When I think about the spaces where we learn, I’m struck by how deeply they shape our experiences and outcomes. In this episode, I’m joined by Danish Kurani, an architect, designer, and the author of The Spaces That Make Us: Why Design is Broken and How We Can Create a Happier, Healthier World. Danish brings over two decades of expertise in creating spaces that inspire learning, creativity, and wellness. Together, we’ll explore his 7 principles of Baam design, which emphasize the powerful reciprocity between people and their environments. We’ll unpack how schools can move beyond outdated factory models of education and instead embrace spaces that foster equity, collaboration, and a deep sense of belonging.

This conversation is about creating environments that truly work for the learners and communities they serve. Whether you’re a school leader, teacher, parent, or designer, this episode offers actionable insights into making meaningful changes, even within existing constraints. From the importance of acoustics and natural light to integrating nature and community into our schools, Danish’s insights will inspire you to rethink the spaces where we learn and grow. Let’s get started!

Today, we’re talking about the infrastructure of a learning ecosystem and spaces through design, planning, and connectivity. An ecosystem is a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.

A physical environment matters, and reducing friction to interact matters. My dad is an architect in K-12. Early on, he had me read books like In Praise of Shadows and Poetics of Space, which reprogrammed how I thought about aesthetics and space. I later found urbanists like Jane Jacobs, who helped me see complex systems and design.

Before we begin, I think it’s important that we recognize that all things in the built environment are designed towards some end. This means that all schools have been designed, and frankly, many have been designed well. Only they’re designed to achieve an outcome that we believe in less and less.

They’re derived from a factory model of specialization and control. To build learning ecosystems that work for everyone and enable us to adapt to our modern, global, complex challenges, we have to learn from those who have thought long and hard about design and space. I’m excited to dig into this topic today with Danish Kurani, an architect, designer, and author of the new book, The Spaces That Make Us: Why Design is Broken and How We Can Create a Happier, Healthier World.

Danish, thanks for coming back on the show.

Danish Kurani: Hey Mason, thanks for having me.

Mason Pashia: Yeah, of course. This is a really fun topic for me, so I’m glad you’re here today. Congrats on the book. Is this your first book?

Danish Kurani: This is my book.

Mason Pashia: Amazing. What a process.

Danish Kurani: Took a couple of years of researching, writing, and over 20 years of studying architecture.

Mason Pashia: Amazing. We’ve had the chance to chat a few times, and it’s always wonderful, but I don’t think I actually know how you got into this work. How did you find design and space, to begin with?

Danish Kurani: I’ve been practicing architecture for over 20 years. I had experiences in my childhood that steered me in this direction. I can tell you about the first time bad design ruined my day.

Mason Pashia: Yeah.

Mason Pashia: Please.

Danish Kurani: I was six years old. In kindergarten, we had the tile rug on the floor where we’d plop down for story time. We had those vinyl folding mats for nap time, right? This was the early ‘90s.

Mason Pashia: Of course.

Danish Kurani: We had bookshelves stuffed with Berenstain Bears and kids’ books. We had ceramic mugs for Mother’s Day drying one day in class. I really had to go to the bathroom. Our bathroom was at the back of the classroom. I got up, walked to the bathroom, and walked in.

I shut the door behind me, and another boy from the other side walks in. I realized that this bathroom was situated between two classrooms. It was sort of a Jack-and-Jill bathroom between two classrooms, and he had to go really bad. His pants were down, and he started peeing everywhere.

He is literally peeing on me, and I’m getting soaked. I can’t get out of the way. It’s a small bathroom, and I’m just drenched. I just end up standing there until he is done, and I had to then walk back into class, pretending like there was no accident.

I had to go sit down. It was super embarrassing trying to not be seen. My teacher, Ms. Ray, saw me. She took me aside. She had this pair of pants for kids who have accidents. They were acid-washed jeans. I had to wear those the rest of the day. It was so embarrassing.

