Healthy Schools by Design

Perkins&Will stands out among other architecture firms in thanks to its in-house research labs. In the Boston studio, the Human Experience Lab teamed up with the K-12 design practice to produce Healthy Schools by Design, a research-informed resource for school administrators and parents to make better design decisions about the schools in their communities. The project formed in the wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic as a series of guidelines to create schools that are healthier and more resilient to disaster; it has since expanded.

Our two primary challenges were to establish expertise while maintaining approachability, and to communicate dense research findings in a digestible way. The website has a simple structure that explains the research process and points readers to individual research briefs that can be downloaded for easy reference and sharing. Documents have simple layouts with ample white space, illustrated with simple iconography and colorful geometric forms.