Podcasts about danish kurani

Designing learning spaces with the end users -- teachers, students, custodians -- can make a huge difference in people's lives.Today Danish Kurani, the founder of Kurani, an architectural firm, joins host Jon Eckert. Kurani specializes in designing education spaces with empathy and prioritizing the end user. Danish discusses an embarrassing moment in kindergarten that later inspired him to begin creating intentional learning spaces.To learn more, order Jon's book, Just Teaching: Feedback, Engagement, and Well-Being for Each Student.The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership. Each week, we'll talk to catalytic educators who are doing amazing work.Be encouraged.Timestamps:[2:19] - Danish introduces himself.[5:13] - Looking beyond the most economical solutions, Danish designs intentional learning spaces.[7:00] - Danish discusses what inspired him to design learning spaces.[11:23] - Involving the students, teachers and custodians when designing spaces is essential to Danish.[16:00] - It's important to study data to know if the designs have an impact. [21:00] - Danish is most excited about his current projects that help equip students with relevant skills. [25:37] - Jon puts Danish through a lightning round of questions.Find Kurani online: Website - Kurani Connect on Social Media:Baylor MA in School LeadershipBaylor Doctorate in EducationJon Eckert: @eckertjonCenter for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl

Inspiring architect Danish Kurani is not only rethinking the design of our educational institutions, but innovating the entire concept as well. A true disruptor, Danish has a simple mission to build projects with empathy and humanity by abashedly challenging the status quo. Whether he’s spearheading and enriching designs for Google’s Code Next Stem Lab in Oakland, California, Black Girls Code in New York, or the upcoming Riverbend school in India, Danish says he wants to solve society’s greatest problems with socially aware, inclusive, and democratic design solutions. They are using design for good, he says, to build things that make people’s lives better.

Can architecture be life-changing? Architect Danish Kurani has demonstrated to the world that, yes, absolutely, it can. In fact, he has identified the proverbial elephant in the classroom. While the past several decades have seen enormous advances in pedagogical methods, the shape of our learning spaces has remained largely unchanged since the 1950’s. Think: rooms filled with desks in rows all facing front, in an environment directly counter to contemporary progressive learning styles. These outdated school structures often stifle innovation and creativity. Seeking to remedy these constrictions, Kurani links architecture with student-centered learning. His innovative designs help schools empower students and teachers in the learning process, thus helping entire communities prosper. For example, the Literacy Lounge project is underway in Brooklyn to give underserved kids access to “America’s first smart library with sensor technology,” while another project will build an arts center in St. Paul, Minnesota, enabling artistic expression in Black youth in a culturally-relevant environment. Always curious about and devoted to the question of how a space’s design might help solve issues such as poverty, hunger and inequity, in 2011 Kurani left the world of large design firms in which he had worked since graduating from Rice University with a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture. Reflecting on the world’s monumental social problems, he knew that, at the core, the solution lies in education. Kurani took his thoughts to Harvard where he earned his Master’s of Architecture in Urban Design. He subsequently founded Kurani, “a platform for funding life-changing architecture,” using the “School Box” concept. It utilizes the fabrication of “simple, interconnected parts,” to provide “maximum flexibility” which significantly reduces construction cost and time. Perhaps more importantly, the model “has the potential to be more accepting of the latest and best learning models and technologies.” Kurani recalls playing and building with boxes as a child in the back of the dry-cleaning store his parents owned. By age 13, he was designing recreation centers for kids on the streets of Karachi. Upon hearing his mother’s recollections of her school days, he remembers being struck by the vast differences between his own education and hers, which had been “all about facts and memorizing.” Reflecting on these differences alerted Kurani to how much education has changed over the last few decades. In his 2016 TEDx Talk, Kurani asks why, if we’ve had such rapid-fire changes in technology, medicine and other fields since the 1950’s, then why not in school design? “Education,” he says, “is evolving, it’s changing, and while there have been dramatic changes, our school buildings haven’t changed.” These buildings were built for one-directional education, and they were built to last. Though practical, it is these very spaces that keep teachers and students from engaging in 21st century enlightened learning methods such as peer collaboration, real-world problem-solving and student-generated curricula. Kurani says it well: “We are building a state-of-the-art Formula One engine in the body of an old, broken-down Buick, and wondering why the car won’t go.” But how does Kurani achieve what schools have so long been unable to? He explains that, rather than function leading to form, as in traditional architecture, that learning must lead to form. The difference is to go beyond Maslow’s hierarchy wherein we ensure the basics of safety and shelter to include the very best innovative pedagogies that consider students’ needs and desires for their own learning. Moreover, Kurani goes further than learning leading the architectural design, to considering the actual purpose of learning. Do we, as a global society, wish to merely create efficient workers, or do we wish to develop each person’s imagination and creativity so that communities might solve their own social problems and direct their own futures? In 2015, Kurani was invited by Denver Public School’s Imaginarium Lab to help Columbine re-design its school. The teachers’ vision was to personalize education and helps students learn in whatever ways were comfortable to them. In order to figure out the best environment to support different forms of expression, they sketched floor plans and arrangements according to purpose, and they talked to students about what would make them comfortable, and what inspires them. Together, they came up with 15 unique tools and learning games, trained the teachers how to use them, as well as how to get the most out of their spaces. The results were that students became more confident, took more risks, worked together in teams, and the shy and quiet ones began speaking up. In 2018, Kurani created the Manhattan headquarters for Black Girls Code, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching computer science to women of color, ages 7 to 17. Its success is due in part to the acknowledgement of an inherent gap in opportunity for young girls of color. Focusing on gender and racial equality, mental health, community sustainability and education, to date Kurani has built 14 projects with several others currently in development. His most recent 2020 project is Riverbend, a new boarding school Near Chennai, India, where the design of the entire campus is like a village. The concept is based on studies about what makes a village special, and what makes people the happiest. The answer is relationships, thus the design leads students of all ages to cross paths. Happiness first, grades second.