I was embarrassed for days around my classmates because they thought I had an accident.

Danish Kurani: And I couldn’t even blame the other boy. He was using the bathroom the way it was intended. It was bad design.

Mason Pashia: Yeah.

Danish Kurani: Who thought a six-year-old would know to not only lock their door but lock a second door? I mean, most adults wouldn’t get that, right?

Mason Pashia: Yeah.

Danish Kurani: That was one of the first times bad design wrecked my day. Maybe it’s not a coincidence that I design schools these days because I don’t want students or teachers to have their days derailed by bad design.

Mason Pashia: I think that’s the first bathroom story we’ve gotten on the Getting Smart Podcast over 600 episodes. Thank you for contributing that. I can see how that would have a formative impact on you. I’m very sorry to young Danish for that experience.

I loved getting a chance to look at your book, and in it, you outline a few different tenets for your, and your firm’s, philosophy on how you design a school. Do you mind giving us a high-level view of what those tenets are so we can scaffold some of our conversation on that today?

Danish Kurani: Yes, absolutely. I’ve developed seven principles fundamental to how we design.

Mason Pashia: Yeah.

Danish Kurani: The way I think of these principles, there’s a term from my native language of Urdu.

Now, Urdu is spoken primarily in Pakistan, but in many countries. And there’s this beautiful, sort of obscure word. It’s called Baam.

Mason Pashia: Hmm.

Danish Kurani: Baam means two things working in tandem. Famous Winston Churchill quote: “First we shape our buildings. Thereafter, they shape us.”

Mason Pashia: Hmm.

Danish Kurani: There’s reciprocity between us and our environment. We shape it; it shapes us. That’s what Baam is describing—two things mutually influencing one another. The way I practice and what I’m sharing in this book is Baam design.

It’s a way of thinking about our world and moving in our world where we’ve recognized that we get to shape it, but it’s also shaping us. And so there are seven principles that I follow to create designs. One is to look within.

Before you design anything, understand who it’s for and their needs, then design outward—first principle. Another principle: solve important problems. Don’t put flash over function or style over substance. Really think about what is important here.

What am I trying to solve? Actually, the word design itself is Latin. It comes from designate, which means to identify a problem and to contrive or plot a solution.

Mason Pashia: Hmm.

Danish Kurani: Solve important problems. It reminds us to stay focused on what we’re actually trying to do here and not think about things like resale value or how cool it’s going to look on social media. Really solve the problems for the people who are using it.

Mason Pashia: And I just want to, real quick, say, so far these also apply to learning design. These are not necessarily just spatial in nature. These are really good tenets for how you should approach curriculum or a project for young people. So keep going, but our listeners can listen through that frame as well.

Danish Kurani: Good. Maybe all seven will have that. I think the principles—I’ve heard from UX designers, graphic designers—who have said, “Hey, these principles also work in our world as well.” So another principle is design for change.

Design has the power to nudge us towards certain behaviors or mindsets. If we understand how design influences people, we can use it for good. Things change over time. Society changes, people’s needs change, curriculum changes, pedagogy changes, learning models change, education evolves, technology changes.

Design with these in mind. Over time, things change.

Mason Pashia: Yeah.

Danish Kurani: Another one is to follow nature, and that really means we are biologically wired to respond to certain stimuli in certain ways. Lighting, air, views, noise—all of these things, because of how we’ve evolved, we know how they physiologically affect us.

Keeping this in mind when you design so that you are creating places that are comfortable for people. Another one—

Mason Pashia: Building on that, one of my favorite design principles from biomimicry is that nature creates conditions conducive to life. I love taking that first word and swapping it with anything else. Design fundamentally creates conditions conducive to life. Like whatever that thing is, it’s the life thriving. So just adding that in there too.

