Join our K12 expert architect, Lee Beukelman, as he unveils the art and science behind crafting healthy, sustainable learning environments. From boosting student engagement to fostering teacher well-being and community pride, Lee shares insights into the transformative impact of purposeful architectural design on educational spaces. Discover how architecture can shape the future of K12 education.
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Episode Transcript
Skyler: Welcome to another episode of Laying the Foundation.
Skyler: All right. Welcome back to another episode of Laying the Foundation podcast. I'm Skylar, more or less your host, I guess. And, uh, today I'm here with Lee Buchelman. He is one of our lead K 12 architects. Lee, thanks for being on the show.
Lee: Thanks for having me Skyler.
Skyler: Absolutely. Absolutely. So Lee, um, you gave me this sheet of paper here and it's got, it's got our K 12 like education space mission statement on it from us at CMBA architects.
Skyler: I'm just going to read that real quick. So it's wanting to impact generations of learners. We elevate every K 12 project to be safe, sustainable, and healthy spaces. That foster student engagement, increase teacher retention and boast community pride. Now, the reason I want to bring that up is because today we're going to be talking about what healthy spaces means when it comes to these K 12 projects.
Skyler: Because obviously we want our kids to be in healthy spaces, right? Where they're learning and growing and developing. So, I guess, first of 12 architect, Creating these healthy spaces is important to you. And I'm sure you've done a lot of research and education when it comes to figuring out what that means and how that's achieved.
Skyler: So tell me a little bit about, you know, what that means. What is that? What is a healthy space? What are we looking for there?
Lee: Right. Well, kind of stepping us back there a little bit, Skyler, um, at CMBA, we know we, we send our, all our K 12 staff to conferences, um, two main conferences that we attend is, uh, uh, ed spaces.
Lee: It's held all over the country. And then A4LE is another one. And what these conferences are, it's architects coming together, educators coming together, superintendents coming together, uh, all those things, uh, furniture designers, researchers, all that good stuff that, uh, we come together, spend three, four days together.
Lee: Um, and we talk about trends, what's happening in education, uh, where's education going, or even. um, the past few years that's been kind of on the rise, um, not only in education, but all over is obviously, uh, mental health and how that impacts our students. Absolutely. So when we talk about a healthy space, that's really what, uh, we're getting into, you know, we're not talking the.
Lee: Well, it all relates, but we're talking more of the mental health, the emotional health, um, of our students and how that, um, is impacted through architecture. So if I, if I were to just kind of quote one of the, the researchers that we, uh, went to their definition of a rising kind of. Area of study in architecture is this thing called neuroarchitecture.
Lee: And we're kind of, we're going to geek out here probably for a while here. Yeah.
Skyler: Give me the, give me the neuroarchitecture one on
Lee: one neuroarchitecture one on one. Here's the definition of that. Yeah. Uh, the field of neuroarchitecture it's hard to say it is, is about understanding the fundamental ways that our environment shapes, our brain behavior and experience, and using that knowledge to design spaces that promote health and happiness.
Lee: It's pretty basic when you break down that, the actual part of it. Like
the
Skyler: way that we are, we're experiencing things is affected by the way that we're kind of interpreting that information from a, from a brain level. So we have this like whole sort of sect of science, I guess you could say, where it's that, um, neuro, neuroarchitecture, the, the spaces around us.
Skyler: So explain to me a little bit about how we are taking that. concept of, of neural architecture and how we're applying that into our K 12 spaces to make them those healthy spaces. What are we looking to achieve? I guess it's probably probably a good starting point. What kind of, uh, emotions or ways of thinking are we trying to achieve, uh, by using the science?
Lee: So one of the, one of the big parts of neural architecture based on Obviously, what we've, what we've learned from these conferences is, uh, it's the reduction of stress in kids really, right? They, they've come to learn that, um, stress can have a negative impact for years on kids. And then when you really step back and look at that and think, well, why is this important?
