Date/Time: October 30, 2025 | 10:45 am – 12:15 pm

Room: 157-158

Audience: Architects, Engineers, Educators, Facility Personnel, Contractors / Suppliers / Manufacturers, Consultants

Call to Action:

• Reframe Risk – Shift the mindset from fear-based decision-making to a freedom-based approach that views risk as an opportunity for innovation. Attendees will be able to see their Fear brain in action and will leave the session with many tools they can use to shift from that place to a more Freedom, innovation-based approach.
• Leverage Stakeholder Buy-In Strategies – Implement proven techniques to gain support for bold design choices and mitigate pushback.
• Apply Real-World Lessons – Take inspiration from case studies of groundbreaking school designs and apply these insights to future projects.

Abstract: Too often, bold, innovative ideas in school design get watered down or abandoned before they even make it past the blueprint stage. The root cause? Fear. Fear of stakeholder pushback, budget constraints, breaking from tradition, or simply the fear of failure. These concerns stifle creativity and limit the potential for transformative learning environments. This session provides the permission slip you didn’t know you needed—the confidence to think bigger, take calculated risks, and challenge the status quo in educational facility design. Through real-world examples of bold, student-centered design solutions, we’ll examine the barriers to innovation and how visionary teams overcame them. Attendees will gain practical strategies to push past fear-driven decision-making and champion progressive, high-impact design solutions that elevate the learning experience. Expect an engaging mix of interactive discussion, real-world case studies, and actionable tools to help architects, designers, and school stakeholders embrace creativity and push the boundaries of what’s possible in learning environments. The future of education depends on bold thinking—let’s give ourselves permission to design for it.

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify the key fears that prevent innovative school designs from moving forward and how to address them effectively.
2. Learn how to shift from a risk-averse to a risk-aware mindset when designing future-ready learning environments.
3. Explore case studies of innovative school projects and analyze how design teams overcame obstacles to bring them to life.
4. Develop actionable strategies for securing stakeholder buy-in and advocating for student-centered, bold design choices.