Danish Kurani: In the book, I talk about biomimicry. Often, you’ll see people—I’ve seen so many schools that have been built, and someone will say, “Yes, we took inspiration from the mountains or a tree,” and it’s like the building’s just shaped to mimic the form of a mountain or an ocean wave because there are schools on the coast.

But really, if we want to follow nature, don’t just copy the form. Copy how it functions. Why is a tree so successful? How does it convert sunlight and water into energy? How does it provide shade? How does it purify air? Can you actually do that in the building itself?

Don’t just make it look like a tree. Make it work like a tree. Embrace details—not overlooking nitty-gritty details that make a space work well. It’s not enough to just say, “Well, we’re going to have a classroom, and obviously you gotta have a door leading out of the classroom.”

Well, how wide is that door? Is this a maker space where you’re moving in and out materials? Maybe that door needs to be a little wider than a usual one. Or does that door have an automatic closer? Well, that’s going to make it a little bit harder to move things in and out, so maybe this one doesn’t have it.

So getting into nitty-gritty details. I think so much of our environment these days, if you look around America—and frankly a lot of parts of the world—it’s bereft of detail. We have all these blank buildings that look boring and flat because that’s cheap and thoughtless.

But we evolved in nature. There’s science behind this. Beauty is scientific. Mathematicians have looked at how we evolved and what we like. What humans find beautiful is complex repetition.

We like complexity and repetition. So complexity—generally, the buildings around us don’t have complexity.

Mason Pashia: True.

Danish Kurani: And they’re very boring. They’re sterile, right? They’re just plain. And so complex repetition—an example of that, if you think of a honeycomb, right? You’ve got these cells that are repeating.

Yet, every cell is slightly different. And so that’s where the complexity comes in. Or leaves on a tree. They are repeating.

Mason Pashia: Yeah.

Danish Kurani: But each one is slightly different. Because we’ve evolved in nature, we are wired to appreciate complex repetition. Embrace details. Add some details and make your buildings more beautiful.

They’ll be more appreciated, more beloved, and feel better because that’s what we evolved in.

Mason Pashia: And those gross styrofoam tiles on the ceiling of most schools do not count as complex repetition, right?

Danish Kurani: No, they are repetition, but that’s monotonous repetition.

Mason Pashia: Exactly.

Danish Kurani: The two other principles—one is build ecologically. This means keeping in mind ecosystems and how we’re affecting those, and think about the materials we’re using when we construct, because if it’s bad for ecosystems, animals, other sentient life, or the planet, ultimately it’s bad for us too.

Lastly, zoom out. Think about things in their broader context. Everything has context. If you put a chair in a classroom, it’s got context because it has a table it has to work with, and it has the rest of the room it has to work with. If you put tables in a classroom, they have the context of the entire room, the layout, and the relationship to the window and lights.

A school building—its context is the neighborhood that it’s in. Only by looking at the context can you design things so they work well. An example: when people are buying a home, they’ll go look at the home in the daytime. They’re like, “Oh, it’s beautiful, great lighting, I love this.”

They buy the home, move in, and then they realize, “Oh my god. At night, there is this light beaming in from across the street, and the bedroom faces the street. So every car that revs and goes by keeps me up at night.”

Zoom out means look at the full context. Come back at night and look at that house. So when we’re designing—yeah, just take a minute to zoom out so that you understand the context fully. So those are the seven principles of Baam design, and they can help create places that frankly are better for our health, our happiness, our productivity, and our relationships with others.

Mason Pashia: Yeah. I think that’s really great. On that subject of zoom out, that’s the direction our conversation’s going to take. We’re going to start focused at the space and school level, then we may bloom out a little bit. But as we’re sitting in that school level, I want to just—A, I want to ask for some action guidance for people listening.

Too often people assume design can only be done with a blank canvas, like a page that you’re designing a new school and you’re going to try and pass a bond to get it built. And they’re like, “No, I shouldn’t incorporate design principles,” which is great if you’re given that opportunity.

