About this book
Good educational design has never stopped at the building line. Learning Ecologies in Architecture takes that observation seriously and asks what it means to design for the networks—social, material, environmental—that make learning possible in the first place.
Two Senegalese projects anchor the volume, both recipients of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture: the Alioune Diop University Teaching and Research Unit by IDOM (2019) and the Kamanar Secondary School by dawoffice (2022). From there the contributors examine how exemplary school buildings shape and are shaped by their contexts through translation, research, innovation and collaboration—and several assess, candidly, where civic engagement in architecture has fallen short of its own claims.
Key features
- Detailed treatment of two Aga Khan Award-winning school projects in Senegal
- Critical assessment of participation and co-design, including their limitations
- New frameworks for thinking about representation and materiality in educational buildings
- Contributions from Christian Benimana, Katherine Dawson, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Anna Heringer, Farhan Karim, Timothy Latim, Lesley Lokko and Ola Uduku
What you'll discover
- Ola Uduku's history of African educational space
- What translation and collaboration require if they are to produce meaningful change
- How material choices carry cultural identity and pedagogical values
- Learning ecologies as networks extending well beyond the classroom wall
About the editor
Deen Sharp is a geographer and urbanist, a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics, and editor of the American University in Cairo Press's urban studies series on the Arab world. He has co-edited Open Gaza: Architectures of Hope (2021) and Reconstruction as Violence (2025).
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Dimensions: 173 × 247 mm
- Pages: 256
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783966800365
- Publisher: ArchiTangle
- Publication date: 15 August 2025
Perfect for
Architects working on schools and universities, educators interested in how space shapes pedagogy, and readers following contemporary practice across the African continent.