What Happened When an Architect Went Back to School

• During a two-day residency at Southern Methodist University, the author observed firsthand how a room’s geometry, furniture, and technology placement subtly shape students’ attention, engagement, and group work.
• Because no single room type meets all instructional needs, educational environments can benefit from a portfolio of differently scaled and configured classrooms that allow faculty to match spatial design to teaching style.
• Because the evolution of teaching tools and learning behaviors promises to be unpredictable, academic spaces must remain flexible so that they can absorb change while maintaining their functionality and purpose.

 
When architects design academic buildings, we spend months—sometimes years—agonizing over classroom adjacencies, ceiling heights, and audio-visual technology (AV) integration. But once projects are finished, we rarely return to spend full days in those finished spaces, working shoulder-to-shoulder with students, to witness firsthand how the physical space supports or limits learning.

I first visited Southern Methodist University’s campus in Dallas in 2019 to begin designing a new home for SMU’s Cox School of Business. I returned in April 2025 for a residency at the newly completed building, designed by my firm RAMSA (Robert A.M. Stern Architects), recognized for its focus on higher-education architecture, and GFF. The transformational renovation unified three disconnected buildings into a cohesive 220,000-square-foot academic facility and expanded the school’s original footprint by more than 30 percent. The new facility features 22 classrooms, office suites, and new spaces for study and socialization.

Over two days in April, I attended five classes and interviewed faculty, administrators, and more than 100 students. I observed life in the building—from the early-morning buzz of people preparing for classes to the low evening hum of people using study rooms and working in groups. I watched how students took notes and contemplated how room configurations can lead to more focused work.

I left with a more nuanced understanding of how ever-evolving pedagogy, technology, and student needs shape modern academic settings.

The Origins and Evolution of Classroom Design

To understand the context of contemporary classroom design, it helps to look backward. While earlier precedents existed, the classroom as we recognize it today emerged in the 19th century as a standardized setting for didactic instruction, comprising rows of chairs, a chalkboard, and a single authoritative voice directing the learning experience.

In their 1929 book College Architecture in America, architects Charles Zeller Klauder and Herbert Clifton Wise charted only two types of classrooms: recitation rooms (for interactive sessions) and large lecture halls. Over the following century, shifts in pedagogy sparked corresponding shifts in spatial design. Harkness tables challenged hierarchy, while novel designs such as Kiva and SCALE-UP classrooms dissolved the front of the room entirely.

The trend toward decentralizing the professor as the sole authority has gradually transformed lecturers into facilitators. Technological shifts over the last two decades have further shaped how students learn.

Classroom design exists at the intersection of art and science.

Today, classroom design exists at the intersection of art and science. Designers preach principles such as ensuring that display screen height is one-sixth the distance to the farthest seat and that legible viewing angles fall within 60 degrees. Variables such as ceiling slopes, ambient noise thresholds, and eye-to-ear geometry are rigorously modeled and debated during design phases.

During my visit, however, I was able to test the function of these rooms as a student. I witnessed how diagrams translate into physical space; how ergonomics affect participants in a three-hour class; and how theoretical ideals translate into real, lived experience.

Building Variety Into the System

To design the Cox School facility, we worked closely with faculty to develop a portfolio of 22 classrooms spanning different layouts, technologies, and sizes (from 30 to 400 seats). Some rooms are flat-floored and tightly focused, others are tiered with gently curved rows, and others group seats into collaborative clusters. Some are tech-saturated; others rely on simplicity. The variety is a philosophical choice as much as a functional one—a recognition that learning and teaching aren’t uniform.

Each class I observed during my April visit offered a distinct window into how space mediates learning:

1. Introduction to Marketing. Taking place in a lecture-style, 55-person room, this course felt like a forum, with student groups standing at the front to present marketing pitches and field questions from their peers. Gentle 5-inch tiering made the space feel intimate, facilitating clear views and conversation between rows. Confidence monitors that displayed presentation content were placed at the rear, allowing students to face the room during their presentations without needing to glance at their slides.

Students in the class raised hands mid-presentation and leaned forward to take notes. A few lingered after class to continue the conversation. The space didn’t dictate interaction but instead fluidly supported both formal and informal engagement.

2. Financial Accounting. Taking place in a lecture-style, 72-person room with a theatrical feel, this session was more traditional and instructor-centered. The professor presented a live Excel demonstration and step-by-step modeling of financial flows, making real-time digital annotations on a lectern-mounted tablet.

The layout directed attention to the front. Large projection screens ensured visibility from every row, and audio was crisp without amplification. The front row filled up first, suggesting that students prioritized visibility and clarity over casual engagement.

The variety of classroom designs is a philosophical choice as much as a functional one—a recognition that learning and teaching aren’t uniform.

This classroom came with trade-offs. The room was highly focused, but also had a subdued energy and allowed for less fluid interactions. I also wondered about the room’s lone structural column, an unavoidable constraint of working within a renovated space. It didn’t obstruct the instructor but introduced blind spots between students.

3. Negotiations. The session in this cluster-style, 45-person room felt like an interactive workshop. The space was active and adaptable, and a mix of six-person tables and linear desks made every seat feel equal. As students engaged in an energetic, continuous discussion about international negotiations, they changed seats, moved between tables, and got up to consult with each other across the room.

Although the room supported these interactions, the front zone around the lectern and monitors was tight and equipment occasionally impeded movement. The confidence monitors, mounted at the front, would have been more effective on the back wall. Still, it was clear why many students cited the cluster rooms as their favorites.

A classroom at the Cox School equipped with cluster-style seating supports both general discussion and focused group work.