Lee: Think about how long kids are in school, eight hours a day from when they're. What, five, three, starting at preschool all the way up till 18, 19 years old, right? So, and then we, if you're a parent, you know, their kids brains aren't really fully developed until 25. So, um, think about all the impact that school has on the development of our brains.
Lee: That's right. And if stress has that much impact. On our kids, you know, how does the building or the environment that they spend the majority of their childhood. Yeah. How is it designed to lessen that stress, right? Um, so there's, I mean, there's a lot of research out there, um, that can support this, but. One thing that we do when we sit down with clients and we've done this with we do this with all our clients and when We first get started is what are some of the big goals of your project?
Lee: Mm hmm And a lot of the times or how do you want this project to look and a lot of the clients say well We want it to be welcoming. We want it to be warm. We want it to be fun We want it to be a place of curiosity joyful all those All those fun, positive emotions. Right. Right. So what neuroarchitecture has really been doing is researching, how do we draw out those emotions through design?
Lee: Um, a lot of times you hear it said like, you know, I don't know what I like, but I know what I don't like. Oh yeah, that's a good way to start. You've seen that. So we all know what spaces we don't like being in, but at times you, there's Um, spaces that, uh, we go into and we sometimes just don't know why we like it, right?
Lee: And that's the, that's what neuroarchitecture doing is researching what, what is it about a space that, um, makes us feel good based on that definition, right? So what we've also come to, this is where the nerd comes out. So what we've also learned, uh, through science, and honestly, that's why I love architecture.
Lee: It's a blend of, Science and creativity is a big reason why I got into architecture. Cause it's kind of fits both my personalities to an extent. So those emotions that I mentioned earlier about joy and welcoming and warm. Well, what we know is the chemicals that get released in our brains. When we feel that, right, they've identified those chemicals.
Lee: It's like, uh, I'm not going to geek out in, but it's like dopamine, right? Those are, those are all chemicals and serotonin and endorphins, all things that we've probably heard. Right. But when we have those emotions, those are the chemicals being released in our brain to give us those emotions. Right? So then neuroscience takes it one farther and they've been studying what is it that releases those chemicals, right?
Lee: Yeah. What's the trigger that causes trigger? Yeah. It starts to start and really it becomes, um, they break it down into these, these senses, right? What do we start to sense when we, uh, enter a space? What, what does that, right? And they've identified, uh, let's see here, 2, 4, 6, 8, about. Eleven different senses, and when we walk into a space.
Lee: That's what starts to release those chemicals. Right. Should I just list them off? Go for it. Yeah. So one of them is the sense of self efficacy, sense of balance, sense of self worth, sense of purpose, sense of place and belonging, sense of knowing, sense of security, sense of agency, and sense of freedom. Wow.
Lee: So a lot, a lot of them. I don't know how many, what was that, 11? One, two, four, six, eight, nine. All right. I was a little off. All right. That's fine. But either way, so they've, they've learned that when you have that type of sense, when you walk into a space, it starts to release those positive chemicals, which gives us those emotions.
Lee: Yes. So that we're trying to achieve. Right. Yeah. So then you take that one step farther and this is where an architecture starts to come into play is, okay, what kind of spaces produce those senses? Exactly. Right. So if we choose, if we choose one of the topics, um, one of the senses, let's do self sense of self worth.
Lee: Okay. And the reason I choose this one is this one really, I think starts to demonstrate it in a current project, uh, that I just finished up doing. Oh, okay. Working with Dave Brockchus and Morgan Driscoll in our office and, um, is the MOC elementary school. Yes. Okay. And so just talk a little bit about how we brought sense of self worth out in that school.
Lee: Absolutely. And if we broke down sense of self worth, it's, uh, the individual's perception of their value and importance. Okay. Right. That's probably a pretty decent definition of self worth. Yeah. Well, how do you, how do you design a space to promote that? Um, one of them, uh, that we did on, uh, the MOC school was, is this idea of scale.
Lee: Okay. Designing a building. It's a big building. Yeah. About a thousand kids that could be here, right? I was going to say, I got to see it. When a kid walks up to it, I mean, we're talking this thing is 25 feet tall. Yes. So how do we break that 25, 30 foot tall building down to their scale? Well, that starts to work its way more inside the building.
