Alexandra Lange
Architecture & design critic

Century-Old Decisions That Impact Children Every Day

Illustration by LA Johnson/NPR.

Great story by Anya Kamenetz with amazing classroom history illustrations, plus a book excerpt on blocks, at NPR.

Alexandra Lange’s interest in school design started in her childhood, when she read Little House on the Prairie, with its indelible depiction of Laura’s one-room schoolhouse in Wisconsin.

Today, she’s an architecture and design critic. Her new book, The Design of Childhood, considers the physical spaces where our children learn and grow: from the living room rug crowded with toys, to the streets, welcoming or dangerous, to classrooms, bright and new or dilapidated.

“I felt like a lot of the contemporary discussion about education was really focused on content,” she tells NPR. “In that really tight space in front of the kid’s face. And as someone interested in design I’m always interested in, what kind of room are you in? How much natural light does it get? What kind of materials is it made of? What kind of a chair are you sitting in?”