Incorporate those design principles, but that’s not the reality for most people. How can people interpret what you’re saying into something they could do this week, tomorrow—a way they build toward it in the future? How does design become an iterative process rather than a final calculation at the end?

Danish Kurani: We’ve worked in so many contexts where we have gone into schools and renovated within their existing building without making structural changes. We have even created education spaces in retail storefronts, warehouses, and abandoned offices. You don’t have to start from scratch to create an excellent education space.

Start with a few techniques or practices. In the book, I outline certain practices and mindsets that you can get into to start creating better environments. So, one, I would start with observation. Know your goals, and if you don’t, maybe step back and think about what are my goals? What am I trying to do with the space? What is the educational experience I’m trying to create? How am I trying to make life wonderful for these students and teachers?

Mason Pashia: Don’t do that. Definitely do that.

Danish Kurani: Definitely do that if you haven’t already.

Once you have that target in mind, you can start a couple of things. One is observing. Think of ethnographic studies. Be a fly on the wall. Sit in on some classes and see how the space is affecting the experience that I’m trying to create.

And you can jot this down, like a SWOT analysis. Is this space hurting or helping us achieve our ultimate goals? If one of our goals is that we want more peer-to-peer learning, is that happening, or is the space hindering it? It’s not going to be neutral. It’s going to help or hurt. It’s up to you to observe, identify that, and make note of this. So, as you think about your objectives, the experience you’re trying to create, just be a better observer. This comes up in art often. The best artists are supremely skilled and talented.

One of the talents that they have that inferior artists lack is that they just see better. They take the time to observe reality. If I’m painting fruit on a table, my painting is better if I look closely. Be a fly on the wall in your school.

In the hallways, in the classrooms, and in outdoor spaces, just observe how the space is guiding and influencing people. And if it’s nudging them towards what you want them to do or don’t want them to do.

Mason Pashia: Hmm.

Danish Kurani: So that’s one thing. Even if we just start there, you’re going to start noticing a lot you can change in your school immediately. It’s pretty profound once you start tallying up: these are ways our space is helping us, and these are ways it’s holding us back. Now, some really fast or simple things you could be doing—I’ll give you examples.

Studies show people are more creative when they work under a high ceiling. So I’m talking a ceiling that’s 12, 13 feet. So think about where you have your spaces where you expect kids to be creative. Are those in rooms that have high ceilings? If not, move those activities or those classes to the rooms where you have high ceilings.

On the flip side, people are more focused under a shorter ceiling, and the reason is it’s when you compact the space, when you compress it, it’s kind of like having blinders on a racehorse. It lets you focus. So when you need them to be really focused, put them in shorter rooms. So easy—just move where your activities are happening.

Mason Pashia: It’s true of hoodies too. If you put up a hoodie, it does a similar effect. Maybe that’s the more personalized approach. If you can’t lower the ceiling, give ’em a hoodie.

Danish Kurani: It does. And believe it or not, we had hoodies in one of our architectural designs for a room where they needed to be focused. In the closet will be hoodies, and they can grab ’em and just—

Mason Pashia: Love that.

Danish Kurani: Yeah. When you need kids to focus, have them face away from the rest of the class, right? So visually, all of that distraction ends up being behind them. This is why library carrels were so effective, right? They literally compact your environment into this little cubicle, and you can get down and focus in there.

So, and to this point of distraction, another thing—there are studies that show that rooms overly decorated—and by that, I mean all of these lovely scaffolds that educators are putting up with great intentions, these laminated posters, all of these things—that creates this visual noise. And it’s hard to focus with visual noise.

For a child, it’s harder to tune that stuff out than for adults. Declutter your walls. That’s a straightforward and simple thing you can do that will allow them to focus on what’s being taught.

Mason Pashia: That’s important and similarly important to keep in mind is the fact that you’re always going to be weighing trade-offs, right? Like there is a huge incentive to putting up student art on the walls or something to have them be proud of their work. So I think that there is a little bit of a balancing act. We shouldn’t walk in, and it’s Ikea.

