Schools are still being built today along the old lines of a row of classrooms along a corridor with coat-pegs and the occasional ‘work-corners’. There are often external reasons for such a plan, and the classrooms themselves may be well-designed and may function accordingly. But you must realize that, with this type of arrangement, each classroom becomes a self-contained, separate unit with at best a reasonable relationship with its immediate neighbours. Children in different classes see each other in the corridor when the lessons start and finish – and at those times it is usually very full. In a situation where the classrooms are grouped around the communal space, so that the children leaving the classrooms automatically converge into the centre, there would be much more opportunity for casual and spontaneous contact between children of different ages…[+]