Lee: Okay. And we broke the spaces down inside. We gave nooks and niches and, um, we didn't keep long. We, we bent them. We, we kind of made it a meandering path if you will. Um, so really making sure that like when, uh, when a student's in there, they don't feel like they're necessarily part of a larger school, right?
Lee: They're in their neighborhoods there. Then when they're in those neighborhoods, they have little, little breakout rooms, classrooms. We have these places out in front of the classrooms that we call the front porch. Oh, soft furniture. Um, things of that, and it's not all grown up size stuff, right? It's, it's stuff down to their level, it's things that they can touch, they can participate in.
Lee: But it's even things like to respect their scale as a student is the size of their locker. Yeah, okay. You know, the size of their toilets. All those types of things start to play here, because what that really starts to do for them is that it makes them feel valued because it becomes theirs. Yes. It promotes, uh, ownership and belonging.
Lee: Okay. You think, uh, why does a kid want to go to a playground? It's built for them. Yeah, absolutely. The school needs to be built for the kids. I think back to a time, uh growing up Uh, do you remember book it with pizza hut? Yes. Oh, absolutely They they wanted the kids there. They made you feel important, right?
Lee: They hung your stuff up on the wall They made you do it, but my pizza hut growing up, they had a little door next to the big door, so it was like a little three foot door. Oh, that's fun. You got to go in your own little door as a kid, right, so you think of that self worth like that's my door. That's not my parents door.
Lee: That's not my teacher's door. So I
Skyler: got my personal pizza for reading ten books.
Lee: Exactly. So that's that's the kind of idea that we're bringing through and we do that through The variety of spaces, how we break down furniture and making sure that their desks fit them, all that kind of stuff. So that's how self worth starts to play itself out in architecture.
Lee: And I
Skyler: like what you said about like the distance, like even with just like hallways and stuff, breaking that down so that this is like kind of my neighborhood. This is my classroom right outside. I've got a nook that I can go to, um, a lot more personalized, a lot more, um, and I mean, it kind of stems into the real world, right?
Skyler: Like we all kind of, sometimes we'll get this sensation watching like national news and stuff like that, where we're just this little piece of the puzzle. I'm just this guy out in Iowa and there's crazy big stuff happening in the world and I'm just such a small part of it. Whereas we take these spaces and we narrow them down.
Skyler: To give the kids that feeling, like you said, of that this is my space, this is my neighborhood, I have an impact here, or I'm a piece of this, um, but I'm a bigger piece, you know, because it's, uh, it's sized
Lee: to me. Right. And then they just have freedom within those spaces, right? Yeah. What we really talked to those teachers about early on is How do you let kids move around?
Lee: Right? We've, the classrooms are all good size, but we've, we've provided glazing looking right out into the hallways where they can send students. So the student doesn't have to just sit at the table anymore. Sure. And we've zoned the classrooms to have. Teachers are great at zoning their own classrooms.
Lee: So right. We made sure we designed to that too, right? That's goes to part of our vision statement of teacher retention. Yeah, how do we design the space to Make the teachers job even easier.
Skyler: Absolutely and there's kind of an interesting side of that too because you guys obviously have to To some extent work with the teachers to kind of understand the spaces that you design for them I would assume yeah, and there's you know, that's it down of like This is why we designed it this way.
Skyler: And this is what science kind of backs up. And, you know, obviously. If the teacher goes in there and they're not using the space the way that you guys designed it kind of defeats the purpose to some extent, so it's important that they understand like, Oh, I need to let the kids have that, you know, that man or whatever.
Skyler: I, if I just pull tables up and just make them sit at those, you kind of thrown off the whole, the whole point. And
Lee: honestly, all the schools that we've worked with teachers are, they, they go to these same conferences. They do a lot of the same stuff, right? They, they know. All these best practices for teaching their own students, right?