But if you’re trying to create conditions for something, it’s useful to have these things in your toolkit to be like, “Oh, I know I can pull this lever and affect change.”

Danish Kurani: Exactly. There are plenty of places around the building where you could display student work or make them feel proud, right? You’ve got your dining spaces, transition spaces, common spaces. Now, acoustics is another big one. Students sometimes miss up to 25% of what’s being taught by their instructors, which causes them to fall behind. And this is because of poor acoustics.

Mason Pashia: Hmm.

Danish Kurani: If you can fix the acoustics in your classrooms, bring in softer materials. So either on the ceiling, on the walls, adding acoustic panels, carpets, fabrics—some of these things can really go a long way to improving acoustics.

Now, I’ll throw one more. Research shows a better school, a better learning environment, just that’s cleaner, well-kept, better designed—students actually have a higher self-perception when they are in an environment that’s considered a good environment. So if you want students to have a little bit more confidence, feelings of self-worth, that investment you’re putting in also goes towards that. And so just keeping some of these things in mind. Now, these are, again, simple things that you can start doing immediately without having to start from scratch.

Thanks for sharing those.

Something that stuck out to me when I was reading through—actually, I’m going to ask a different question first. For a long time, the trend in education, maybe the last 15 to 20 years, has been to make bigger open spaces. It kind of followed the coworking trajectory or these other workplace design trends.

I feel like recently there have been some studies that it may or may not be kind of leading the witness a bit, but they suggest it’s actually not that much more productive. How do you think about that design trend within schools, and what is the philosophy of you and your practice on open spaces?

Danish Kurani: We’re not pro or against open spaces. The way I design is to figure out what it is that you need, who we are designing for, and whether this is going to work for them and get them to the goals that you have for them. So there is no “this always works” or “this doesn’t work.” Open spaces—I can tell you, when you’re younger, maybe it’s a little bit more difficult to focus in an open space. As you get older—

Actually, when I was in kindergarten, the space was designed so poorly I got peed on. When I was in middle school and high school, again, very similar to a lot of people, it was very prison-like environments. It wasn’t until grad school when I was in an environment that felt like it actually helped me learn and inspired me.

I’m talking about Gund Hall, the building for the Graduate School of Design at Harvard.

Mason Pashia: Cool.

Danish Kurani: The Graduate School of Design’s Gund Hall was built in the 1960s or 1970s. You would look at it and say, “Oh, it’s this brutalist building from the outside.” And I agree—from the outside, it could be better. Inside, it’s incredible what it does for students. The way Gund Hall is designed is that when you walk in the ground floor, it has the library and an open common space, but the common space is used as a gallery. So immediately you walk in, and you’re seeing what your classmates are working on. I was studying architecture and urban design.

I got to see what urban planners, landscape architects, design technologists, and real estate students were working on because everyone’s work gets displayed in the gallery at some point. You’ve got these gallery spaces. Then you go upstairs. Floors two through five are called trays.

These are open floors and terraced, so each floor gets slightly smaller than the one below it. These are open studio spaces. Every student has a desk. You walk up there and immediately see what 400 people are working on. It’s all open. Everyone’s got a desk, pinning up their work and their models.

You walk around and see this. You’re walking to the bathroom, the café, or leaving the building, and you cannot avoid walking past the work of so many other students. And it catches your eye. You stop and ask, “Hey, that’s really cool. What are you building? How did you do that? Can you show me?” You plop down at their desk. They open the software, and they’re showing you or talking to you about what they’re designing in their studio. This was the first time I was in an environment where the environment itself inspired me because of how it exposed me to what others were working on.

Even when a professor asks students to present, there are presentation spaces that are sort of open from above, so you can hang over a mezzanine, be on higher floors, and see presentations and hear feedback that other students are getting. So constantly around the building, it’s exposing you to creativity.