In today’s episode of the Getting Smart Podcast, Emily Liebtag is joined by Danish Kurani, a learning space architect and professor at Stanford and Harvard University. He’s also the Director of Kurani.us, a company that uses deep research on education and architecture to create spaces that improve learning outcomes. They design campuses, buildings, and interiors for K-12, university, and education initiatives for all ages.   Together, Emily and Danish discuss learning spaces that inspire; how the learning model makes a difference on the space (and vice versa); and the good, the bad, and the ugly of learning spaces. Danish also shares what he feels is important in a learning space and why, what creates a learning space failure, and how the process of design needs to really include the people who will be using the space vs. just the outcomes you want that space to elicit.   Danish sheds light on what he’s seen across the country (and around the world!) in terms of how schools are transforming their spaces so that they’re more conducive to the type of learning they want to see from students.   Key Takeaways: [:15] About today’s episode. [:48] Emily welcomes Danish to the podcast. [1:07] Danish introduces himself and talks about his background in education. [3:00] Danish sheds some light on how education became a part of his work. [5:33] Danish describes the good vs. the bad in learning spaces, giving several examples. [17:38] Learning spaces — they’re not just about the furniture (and look and feel) but also incorporating who the students are. [20:43] Danish elaborates on how he feels the learning model makes a difference on the space and vice versa. [24:45] Danish talks about some learning space failures. [27:33] Some aspects of great learning spaces that Danish wants to see more of. [31:03] Where to find Danish and his work online.   Mentioned in This Episode: Danish Kurani (LinkedIn) Danish on Twitter @Kurani_Us and @DanishKurani Kurani.us Stanford University Harvard University “TEDx — Danish Kurani — Designing Places for Learning” (Video)Code Next Lab Khan Lab School   Want to learn More about Learning Spaces? Check out, “Three ways to design better classrooms and learning spaces,” a blog Danish published with the team on GettingSmart.com.   Get Involved: Check out the blog at GettingSmart.com. Find the Getting Smart Podcast on iTunes, leave a review and subscribe.   Is There Somebody You’ve Been Wanting to Learn From or a Topic You’d Like Covered? To get in contact: Email Editor@GettingSmart.com and include ‘Podcast’ in the subject line. The Getting Smart team will be sure to add them to their list!

According to a recent article school and prison design are historically linked, and I was interested in having a conversation with Danish Kurani about this and how we alter our educational spaces for a new reality. I've appreciated a number of conversations with Danish over the years as he has sparked a new energy for us to "cultivate happiness", "re-village" our schools, consider educator "comfort" and well-being, and consider "people-centric design". Danish Kurani is Chief Designer at Kurani, Instructor at Harvard, Lecturer at Stanford, and is an American architect building environments to improve the human condition. You can find more information about Danish's projects at www.kurani.us.  

“Flexible.” It’s a word that often pops up in conversations about redesigning learning environments, relating to choices in furniture or movable walls. But according to Danish Kurani, redesigning 21st century classrooms goes much deeper than merely achieving flexibility—it involves going all the way back to considering Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Kurani is a licensed architect who focuses his work on learning spaces, and currently teaches a “Learning Environments for Tomorrow” course at the Harvard Graduate School of Education every year. Having worked on locations ranging from Denver’s Columbine Elementary to SELNY, a psychotherapy clinic and adult learning center in New York, Kurani has seen and used a variety of tactics to implement learning design in pursuit of specific goals. This week, EdSurge sat down with him to hear about the most common design constraints, architecture gone wrong, and the work his firm recently conducted on the Code Next Lab in Oakland.