Lee: We never pretend to be the teacher. No, right. We always, like, it's always a matter of working with them and being along for the ride as the teachers envision their spaces. Um, we may push them a little beyond what they maybe originally imagined. Yeah. Um, but, that's always a, That's always the fun part of the design process, right?
Lee: Absolutely. Then let's just kind of go back to some other things that we did to MOC to make it fit the student, right? Yeah. So another sense would be just this probably place of belonging. And so how did we pull that out, um, in the school? Well, again, I go back to the playground concept. Why do kids want to be there?
Lee: It was designed for them. Yeah. What else though? They're colorful. Um, and colored kids love color. Absolutely. One exercise we did on MOC was, uh, we gave, we gave some kids, it was a much smaller group of kids, um, including some of my own, uh, because it was, the MOC was designed during COVID. So we couldn't get in the classrooms.
Lee: Right. Um, but we printed out a coloring book look of the building. Okay. All right. So it was black and white, just like you would see in a coloring book. Sure. Um, we handed that to kids and we said, Hey, if you could design your own school. What would you do? Sure. And what they did, we didn't, we didn't prompt them with anything.
Lee: They had to go get their own colors, markers, whatever they wanted. Well, we had ranges from, let's see, at the time it was sixth graders up to, or six, six year olds up to fifth graders. Okay. Sit down. And while these things, you can just imagine, um, Just scribbled every color of the crayon box on this building.
Lee: And so that led to a lot of our inspiration of what do kids want to learn and what do they get excited about? Well, kids thinking color, they're, they're attracted to color, all this thing. So if you drive up to the MLC building today, This building has an iridescent metal panel on it that changes color, depending on how you look at it, and how, what direction, what sun, the way the sun is.
Lee: It goes from a, it goes from a red to a gold, to a purple, to a green, to a aqua. Right? It's, it's kind of your 1970s, uh, Psychedelic
Skyler: car, psychedelic car, right?
Lee: You and I never experienced
Skyler: it. Right. That's true. But it is pretty as somebody that's seen it It is really cool and it's a neat effect and like any angle that you're at will change the the perception
Lee: of the building And it's completely clad in that so, you know that just gives them that sense of belonging again This is a fun place and already reading from the outside that this is going to be a fun place Oh, absolutely, right.
Lee: The color just says it's going to be fun. Yes, when you get in it's to their scale It's to their ownership and so through those Yeah. Right? That starts to release those chemicals that we talked about. Right? They want to be there. And actually at the front of the building, well, not really the front, but as you approach, you see the playground.
Lee: Right? So you instantly start thinking good things. Yes. Right. We don't bury it and we don't hide it with mechanical units or anything like that. Right. You see the fun. So the stress chemicals are reduced. Yes. Well, with us, what we hope, right? That's what we're going for. Um, and so when they're in there, um, hopefully there's the stress level of the day.
Lee: Is is less than what it would've been if it was just back in the day. You know, it was a hallway with white walls. Yeah, absolutely. Lot fun and fun's a lot of color inside
Skyler: too. Fun. There is a lot of color inside. Yeah. Yeah. Which also kind of goes into that.
Lee: Attention architecture professionals. Are you looking for an employment opportunity that will provide you with a wonderful work culture and a competitive pay rate?
Lee: Look no further than CMBA Architects. Our firm offers flexible scheduling, a casual dress code, and a great work environment that will help you collaborate and create. Plus, who doesn't love having Fridays off?
Skyler: To learn more about our available positions, visit the careers page at CMBAarchitects. com and apply to join the CMBA team.
Skyler: And then, uh, something that I, I kind of picked up, you know, as you're talking about this and then thinking back to when we visited, um, the nooks and things that you talked about, they're all in like shapes. It's not just like, here's a appropriately shaped spot for a person to sit in kind of a thing. It's not like, uh, it's a chair shape or something
Lee: like that.
Lee: Funny story. During the. During the walkthrough of the open house. Yeah. I was, you know, giving tours and older people would be like, well, what are, what are these things for? Right. Right. And the fun thing was, is It, the kids knew exactly. They jumped right in. Yeah. They jumped right in them. They just laid down on these pillows that we had in there.