It’s exposing you to new ideas and other people. And so open spaces can be magical. It depends on what you’re trying to achieve. And if you ask me to take the SATs in there, I’m going to say no way.

Mason Pashia: Right?

Danish Kurani: If you’re asking me to design and create stuff, at that age, for that purpose, it can work.

Mason Pashia: That’s great. It complicates the idea of productivity. It’s often lumped in with productivity, like this is the most productive space. That in itself is a wide spectrum of what it means to be productive, whether that’s focus or brainstorming.

Those all look super different. You also talk about wellness within school design. It surprised me. It’s so important and also not typically talked about as something a school needs to do. It’s striking because we associate wellness and health with a hospital.

Very non-representative of what it means to design a healthy space. Typically very clinical, white, boxy, and segmented. Implements and instruments aside, it’s not a pleasant place. So I’m curious how wellness shows up in a school building through your design principles and in the world.

Danish Kurani: Sure. In the book, I talk about hospitals. For anyone who’s interested and has had a loved one in the hospital—just a couple of years ago, my mother had a heart valve rupture and just a cascade of health issues because of that. And that year, I spent over 800 hours in the hospital observing.

I was doing exactly what I’m telling school leaders to do. I think anyone who’s either been in the hospital or had loved ones in the hospital, I think you’ll enjoy reading about how we could redesign our hospitals. Back to schools and wellness—I think this applies even in workspaces, not just schools. If we want to perform at our best, we have to feel our best, and this is overlooked in schools. If we’re not nourishing our bodies in the right way, then our minds aren’t going to be optimally performing.

I’ll give you an example. There’s a school that we worked with down in rural Alabama. I was working with this nonprofit, Ed Farm. They’re based in Birmingham, and we created this concept called a connected classroom that essentially helps schools from rural towns and students connect with educators, resources, and opportunities outside their town.

We’re beaming in teachers, getting access to courses you wouldn’t otherwise have access to. One of the things that we did in those rooms is make sure that the design of the room supports wellness. And so one of our principles—follow nature, remember—is how are we conditioned to respond to certain stimuli? To light, the amount of stimulation there is, noise, air movement. So if you look in that room, one of the things we did is make sure the acoustics are great. Some of the highest-performing ceilings in terms of acoustics, we have carpeted floors, fabrics, and wall fabric.

In fact, I have a piece of it here. We’ve got 100% recycled polyester wall fabrics. And by the way, this wall fabric, which is a dark color, this was actually the exact color we used. It framed the big screen that was on stage where teachers would beam in.

Mason Pashia: Hmm.

Danish Kurani: The reason—it created this dark frame. If you look at any of our modern devices, your iPhone, your MacBook, they have a dark frame. It’s because that helps you focus your eyes.

Mason Pashia: It’s got a dark frame.

Danish Kurani: Yeah. It helps you focus on the content. So we created that dark frame. We stripped the walls bare so that there could be this feeling of calm and replaced stark white with a soft, greenish-blue. Scientifically proven to help with feelings of calm and focus because blue is the most common color in the world, so it puts us at ease.

When we see blue, we’re so familiar with it. The oceans are blue, the sky’s blue. A lot of our world is blue. The second most common color is probably green, and so we feel very calm and at ease. Around the room, we created what’s called a pace track, so the carpet changes colors, and there’s a track drawn around the center of the room so kids can pace and think.

I’m a big pacer. I’ll take calls or meetings or just think through a problem. And I like to just pace around a courtyard. So we created that inside the room for them.

Mason Pashia: Cool.

Danish Kurani: Earlier I was talking about study carrels.

Mason Pashia: Yep.

Danish Kurani: We actually created a line of study carrels that have perforated wood screens that allow students who need a little bit of extra help focusing to turn their back, get inside, and focus. So there are all of these elements. And of course, we brought in an air purifier and better air quality. We made sure they get lots of natural light. Doing a lot of these things because we know that your performance is not just based on how smart you are. It’s based on the conditions you are put in as well.

