How can schools, classrooms, and other educational spaces be best designed to support deep and life-long learning?
How can architects, educators, and designers create places for learning that incorporate the latest research and innovative practices from around the globe?
Overview
Founded in 2007 at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and Graduate
School of Design, the Learning Environments for Tomorrow (LEFT) Institute
convenes individual practitioners and project teams in an interactive and
intensive one-and-a-half -day event in which participants learn from leading
experts and apply lessons to their active projects – ranging from modest
redesigns of small settings, to large school building renovations, to ambitious
new construction and campus planning projects.
Who: LEFT is explicitly designed to engage and support individuals and
teams of architects, educators, designers, educational planners, and
leaders involved in active design or redesign projects.
What: LEFT 2026 offers a unique opportunity for you and your team to
receive research-based ideas, expert feedback, and practical support.
Why LEFT: LEFT examines how contemporary forces – such as
generative technologies, shifting demographics, and climate change —
are shaping how and where learning happens. Designing effective
schools and other learning places amidst such shifts requires a clear
participatory process.
Inspired by examples and research, teams will develop answers to
these questions with expert support from LEFT faculty and develop the
tools to effectively continue this exploration with their communities
back home.
Where: Importantly, LEFT also engages in, and draws wisdom from, the
very locations in which it convenes. LEFT 2026 will be held at the Eliot
School, an innovative Boston Public School in the historic North End
district of Boston. This multi-site, urban school will also serve as a site to
inspire teams to consider what might be possible in their own contexts.
In the years ahead LEFT will be convening annually in equally inspiring
locations around the world.
Please join us for this inspiring and one-of-a-kind event!