Lee: And I was like that. Yeah. And they're like, Oh, okay. I get it. You know? And yeah, that works. It is
Skyler: really cool seeing how like kids just get it. Yeah. And, and I guess that really ties into the neuroscience, right? Like this is something that they associate with us. It just makes sense because it releases those things in the brain.
Skyler: It says, Oh, this is, this is a fun spot. I'm going to go have fun there or whatever the case.
Lee: So that's pretty cool. And I think the challenge with it is, you know, obviously size is money, right? But to one thing that we know also through this is density of students is also causes stress, right? So we need to, in order to be successful in some of these ideas, you need to allow things to breathe.
Lee: And that's why buildings. Schools of today seem that much larger than schools of the past, right? Because we have to plan in that movement where we're letting kids move around a lot more. You take a project like Sioux Center High School, right? There's a lot of open group and collaboration spaces, um, that we could have probably designed out of there and cut.
Lee: 25 percent of the space, sure. But it's that type of space that's really bringing that education experience to the next level. Exactly. And those high schoolers, um, at Sioux center will probably be more prepared for college because it's set up more from that learning aspect, right? A lot more independence.
Lee: Yep. All right. We've talked about that of sense of freedom. Yep. Right. How do we build in that? Yeah. You're, you're, you're safe and secure in this building. Mm hmm. Right from the outside elements And then it's so how do we give you that freedom right still make your own choices? Lunch tables, right? You have your choice where to sit.
Lee: You can sit in a booth you can sit at a Uh, cafe type high bar, you can share the standard cafeteria tables, like going to a restaurant. It is going to a restaurant. Right. So that's exciting. Just give them the choice where they want to sit for the day rather than them all being the same. So again, sense of freedom, a big deal to upper kids, upper level kids of where.
Lee: Obviously, we know teenagers are looking to spread their wings, right? Let me be myself. I want to be independent. Give them a little bit more independence in the school. Very
Skyler: cool. Very cool. One other thing that I would say, uh, just something that I thought of that I noticed was with the playground back at, jumping back to MOC.
Skyler: There was that. So it's not like it's just in the ground. There's, I don't know what it's called. I mean, you would that rubber, that that rubber surface, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Fall and I, I think that jumps back to that sense of safety, right? Sure. It's like the second I stepped on that, I was like, oh, you felt safe?
Skyler: Yeah, this is all right. And I'm like, yeah, I could, I could just about, just jump in the air right now and just fall back into it. Like it's not quite a trampoline, but it kinda gives that sensation. So I would definitely say that
Lee: would also, especially coming off the concrete, right? Oh, absolutely. Yes. Yes.
Lee: And
Skyler: it was kind
Lee: of fun, honestly. Safety, security, that is also, you know, a very growing topic. And I think you guys have done topics on that in the past of like how it's not prisons.
Skyler: Yup, exactly.
Lee: Yup. Um. And that's critical. That's critical talking with students too is how do we compartmentalize our buildings?
Lee: Yeah, there's a tension there right to to create these positive emotions locking down the building behind CMU walls and no windows and openness does not create that. So what is that tension? That's what we have to figure out as architects and teachers and admin is okay, how open Is open and safe, right?
Lee: Safe and secure kind of two different things. It's true. Prison is secure. We want our, we want our schools to be safe, right? Right. So we want them to have the feeling of safety. That was one of those security. That was one of those senses as well. So some ways we handle that is, yeah, finding that balance of transparency.
Lee: Sure. Um, but also a thing that we call compartmentalization. And again, that's kind of breaking the building down by scale a little bit, um, but making sure that if an event happens, that we can section the school off. To, um, either contain right, the, the threat, whatever it may be, or, uh, to put in enough barriers that allows everybody else to escape.
Lee: Sure. Potentially, depending on the, the threat or whatever it takes. Yeah. So sometimes you need to hunker down, right? Yeah. Tornado, you wanna
Skyler: hunker down tornado. Yeah. We're in the tornado.
