Pre K-12

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  Roland A. Coleman II

  Principal

  Roland Coleman has over 30 years of experience in client and design team management, with a focus on educational planning and design for city, suburban and rural school districts. Projects have ranged from campus master plans to complex district-wide, multi-year, multi-phased assignments involving existing conditions assessments, programming, user/stakeholder communication, programming and test-fit concepts for renovations, and new replacement schools. His ability to develop consensus within multiple constituencies – students, teachers, parents, administrators and the community – has produced outstanding educational facilities that reflect the client’s spirit and vision, while meeting their goals for budget, schedule, function and quality civic architecture.

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  Hans Kullerkupp, AIA

  Principal

  Hans Kullerkupp is responsible for Cannon Design’s Pre K – 12 education practice, providing leadership during planning, feasibility studies, and facility evaluations as well as building design and renovation programs. With expertise gained over 40 years of professional practice, his valuable relationships with State Education Departments lend clients the critical insights required to navigate the regulatory review and approval process to obtain authorization for design and execution. A number of projects have been recognized with local, regional and national design honors from American School and University and the Society of American Registered Architects. These include Rochester City School District, James Madison School of Excellence, and the Cornwall Central School District, High School.

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  Trung T. Le, AIA

  Principal

  A key leader for Cannon Design’s education group, Trung T. Le is a widely-recognized advocate for incorporating multiple intelligences and learning styles in the design of education environments. During his 20-year career he has created spaces encouraging student inquiry and imagination, and what it means to be a part of a global community.

  His design philosophy has yielded awards from the Chicago and national chapters of the American Institute of Architects, and has been featured in Architectural Record, Contract Design and Edutopia. Le is a frequent speaker at national and international education and design conferences, and his collaboration with Bruce Mau resulted in the publication The Third Teacher, a cabinet of wonders on how design can transform the ecology of learning. Le also leads The Third Teacher Plus, an education design consultancy within the firm’s ideas-based practice assisting learning communities to better serve 21st century learners.

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  Christian Long

  Vice President

  Christian Long is an educator, school planner, technology expert, passionate advocate for innovative learning communities, and educational futurist. Christian works for Cannon Design’s education group where he helps to lead The Third Teacher Plus platform. Additionally, he was the founder of Be Playful, a collaborative global design agency focused on the intersection between school planning/design, emerging technology, professional development, and future trending. He is also founder/co-developer of Prototype Design Camp, an innovative national design program for young creatives, collaborating on real problems in the real world in real time. Additionally, Christian speaks nationally and internationally on topics ranging from emerging trends in education, 21st century technology and social media, and innovative school planning practices.

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Planning & Programming

Each ‘local school’ should embody the specific programming and planning as a critical component of the childhood to college educational continuum known as PreK/16. Our experiences across the country and overseas reinforce that to be effective design professionals we must focus first on being careful listeners at the inception of each client relationship.

The ‘program’ developed for each project will establish the essence of the educational mission, expectations, as well as standards by which the proposed project can be quantified and equitably measured. The ‘planning’ will seamlessly integrate best practices, and functionality that translate challenges into exciting opportunities. The operative mind-set thus is to program, plan and then explore the most meaningful possibilities as architectural solutions in a structured process.

Facilities Survey & Assessment

The background accumulation must be specific to each client’s circumstances and context – whether an existing school, reconstruction, expansion, or entirely new initiative. The key is to benchmark the existing conditions relative to emerging trends in pedagogy and technology that have proven successful.

The common thread between high performance educators and students prepared to learn are facilities that profoundly encourage and sustain that dynamic human interaction. An accurate assessment of the conditions, capacities, and useful life of the facilities are the strategic touchstones to establish priorities, budgets, and ultimately the value and ‘do-ability’ of a proposed project. Our methodology involves a holistic evaluation of nearly 90 criteria from building systems to support spaces, accessibility and green design. The resulting assessment is a cumulative ‘snapshot’ that uses numerical rankings consistently across all criteria in an easily understood, reader-friendly manner.

Pre K & Elementary Schools

The end goal of educating students who will achieve their full potential requires a solid foundation. In schools, that basic building block is high performance classrooms from PreK to graduation.