Mason Pashia: Hmm.

Danish Kurani: The way I know this—when I took the SATs, the first time I took the SATs, I showed up. I’m sitting down, nervous about taking this long test, making sure I do well, and there is construction happening in the bathroom next to our classroom. These bathrooms in K-12 were killing me.

Mason Pashia: They’re your core antagonist.

Danish Kurani: There is construction happening on the day of the SATs next door to me. I couldn’t focus. I got out of there and immediately signed up to take them again.

Mason Pashia: Yeah.

Danish Kurani: And two months later, I took them again. I didn’t prep anymore. I didn’t do anything differently. I showed up to take them. Quiet classroom, carpet floors, no noise, nothing going on. I scored 130 points higher, which was back when it was out of 1,600. So it was more than a 10% increase just because the noise level changed. So I know firsthand it’s not just about how smart you are—it is the conditions you’re placed in.

That’s why the wellness piece matters. If we’re not feeling well and our biological needs aren’t taken care of, we’re not going to perform at our best.

Mason Pashia: Thanks for bringing that up. We have not gotten to any of the questions I sent you yet. This has been completely organic riffing.

I want to run through a quick-hit round, just naming things and seeing what you think about them, because you and I have riffed a lot on urban planning, specifically with regards to education design and learning ecosystems. I don’t have a list—just off the top of my head. One is walkability. Primarily, to and from school and the surrounding areas.

Danish Kurani: I wrote about this in The Spaces That Make Us in multiple chapters. I talk about walkability because car culture has such a big impact on our lives—not just for schools.

There are studies that show that after someone has sat in rush hour traffic, the chances of domestic violence are 9% higher.

Mason Pashia: Wow.

Danish Kurani: Think about this. You’re sitting in a car, driving, building up anxiety or anger. The problem with car culture—not having options and being forced to drive everywhere in much of America—is that it positions everyone else as an antagonist.

So if you and I are driving, you are taking up the space that I need.

Mason Pashia: Right.

Danish Kurani: Getting ahead of me. It’s a zero-sum game. If we’re on public transportation or walking, if the train breaks down or there’s a slowdown, we can commiserate.

It actually positions us side by side. There are plenty of problems with car culture. It leads to chronic diseases because we’re very sedentary, and it’s leading to obesity and heart disease. We’re not walking enough, not getting enough movement. Movement is one of those biological things—we’ve got to move. We’re conditioned to move. So for schools, being able to walk to school makes such a big impact on the child’s experience. Not only do they have a healthier lifestyle—physically and emotionally, mental health—it’s better for the mental health as well. If they’re walking to school, that means that they can probably walk to other opportunities and businesses around the school. I encourage schools to think off-campus as well.

I encourage schools to think off-campus as well. How can the neighborhood become part of the learning experience? Extend that experience beyond your hedges. Your neighborhood is rich with social, intellectual, human, and physical capital. There are incredible people there your kids can learn from. There are incredible organizations. There are physical resources and amenities you can tap into. If you are a school that’s in a walkable environment, it’s so much easier to do that. And so I think it makes a big difference if students can walk to school.

Mason Pashia: That’s great. Agreed. Another one I’m going to throw out: Jane Jacobs. Author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. What do you think we can learn from her in our planning of where schools are in a neighborhood or the learning environment?

Danish Kurani: A lot. If you pick up the book, I even thank Jane Jacobs for how much she’s influenced me and other designers. One of the big takeaways from her work is she would say, “More eyes on the street make it a safer place.” And what she meant by that is if you look in urban areas—I’ve lived in New York City, and to me, it felt like one of the safest places I’ve ever lived.

I’ve lived in many cities—Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Cambridge, Paris, San Francisco, Bombay, Karachi, lots of places. More eyes on the street—one of the reasons New York feels safe is because there’s always people around. So if something were to happen, people can intervene.