Lee: Be Yeah. If there's a fire you wanna get out. Exactly. There's, you know, active shooters, all that kind of stuff. You.
Lee: Depending some you run, you know, maybe you have to hide it depends on the situation, right? So creating a building that allows for that variety of, um, Security measures, right? And but a real big thing that neuroarchitecture pushes is if we can get ahead of it on the more of the preventative side, right?
Lee: If we can create an environment that is a place students want to be, they are having fun. They feel like they belong, um, they feel safe. Yeah, they feel safe. Maybe, maybe some of the acting out will eventually, over time, years, that that'll, that'll start to diminish. That's a good point. So it's kind of like neural architecture, how do we design a building, uh, to be preemptive and then also reactive, right?
Lee: So like we're trying to cure, but then we also obviously need to have the reactive measures. Alarms, cameras, compartmentalization, locking doors, all that stuff. Maybe even bullet resistant glass, right? Unfortunately, we still have to plan for both sides of it, right? But that is the balance that we always work out with districts is.
Lee: We want to be open, you know, how open is too open. That's right. Or how closed off is too closed off. Yeah, that's true I'm always opening things up I do that obviously with knowing that there's a tension in there. Exactly. So exactly yeah, that's that that sense of freedom and that sense of security is a fine a fine line and you start to see this this concept of neural architecture Uh, a big one out there today, uh, that people may have heard of is it's called biophilic design.
Lee: Right. And that's responding and designing to nature, kind of incorporating nature, natural elements into the building. And I mean, that has a huge play in neuro architecture, but it's just kind of another field. That's maybe a podcast for another day. A whole other, yeah. Biophilic design. Come back next time for biophilic design.
Lee: But it's the same thing. It's, it's. How does, how was our brain react to nature? Yeah. You know, you go outside, you go on nature walks, parks, things like that, right? That, that obviously is wired in our brains in a certain way. And so that's a whole nother, um, I would say it kind of. Stems from this. A little bit similar Sure.
Lee: But it doesn't relate. They don't come out and say it's neuro architecture. Sure. Or they just, it's just another study. It's
Skyler: another, yeah. It's another area of study. Another like deeper sect, I guess you could say, of the, of the neuroscience. A way of doing it. Yeah. Yeah. But obviously there's application when it comes to an act.
Skyler: Or, uh, architectural side, you know, how do we put nature into the classroom? So, but yeah, definitely, definitely a future episode for sure. Biophilic design. I think it might've been vaguely referenced before. What else haven't we, I mean, there's a lot we haven't covered,
Lee: right? That mission statement is a, is a, it's a mouthful of, uh.
Lee: Things Right,
Skyler: exactly. To, to un unpack and, and discover for sure. But what, uh, is there anything I haven't touched on yet that you want to touch on in just the current conversation? Yeah,
Lee: well, just to kind of bring it back to the mission statement probably is the reason we even do these. Um, seminars or these outings to learn more, um, you know, we say that we want to elevate these projects to enhance student engagement, um, teacher retention and to boost, boost community pride.
Lee: Well, we've, we've learned just through all the schools that we've worked on is those are, those are some key elements that. Um, school struggle with sure. Right. They, they want their students to be engaged because that only means better. They're all, they're all trying to raise better humans. Right. I mean, they're trying to educate our humans.
Lee: So we need our kids to be engaged and if they're not, so we need to provide spaces that do that. And that's why we go to these to learn how to make engaging spaces. Well, through those same things, if your students are engaged. Um, your teachers are going to want to be there and if you have happy teachers, they're going to work harder to keep their kids engaged.
Lee: That's right. And then through that, if you've got strong education system, man, you're going to have a strong community. You show me a strong community that doesn't have a strong school. That's right. They just don't, they go together, right? Strong schools go with strong communities and strong communities go with strong schools.
Lee: So, um, I feel our mission statement aligns with so many goals of the towns around the area. Um, and then also just our superintendents. Like those are, those are things they want. It's
Skyler: a big ecosystem. It really is. Like you gotta, you gotta affect it from, it's hard to affect it from like the, the get go. I guess schools just saying schools and like.
