Designing Schools for 21st Century Learning

Randall Fielding, AIA, is the Chairman and Founding Partner of Fielding Nair International, LLC (FNI), an award-winning school planning and design firm with offices in Minneapolis, Tampa, Madison and Melbourne, Australia. The firm has consultations in 23 states around the U.S. and 26 countries. Randy oversees FNI’s primary mission to improve learning by serving as a world leader in the creation of new and renovated educational campuses that are in consonance with best practice and research.

Fielding’s achievements have earned him more than a dozen design awards from the American Institute of Architects, The Council of Educational Facility Planners International (CEFPI), the American Association of School Administrators, and School Planning and Management Magazine. He is internationally recognized as an authority on innovative school design and received the CEFPI Planner of the Year Award in 2007 — the most prestigious honor of any individual in the field of educational design. He has been selected to serve as an architect, consultant, presenter and/or keynote speaker in Australia, Azerbaijan, Canada, Cayman Islands, Chile, Finland, Great Britain, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Portugal, Qatar, Singapore, The Czech Republic, The Netherlands, Sri Lanka, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States.

One of Fielding’s “signatures” is his ability to come down off of the podium, sharing ideas with heads of state, educators, and children with equal passion. This spirit of sharing extends to two million people each year, through DesignShare.com, an online forum for innovative learning environments that Fielding founded in 1998. He continues to serve as DesignShare’s editorial director, but the focus of his work is to lead communities in the design of environmentally responsive campuses that foster personalized learning and strong connections to the community.

Fielding’s design work leverages more than 500 case studies from 30 countries — the largest library of innovative school designs in the world. The interactive planning and design process pioneered by FNI is also grounded in a seminal book that Fielding co-authored with Prakash Nair, entitled The Language of School Design. The book establishes key learning modalities for success in the post-information society, and provides a series of design patterns to support these modalities. Randy uses the design patterns as a tool in evaluating existing and proposed facilities, and as a launching point for developing customized solutions for each individual community, campus, school or district that he works with.

In addition to serving as a lead design architect, teamwork underpins all of Fielding’s work, which takes him around the world to collaborate with public and private institutions, educators, developers, and local architects. Whether it’s a high school near ground zero in New York City, a series of vocational schools for the tsunami-damaged areas of Sri Lanka, a school for at-risk students in Minneapolis, a K-12 campus in Indonesia, or a college preparatory school in Switzerland, he finds more commonalties in each community than differences.