I think one of the things we do with campuses is we remove eyes from campus, which is a bad thing. What I mean by that is we put up walls, we put up metal detectors, fences. Anyone who wants to come on campus—it’s a pain to get on campus. So we are signaling to the community, “You can’t come here. You need a pass, special privileges, to work or study here. You can’t just show up.” A lot of politicians talk about hardening schools, right? We have shootings, and they think the answer is, “Let’s just make security even tighter.”

That’s not the answer. Knock down the walls. Open up your campus. Make it part of the community. The more adults on campus, the safer it is for children. It’s the opposite of what many in education and government think.

Mason Pashia: Yeah.

Danish Kurani: The way to achieve safety is not to push your community out. It is to involve them and invite them on campus. Get more eyes on campus. That makes it safer. Jane Jacobs showed places are safer when more people can intervene.

Mason Pashia: I think that’s really profound and a foil to the picture you painted of the architecture school at Harvard, where the first thing when you walk in is you see these common spaces and demonstrations of work that everyone’s doing, contrasted to what we see now, which is like metal detectors and multiple layers of security.

One is much more conducive to inspiration, collaboration, or community. People should keep in mind how they feel when they walk into a building.

Danish Kurani: Right. Not only is it your first impression—how do I feel about this place and what am I here to do? Obviously, the Graduate School of Design at Harvard—you walk in, you see evidence of creativity. You’re like, “Okay, I get what I’m here to do.” Very clear, the message. You walk through a metal detector—it’s not clear what you’re there to do.

Mason Pashia: True.

Danish Kurani: It really signals, “We don’t trust you.” If you were to open up your campus more to the community, it is not just that it becomes safer. The educational experience improves. We talked about getting kids off-campus—go leverage and tap into these resources. If you start bringing adults from the community on campus, think about what they might teach your kids.

Everyone in the community knows something they can teach children. So you are now opening your doors to opportunities for your children to learn. And you might even say, “Look, we’re going to put wraparound services, some amenities on campus that are useful for parents. Let’s get them spending more time on campus.”

I’ve done studies with schools where they want more parental involvement. And then I analyze their building and say, “You know, a parent only has access to these 100 square feet—the 10-by-10 space just inside the door, the only place they’re allowed.”

How are you going to get more parental involvement if they’re only allowed right here?

Mason Pashia: Yeah.

Danish Kurani: So if you want parents to be involved in their child’s education, find ways to get them on campus. And that means opening your doors to them more.

Mason Pashia: I think that’s a good place to leave us today. Unfortunately, we could talk about everything that comes after that forever—how the learning experience gets better the wider you can make your community. For the sake of today, we’ll have to do a repeat. Danish Kurani, author of the great new book, The Spaces That Make Us: Why Design is Broken and How We Can Create a Happier, Healthier World. Thanks so much for being here. Always learn a ton from you.

Danish Kurani: Thank you, Mason.

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Guest Bio

Danish Kurani

Danish Kurani sees how buildings are failing to nourish people. After witnessing how poorly designed environments hold back people across the globe – from the middle of Manhattan to villages in India – he’s made it his mission to remake architecture for human flourishing. His groundbreaking designs for New York City, Google, and communities on four continents prove that thoughtful architecture can unlock human potential. 

Named one of the World’s Most Innovative Architects by Fast Company, Kurani has pioneered a human-centered approach that’s transforming lives worldwide. His work spans from floating homes in disaster-prone areas to schools in informal settlements, always focusing on one question: how can architecture solve our most pressing social challenges?

A Harvard-trained architect and urban designer, Kurani’s architectural ideas have been shared at leading institutions including Stanford, MIT, Harvard, and Columbia, and featured in TIME, World Economic Forum, and the Wall Street Journal. National governments recognize him as a leading voice in social impact architecture – not because he builds beautiful buildings, but because he builds spaces that work for real people.

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