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Scotch Oakburn College Middle School in Launceston, Tasmania has received a 2010 LEARNING BY DESIGN Honorable Mention Award. From among the multitude of projects submitted from throughout the country, this project has been deemed one of the best by a nationally recognized panel of architects and educational facility specialists. FNI served as Design Architect for the project.

In addition, Scotch Oakburn College will be included in an exhibit at the 2010 annual conference of the National School Boards Association (NSBA).

FNI has been selected by Fairfax County Public Schools, VA, to serve as the Planning and Design Consultant for a major renovation project at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology. FNI will serve as a consultant on the Ballou Justice Upton Architects team working on this exciting project to completely modernize the school that U.S. News and World Report ranked the #1 High School out of 18,000 High Schools in America.

A completely revised 2^nd Edition of The Language of School Design (100 more pages and dozens of new illustrations of innovative schools) has been released. With dozens of excellent reviews and thousands of copies sold, LOSD is a must-have resource for School Planners, Architects, Educators and Administrators.
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Sinarmas World Academy in Indonesia has been awarded the prestigious Project of Distinction Award by the Council of Educational Facility Planners International at their recently concluded world conference in Washington, DC. FNI served as this K-12 project’s Master Planner and Design Architect.
Picture shows FNI Chairman Randall Fielding holding the coveted Award with FNI’s Principal Jay Litman who led the SWA design team in coordination with our Indonesian partner Suwandi Dharma.

“The 3,000-crore Yash Birla Group has earmarked Rs 500 crore in the next three years to establish nearly 350 educational institutions for students and teachers through the group company, Birla Edutech.
This will comprise around 200 pre-schools, over 100 K-to-12 schools, 15 super-speciality colleges, and 20 teacher training institutes, the Group Chairman, Mr Yash Birla, said at a press meet here on Wednesday…
..Birla Edutech has tied up with Fielding Nair International (FNI), a company that designs school facilities.”
Other sources:
Projects Today
Myiris

FNI’s Scotch Oakburn College Middle School Project in Launceston, Tasmania has Opened. Project celebrates multiple modes of learning and places special emphasis on student collaboration and learning with ICT.

2008 ended with a bang for FNI as these wonderful projects demonstrate:

CANADA

Saskatchewan: We have been retained to work on 6 projects in Regina, including a High School embedded within a Shared Community Learning Center, a Trades and Skills Center and four Elementary Schools.

Piqqusilirivvik: A new Inuit Cultural Learning Facility developed within the Arctic Circle through a series of collaborative design workshops with the various Canadian and Nunavut governmental agencies, the Inuit Elders and Inuit user constituencies. FSC, working closely with Fielding Nair International (FNI) has developed Piqqusilirivvik as an innovative learning community that will allow students to live and learn in a protected project based learning environment. The facility will be located in the Inuit Community of Clyde River, overlooking Patricia Bay. The building has been designed to fit into it Arctic environment with respect to the extremes in temperature, wind and snow.

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MALAYSIA

Nusajaya: FNI is serving as the Education Planning Consultant and Design Architect for the Sri KDU SMART school to be located in Nusajaya near the Singapore border. This K-12 school with an IB Program will model international best practice in both education and school facilities design.

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SWITZERLAND

Leysin: The beautiful Ski resort Village of Leysin is located in the Alpes Vaudoise at an altitude of 1,200 meters above sea level. FNI is the design Architect for the conversion of the Historic Grand Hotel into a 21^st Century Learning Center for the world-renowned Leysin American School. FNI’s work supports the LAS vision to promote an evolving environment of academic excellence and personal growth for each student.

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ABU DHABI

FNI has teamed up with SHW Group in Texas to develop National Design Standards for the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. This is an exciting project because it will entail the development of a completely state-of-the-art process for creating innovative schools around the country. Altogether, over 300 schools are likely to be impacted by the new Standards. Some of these are in spectacular new developments including Masdar – the world’s first (and only) Carbon Neutral City.

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USA

Middletown, Rhode Island: Before and after pictures at Forrest Primary School. Photo on left shows typical “cells and bells” classroom and corridor block. Image on right shows how this space was converted into a dynamic Personalized Learning Community over the space of just two months with almost no money at all!

Middletown, Rhode Island: FNI has developed and submitted a Master Plan for Middletown Schools with extensive community consultation. Two pilot projects have already been implemented with wonderful responses from the teachers and students – see one example above. FNI is now working closely with the School stakeholder community to develop an implementation strategy for the ambitious Master Plan.

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Key Biscayne, Florida: FNI has recently completed the first phase of the Municipal Charter School project in the Island Paradise of Key Biscayne – the submission includes a feasibility study for the school prepared after a series of community meetings.

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Gainesville, Florida: FNI has been selected to serve as Planning, Programming and Design Consultants for the University of Florida’s PK Yonge Developmental Research School in Gainesville. This project will marry the best innovations in education, architecture and environmental design on the School’s picturesque Florida campus.

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In other News (see our Projects page for more information):Cayman Islands: Three high schools and an elementary school that FNI worked on in the Cayman Islands as Planning and Design Consultants are now in construction. See construction image of the school in Frank Sound below. These new schools are indeed world-class in every regard and they will put the Cayman Islands on the International Map as a world education leader.

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North Carolina: Duke School located on the Duke University Campus in Durham North Carolina, one of the country’s most innovative schools, and an FNI project that we are really proud of, is nearing construction completion and will be ready to receive students in February 2009!

If things have looked quiet on the FNI website, you’ll be pleased to know that this is because we’ve all been incredibly busy helping great learning communities to emerge or become better in new places all over the world. Right now we are very busy in the Arctic Circle; Saskatchewan, Canada; Melbourne Australia; Malaysia; the United Kingdom, Kazakhstan and Florida.

EFEI news
We are anticipating the launch later this month of GoodSchoolDesign.com, a portal for our new and improved Educational Facilities Effectiveness Instrument (EFEI). The new interface is extremely user-friendly and automates the process of recording and presenting evaluations, including photographs! You can go to GoodSchoolDesign.com now to take a peek at the portal and find more about EFEI.

Publications
In February, we were published in the Australian Education Union’s Victorian journal, Professional Voice, and in March had an article in Voices in Urban Education — published by Brown University’s Anneberg Institute for School Reform.

We were also invited to contribute an introduction to the School Libraries Association of Victoria’s new publication, Rethink! — you can learn more about it and find an order form here.

FNI, with local partner architect Ryan Companies has been recognized with a Citation award in the AIA 2008 Educational Facility Design Awards for the Cristo Rey Jesuit High School/Colin Powell Youth Leadership Center. The awards are sponsored by the American Institute of Architects’ Committee on Architecture for Education. The awards will be presented at the 2008 School Building Expo in Illinois.