoves offer quieter, more private spaces for students who wish to study in a calm environment.

Flexibility

New forms of teaching, which are increasingly adaptable and evolving, require more flexible spaces. To support these ongoing transformations and those yet to come, buildings must be capable of quickly adapting to new uses. This is the case with the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes campus of BUILDERS Engineering School in Vaulx-en-Velin. The project features a post-and-beam structural system, allowing the building to be easily modified over time. The same principle applies to the interior spaces, which can be readily reconfigured to accommodate changing needs. The project also incorporates the possibility of future extensions, thanks to prefabricated and demountable façade panels. The building brings together four entities: education, administration, research, and student life. Its central atrium and internal street connect and unify these different functions. Should uses evolve in the future, this central hub will continue to serve as a place for interaction, encounters, and synergies between the various areas.

The Collective Dimension

As knowledge is increasingly built through exchange and the confrontation of perspectives, learning environments must encourage interactions between learners, educators, researchers, and professionals. The challenge is to create settings that support both formal collaboration and serendipitous encounters, which are often sources of innovation and learning. This idea is illustrated by the project of CentraleSupélec, led by Atelier Kempe Thill (lead architect), Patriarche, and Autumn (general contractor). This renovation project is based on the transformation of the gymnasium into a large central hall, providing spaces for breaks, work, dining, and social interaction. Shared spaces extend progressively from the hall, the building’s busiest central area, into each wing. This core volume embodies a true “capable space”, able to accommodate a wide range of uses, foster encounters, and create opportunities for new forms of exchange.

Autonomy

Learning pathways are becoming increasingly individualized, with each person progressing according to their own needs, pace, and objectives. Learning environments must therefore offer a variety of atmospheres and configurations that support focused work, exploration, research, and self-directed learning. The Lyon campus of Burgundy School of Business perfectly illustrates this idea. The educational environment unfolds through a multitude of living and learning spaces. These are organized around a central street featuring micro-architectures dedicated to individual and collaborative work. Agora, auditorium, acoustic booths, collaborative and creative workspaces, incubation areas... The project includes a wide range of typologies that offer unique and innovative ways of learning. Beyond the spaces specifically designed for work, the project is animated by informal learning environments. Corridors, vertical circulation areas, patios, terraces, cafés, entrance halls, lounges, and outdoor spaces all have the potential to become places of learning, which students can appropriate according to their needs and preferences.

Well-being

The quality of the environment directly influences learning capacity, attention, and engagement. As teaching methods diversify and learning rhythms become increasingly individualized, well-being is no longer seen as a simple program enhancement but as a pedagogical lever in its own right. The new campus of NEOMA Business School in Reims, for which Patriarche is working alongside Henning Larsen as executive architect, illustrates this approach. Designed around the health and well-being of students, the project places natural light, views of the landscape, and outdoor spaces at its core. Its campus heart, organized around a large timber structure opening onto the canal, brings together the main student living spaces and extends into wide accessible terraces. The central garden, a true green lung of the project, provides spaces for relaxation, outdoor study, and events.

Experimentation

When information is accessible everywhere, the value of a learning environment increasingly lies in what cannot be experienced alone behind a screen: handling, testing, making, prototyping, and putting knowledge into practice. Educational spaces must therefore support active forms of learning, where knowledge is built as much through experience as through instruction. This approach can be seen on the Paris-Saclay campus of AgroParisTech. Its research buildings were designed around large, flexible, and adaptable floorplates, allowing spaces to continuously evolve in response to scientific needs. Laboratories, meeting rooms, social spaces, and informal gathering areas create an environment designed to support the different phases of research: individual focus, collaborative work, the exchange of perspectives, and intellectual stimulation. In this way, architecture becomes a catalyst for experimentation, encouraging encounters, interdisciplinary connections, and the collective production of knowledge.

Openness

Educational environments no longer operate as isolated spaces but as ecosystems connected to their surrounding communities. Their role is to foster exchanges with businesses, cultural organizations, research institutions, and civil society in order to multiply learning opportunities and root knowledge in real-world situations. Openness thus becomes a way to break down disciplinary silos, bring education and the professional world closer together, and accelerate the circulation of knowledge. The SULLY Santenov project in Dijon was specifically conceived as a place of convergence between higher education, research, entrepreneurship, and the healthcare industry. Students, researchers, startups, companies, and local stakeholders share the same working environment. The building therefore accommodates several higher education institutions as well as shared workspaces operated by Walter Science and occupied by science-driven companies. More than just a building, it forms a true innovation ecosystem where the boundaries between learning, entrepreneurship, experimentation, and collaboration become increasingly fluid.

Credits : ©Nicolas Grosmond, ©Romuald Nicolas, ©FOCUSKPTURE