Nestled in Mountain View, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, Khan Lab School is a futurist laboratory for both STEM-obsessed students as well as forward-thinking teachers looking to experiment with new forms of pedagogy.
If Khan Academy was Sal Khan’s big idea for transforming education in the digital realm, then Khan Lab School is that big idea brought to the physical world. It’s a place run by the innovators of today, designed for the innovators of tomorrow.
Through its partnership with Kurani, Khan Lab School has been able to serve as a cutting-edge model for two groups: educational leaders who want to test out new ways of teaching, and the founders of startup schools who are passionate about building their first-ever campus. Read more
In creating its new high school, Khan Lab School’s top priority was enabling experimentation.
The school wanted its students and teachers to feel like scientists and engineers. Everything needed to be visible, accessible. Spaces needed to be tailored to specific kinds of work, but flexible enough to adapt to changes in technology and teaching styles, as the school was set up to host a rotating roster of teachers.
Too often, schools are built with only today’s vision or technology in mind. As the world evolves, those designs become obsolete, and education starts to suffer.
Kurani’s dual mission: cement Khan Lab School as a progressive and desirable school for local parents and teachers—and, at the same time, avoid future renovation costs with an adaptable design that serves the school decades into the future.
The final design incorporates the best of maker spaces, laboratories, and libraries. The maker spaces and labs feature large windows to offer transparency, in addition to easy-to-read displays that showcase students’ work.
The reading nooks and breakout rooms offer quiet privacy for heads-down work and study. And the common spaces and cafes create chance “collisions” that lead to discussion and new ideas.
Each micro-environment plays an important role in the Lab’s overall design. Having dedicated spaces eliminates the risk that one student’s work becomes another student’s distraction—for instance, two students brainstorming while a third is trying to read nearby.
Instead, Khan Lab School gives students and teachers ample space to test, tinker, reflect, and analyze in whatever environment best suits the desired activity and outcome. The result is greater harmony during the school day, and increased satisfaction from teachers, students, and parents.
“The amount of light and the ability to increase collaboration in the space has enhanced the students’ overall learning experience,” says Megan Burns, the school’s STEM specialist.
With its new design, Khan Lab School isn’t just set up to perform experiments. The school becomes an experiment—one that creates new insights, every day, for improving education.