Skyler: From what we can do as architects designing these schools to promote all the different aspects and all the different things that stem off of that within this ecosystem, right? This is kind of where it starts is the building itself, because that's where everybody's at, right? All your, your staff and all your kids and everything like that.
Skyler: And then those kids are growing and they're leaving the school with the education. Some of them come back to become the staff of that school and so on and so forth. Like it's very repeating ecosystem. So.
Lee: So I don't, I don't know Skyler, is there a way to, obviously this is not proprietary information to CMBA, right?
Lee: We've got this, is there, is there a way to take this white paper and put it as a link in the podcast? For people that want to know more? Sure,
Skyler: I can, I can try to look into, yeah, I think that should absolutely be possible. Maybe they can reach out. Yeah, absolutely. I usually kind of like close out with like a whole thing and I still will, but yeah, absolutely.
Skyler: Check out if you're, um, if you're listening from like Spotify or Apple podcasts or wherever it is that you stream your podcast from, that's not directly from our website, which you can do that there too. Um, but if you're doing it from one of these, uh, third party sources, you should definitely head over to our website and you'll find a page for each.
Skyler: Podcast episode, and I can definitely get that, um, this, this whole neuroarchitecture, um, I, it's a booklet at this point. I'm looking at it on the table right now. It is a booklet. It's good stuff though. Yeah, oh, absolutely. And, yeah, we, as, I mean, as long as it's available online, I can get that linked in there,
Lee: so.
Lee: It's all open source because they want to promote better learning environments because they, these people, I can't even say their names, I'll be honest with you, um, they really believe in, Um, healthier environments and how it can impact the future of the kids, but also just our communities. Yeah.
Skyler: Absolutely. Who's the, what's the, um, organization.
Lee: So yeah, this is one of the things that, uh, one of the seminars that we go to, it's called learning environments. Oh, okay. Association for learning environments, uh, or a four L E is another. So they're,
Skyler: they're kind of the people in charge of, yeah, getting this so
Lee: far, like distribution.
Lee: And I've been watching this develop over the past three years. It kind of started out in just some really infancy, small stuff. And then it's kind of really now formed. I've watched it formed into this full, full back. And now they've kind of been giving it to us in snippets over the years. So this is, I'm assuming this is probably the final deliverable, but maybe next year there'll be a.
Lee: And maybe they'll have
Skyler: two more sentences that came out to fill in the 11 that you've got. Yeah. Awesome. Well, whatever the case, yeah, absolutely. Uh, be sure to check this out. Um, if it's something that you're interested in, which I think it really should be, uh, if you're in any aspect of architecture, I have the interest in architecture.
Skyler: It's definitely a really cool. Sort of new science that's kind of stemming out. And I think that's a, that's really cool to be a part of it kind of from these growth stages and like learning from the get go is really exciting. So definitely be sure to check that out. Uh, no matter where it is that you're listening to just head over to cba architects.
Skyler: com and you'll find a section at the bottom, um, about our podcast and you can find the episode in this episode. get the information from that. So, but whatever the case, Lee, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it. And of course, thank you for listening. This has been another episode of laying the foundation.
Skyler: Uh, my name is Skylar. And of course, as I mentioned before, if you want to find out more about what we do here at CMBA Architects, you can check out our website at cmbaarchitects. com. Uh, see the projects that we work. on. You can see pictures from the MOC project and, uh, other, other projects that Lee's been involved with or other K 12 and, and other projects.
Skyler: And of course, be sure to check us out on social media and follow us there, whether that be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn, and be sure to subscribe to wherever it is that you listen to podcasts from to the Laying the Foundation podcast, whether that be Spotify, Apple podcasts, or anywhere else it's there.
Skyler: And you can definitely follow us from there and not ever miss an episode because we come out with them every two weeks. So you don't want to miss out on all that. Exciting new information that we share with you. Once again, there's been another episode of laying the foundation. I'm Skylar. I'll see you guys next time.
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December 28, 2023