Research demonstrates that teaching and learning are acts of will. However, if the rudiments of math concepts and learning how to read fail to be established in PreK, that student invariably is at risk to be an underachiever. From pre-literacy through early childhood we advocate age-appropriate classrooms that provide discrete, small group learning and activity centers. We also advocate a technology infrastructure that provides in-classroom computer and digital resources as the baseline standard for both teachers’ and students’ use, general classroom as well as science, math and language labs. In the telecommunications would of today’s young people, the computer has to be as intrinsic and accessible as the pencil and calculator were for their parents.

Middle Schools

The dilemma is to keep the instructional setting properly aligned with the psychological, physical and intellectual growth of young people as they enter and experience adolescence. That is a complex challenge for society at large, and in our middle schools the disconnects come into clear focus.

The fact is by the ‘middle years’ we expect our students to have the confidence and mastery beyond learning to read, but instead reading to learn. The impacts upon schools are equally profound because information and events around the world are instantly available in the 21st Century cyber-age. Thus, capturing and retaining each student’s attention span is far more difficult, and demands that education and design professionals truly partner to implement solutions that speak to the mind and imagination

High Schools

Today’s high schools are translating possibilities into achievements that demonstrate a greater purposefulness than ‘a school is just a school’. The students’ interests and skill sets to successfully compete individually and collectively as a team in the global marketplace are now at the forefront of ‘hands-on’, uniquely transformative experiences in our secondary schools.

We have planned and designed high schools that feature ninth grade academies, house plans, academic/technical schools of excellence, and middle colleges where students cross register with local institutions of higher education. The trend is we must re-establish advanced skills in math and science to assure thought leadership in future generations. Accordingly, the archaic boundaries of time, school year and even setting are being blurred by technology where it is becoming customary to bring the professor into the high school classroom, and vice-versa.

Private Education

The world of private schools, although distinct, still keeps a mindful eye on the national trends and dialogue in the educational communities. A more accurate differentiator is that our private school clients are far more nimble at identifying the issues, priorities and a plan of action in response.

Our portfolio of private schools reveals that the market pressures to stay current, cost effective – yet quality results oriented –present real challenges that only vary by degrees. An important distinction we often recognize and enhance is the value placed on the student life aspects. Those important details span the spectrum from formal and informal student common spaces; to he library as the symbolic seat of learning; individual health and team athletics; to the auditorium and even the cafeteria as the daily theatre of life. The facilities must reflect traditions and embrace the education of each child in a personalized and holistic approach.

Capital Improvement Programs

The higher expectations placed upon our students, coupled with the wider usages and complexity of our school facilities contribute to the increasing cost of today’s capital improvements. For example, the safety of our children once was taken for granted, but now requires sophisticated entry, surveillance and wireless VolP systems.

A common misnomer is the presumption that good design is also expensive. Our Pk/12 practice is a testament in both the public and private sectors that great design results form a couple of strategic factors: opportunity; fundamentally great decisions; and most importantly the ability to partner in a cooperative, win/win spirit with each client, user and stakeholder. Capital projects are major investments of valuable resources that simply must optimize the clarity of vision, purpose and accountability.

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  The Illinois School Board Journal

  To build student success: Activating a connection between learning, environment

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  American School & University

  William W. Caudill Citation: Booker T. Washington STEM Academy

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  American School & University

  Booker T. Washington STEM Academy Champaign, Illinois

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  Environmental Design & Construction

  Exercising Thought: Sidwell Friends School, Athletic Facility

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  School Construction News

  Green Building Benefits: A.E. Stevenson High School & Booker T. Washington STEM Academy

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  Consulting Specifying Engineer

  When and Where to Use Displacement Ventilation

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  Chicago Architect

  What’s on the Mind of Trung Le – Head of Cannon Design’s “Third Teacher” Effort

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  Building Operating Management

  Smart Planning, Better Schools

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• Chicago Public Schools - Academy for Global Citizenship

  Green Good Award for Architecture

  Chicago Athenaeum, Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies

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  Sidwell Friends School - Athletic Facility

