Architecture as Educator for Sustainable Grown-Upness: An ESD Performance Framework for School Habitats

Physical environments influence how children develop. Therefore, they matter in education. Relating school habitats to the whole school approach to education for sustainable development (ESD) shows that, beyond their ecological performance, school habitats also deliver an educational performance through their own ‘hidden’ curriculum and pedagogy. Yet, the educational role of school habitats hardly gains attention in global research and action on ESD. This chapter departs from ESD as a concept in education that contributes to ‘sustainable grown-upness’, understood as the development of a mature relationship with our own desires and forces from ‘elsewhere’. Building on this interpretation, this chapter presents a framework revealing educational performance characteristics of school habitats, which describe educational performances. The framework builds on the ‘heart, head and hands’ model and comprises three areas for the educational performance of school habitats: (1) engage the heart, (2) exemplify the head and (3) enable the hands.