4. Managerial Decision-Making. This MBA course was delivered in a cluster-style, 55-person classroom. After individual case-study work, students shifted, with minimal disruption, into larger groups gathered around cluster desks and smaller groups at linear desks. While the first three classrooms felt like a forum, a theater, and a workshop respectively, this room allowed students to flow between all three.

Students praised the interactive screens but noted that few faculty used them. The professor noted her desire for visible clocks, fewer screens, and more conservative sightlines (viewing ratios—how distance and angle affect a student’s ability to see content clearly—were pushed to the limit to maximize seat count). She found the multiscreen AV setup awkward, instead preferring a laptop and a single projector.

These comments underscored a core design tension between supporting both low-tech, focused teaching and high-tech, multimodal instruction in the same space.

5. Business Discovery. The final class of my residency took place in a renovated 150-seat basement auditorium. I remembered what this room had been like before: steep, leaky, inaccessible, and uncomfortable. The space was one of the redesign’s most striking transformations. Natural light filtered through interior glazing at the back wall. Ceiling-mounted monitors ensured content was clearly visible from every seat without need for amplification.

In this session about how artificial intelligence (AI) is shaping the hiring market, the professor provided an overview of large language models and interfaces such as ChatGPT and Perplexity. The room’s scale and layout fostered a sense of anonymity, making the class feel more observational than engaged. But the room performed beautifully in terms of clarity and comfort.

After class, the professor and I discussed how AI might reshape classrooms, but we agreed that there’s no way to know what the technology’s long-term impact will be. Given that unpredictability, classrooms can’t be hardwired to a single moment in time. Instead, they must be capable of absorbing the unknown.

Five Classrooms, Many Lessons

During my campus visit, I noticed several aspects that I might not have internalized from an architect’s perspective:

The subtle patterns in how students learn. I saw students toggle between lecture notes and distractions such as email and browsing; one student even played a full-blown chess match while sitting in class. Surprisingly, about one-third of students took notes by hand and seemed to be the most consistently engaged. Students using laptops were more prone to have their attention drift. Tablet users hovered in between.

These patterns raised the question: Could room geometry or furniture selection subtly support deeper focus? Or at least make distraction less convenient?

I also wondered, how can we redefine the front of the classroom, especially in rooms designed to support group work? While these spaces foster dialogue and collaboration, single-person clearances and equipment placement limit mobility and create awkward conditions for group presentations. At the Cox School, we had planned these zones with instructors in mind, but not always student groups.

However, these outcomes are not design failures but realities of building performance. Unintended effects reveal themselves only once rooms are lived in. The missed opportunities I discovered were a vindication of the residency, which will surely influence RAMSA’s future work.

The power of physical presence. Many students I encountered had spent their formative high school or college years behind screens, and they explained how difficult it was to focus during remote learning. Presence, they told me, isn’t nostalgic—it’s necessary. Faculty felt the same, describing how students’ attention spans frayed during the pandemic.

I watched students gather before classes and linger afterward in their favorite corners, then spill into cushioned corridor seating to keep working or chatting. The building was alive from early in the morning to late at night. Similarly, professors told me that they were now seeing students more often outside of class, leading to better advising, more spontaneous mentorship, and a renewed sense of connection.

Students gather in Arnold Commons, the central hub of Cox School of Business.

These trends might reflect the fact that many in this current generation are experiencing for the first time what physical presence makes possible.

The use of technology. The classrooms at Cox are equipped with dual-projection screens, SMART boards, touchscreen lecterns, lecture capture systems, and integrated AV controls, alongside traditional whiteboards and microphones. However, faculty selectively used these technologies, relying only on what they needed.

Professors universally used projection and consistently praised confidence monitors. While some found SMART boards helpful, this feature was not widely adopted, and lecture capture was rarely active. Younger faculty often cast wirelessly from tablets, while others used annotated handouts or mirrored laptop displays.

That said, in smaller classrooms, the sheer number of screens and inputs sometimes created visual clutter. Students and professors consistently critiqued the locations of confidence monitors. One faculty member asked why designers had made wireless casting the default, rather than reliable hardwire connections. These observations reminded me that classroom technology succeeds not only when it dazzles, but also when it disappears.

More broadly, I learned that the strength of the system lies in its layers. No single tool is essential, but together the presence of multiple technologies offers flexible options that allow professors to tailor their approaches.

The role of the architect, the planner, and the educator isn’t to lock in a fixed model, but to create spaces that can flexibly absorb change without losing purpose.

The uncertain future. This experience left me with a deeper confidence in the value of thoughtful and rigorous classroom design. At the same time, my sense of humility was renewed, because the ground is shifting beneath our feet as AI reshapes how students engage, how faculty teach, and how learning unfolds.

That unpredictability brought me back to Klauder and Wise. Nearly a century ago, they described classrooms in such simple terms: lecture or discussion, flat or sloped. But their descriptions now read as historical artifacts. They couldn’t have foreseen the complexity of our designs today. Similarly, we cannot fully predict the future.

The role of the architect, the planner, and the educator isn’t to lock in a fixed model, but to create spaces that can flexibly absorb change without losing purpose. Whether we view AI as a supplement or a disruption, we must embrace it as something that will undoubtedly shape the next era of education.

Final Reflections

Architects often talk about user experience from a distance, relying on post-occupancy data to evaluate how buildings operate. But during my time at the Cox School, I had the chance to be immersed in that operation—to observe how classrooms are not just settings for learning, but tools that push learning forward.

Even when a building is “done,” the work isn’t. Pedagogy isn’t static, nor are the spaces that support it. There are always new behaviors to study and new questions to ask.

A classroom is a place where academic ideals meet an everyday reality that is complex, adaptive, and full of surprises. Like architecture, classroom design is a practice that’s never finished—that makes it worth returning to, again and again.