  Innovation Architecture & Design Awards

  Recreation Management

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  Champaign Unit 4 School District - Booker T. Washington STEM Academy

  Award of Distinction

  Illinois Association of School Boards

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  William W. Caudill Citation for Design Excellence

  American School & University

  This project supports 21st century learning and has outstanding flexible learning spaces. The inclusion of community history and inspirational messages are an effective component of this design.—2012 Jury

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  Champaign Unit 4 School District - Carrie Busey Elementary School

  Citation of Excellence

  Learning By Design

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  Episcopal High School - Centennial Gymnasium Addition

  Architectural Portfolio, Outstanding Design

  American School & University

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  Roosevelt Union Free School District - Middle School

  Award of Merit

  AIA Western New York

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  Dec. 4, 2012

  Koc Model School

  Cannon Design’s Mehrdad Yazdani and Trung Le presented at the Education and Architecture Conference in Istanbul sponsored by the Koc Foundation and organized by its General Manager Erdal Yildirim. With a focus on the future of education, Le began with ...

  Presented At:

  • Koc Foundation: Education and Architecture Conference, Dec. 4, 2012
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  Feb. 29, 2012

  Design thinking: unlocking the key to innovation

  Curious about design thinking? Wonder what might drive innovation in your school or classroom? Passionate, experienced workshop leaders guide you through the design process as we collectively uncover the issues, identify questions for inquiry, work as teams to ideate and ...

  Presented At:

  • National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), Feb. 29, 2012
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  Feb. 9, 2012

  NOT SCHOOL! Designing a regenerative learning ecology

  How can we create an education system that not only develops the minds of our youth, but also the world in which they live? Trung Le looks at the bigger picture of education and walks through steps to create an ...

  Presented At:

  • Green Schools National Network, Feb. 9, 2012
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  Feb. 9, 2012

  Designing a regenerative learning ecology with students at the center

  The Third Teacher Plus team facilitates a workshop that uses the design thinking process (creative problem solving resulting in a tangible solution) to empower participants to consider how learning can regenerate our society and ecology. Ultimately, this activity is a ...

  Presented At:

  • Green Schools National Network, Feb. 9, 2012
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  Jan. 5, 2012

  Design thinking: an agile teaching and learning methodology for a complex future

  If you were able to design your own ‘classroom for the future’ – with your choice of resources, furniture, tools, and technology – how would you design it so that your students would be most capable of adapting in an ...

  Presented At:

  • CORE Education, Learning @ School, Jan. 5, 2012
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  Feb. 4, 2011

  Below Grade Athletic Facility at Sidwell

  School officials face ongoing and increasing demands to develop academic and athletic facilities that modernize their campuses and strengthen enrollment, while preserving green space, implementing sustainability measures and benefitting the community. Below-grade facilities are often deemed both too expensive and ...

  Presented At:

  • National Business Officers Association (NBOA), Feb. 4, 2011
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  Feb. 4, 2011

  Designing a Spatial Language for the Learning Ecology

  Touching on his efforts to design the education system, Le discusses transformative movements occurring in modern society from which we can find inspiration. With great focus on the relationship between science and the arts, Le seeks to entangle and inextricably ...

  Presented At:

  • TEDxRESET, Feb. 4, 2011
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  Jan. 6, 2011

  The Third Teacher

  The world in which we live and learn has changed dramatically over the past century and continues to evolve at an even faster rate. Unfortunately, our schools and learning spaces have failed to adapt. The Third Teacher introduces revolutionary ideas ...

  Presented At:

  • New York State Superintendents Conference, Winter Meeting, Jan. 6, 2011
  • Big Ideas Fest, Dec. 6, 2010
  • Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation STEM Design Workshop, Jan. 6, 2010
  • British Council for School Environments, Dec. 6, 2009
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  Sept. 6, 2010

  The World Is Spiky

  An in-depth look at the role of the physical environment in education with a focus on how schools can provide safe, sustainable learning centers in urban environments.

  Presented At:

  • CEFPI 2010 Annual Conference, Sept. 6, 2010