The Spaces That Make Us with Danish Kurani S11E5 (144)
What if the biggest influence on learning isn’t the curriculum, but the environment learners move through every day?
If schools are designed for compliance instead of creativity, are we building spaces that quietly work against human flourishing?
🎙️ Episode Summary
In this episode, Louka Parry speaks with architect, urban designer and author Danish Kurani about the powerful but often overlooked role of physical space in shaping how we think, feel and learn. From classrooms and homes to supermarkets and cities, Danish argues that design is never neutral. It influences behaviour, wellbeing, creativity and connection in ways we rarely notice until we learn to see it. Together, they explore what great learning environments require, why flexible furniture alone is not enough, and how educators, leaders and parents can become more intentional designers of the spaces that shape human flourishing.
👤 About Danish Kurani
Danish Kurani sees how buildings are failing to nourish people. After witnessing how poorly designed environments hold back people across the globe – from the middle of Manhattan to villages in India – he’s made it his mission to remake architecture for human flourishing. His groundbreaking designs for New York City, Google, and communities on four continents prove that thoughtful architecture can unlock human potential.
Named one of the World’s Most Innovative Architects by Fast Company, Kurani has pioneered a human-centered approach that’s transforming lives worldwide. His work spans from floating homes in disaster-prone areas to schools in informal settlements, always focusing on one question: how can architecture solve our most pressing social challenges?
A Harvard-trained architect and urban designer, Kurani’s architectural ideas have been shared at leading institutions including Stanford, MIT, Harvard, and Columbia, and featured in TIME, World Economic Forum, and the Wall Street Journal. National governments recognize him as a leading voice in social impact architecture – not because he builds beautiful buildings, but because he builds spaces that work for real people.
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Tune in to be inspired, challenged, and reminded why love truly is at the heart of learning.
[Transcript Automated]
Louka Parry (00:10)
Hello everybody and welcome back to the learning future podcast. I'm your host, Louka Parry. Today we're speaking with Danish Kurani and he's a Harvard trained architect, urban designer and founder of Kurani, a social impact studio, rethinking how schools, clinics and community spaces shape human flourishing. He's the author of a new book called the spaces that make us. And I'm really excited about this conversation because I'm an educator and he's an architect. And of course, there's a beautiful intersection there that we really want to try to understand.
You know, where we think about health behavior and kind of quality of our lives, not just the aesthetic. Danish, great to have you on the podcast.
Danish Kurani (00:47)
Yeah, thanks Louka.
Louka Parry (00:49)
First question, always, what's something that you're learning right now? What's a process of learning or discovery that you're in?
Danish Kurani (00:57)
okay. ⁓ You know, just today, we're working with a school in Northern California. And for the last two days, I've had two people on my team competing. We set up an inter-office competition to see in two days who can produce a better result to create a rendering of a space that we've designed, doing it the traditional way where we model 3D model it and we render it.
Louka Parry (01:13)
to say.
Danish Kurani (01:24)
versus using AI and we've run this competition. So the person in my office who's best at doing each of those, they've actually been competing. ⁓ I think of it kind of like for any fans of the office, the American version of the office where, ⁓ you know, Dwight was competing against the website to see who could sell more paper. We had our own man versus machine competition.
Louka Parry (01:26)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Danish Kurani (01:50)
And I will say I've seen the results they're in and man won for now. So that was interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
Louka Parry (01:51)
Fascinating.
Interesting.
It is, it is fascinating. A lot of the conversations we have here are about this, you know, augmented intelligence space, ⁓ and the implications of it. I'd love you to take us into just like into the center of your work and even your philosophy. know, what is it that you believe about space when it comes to learning or productivity? Like what if you come to understand as a, you know, I would say like a leading architect.
Danish Kurani (02:27)
Hmm. So I guess for me, what I think about space is that it is underappreciated, that it is ubiquitous. You cannot escape the built environment unless you're in the middle of the ocean or actually then you're on a boat and that's part of your built environment. But maybe if you're in the middle of the woods or on a mountain somewhere, but actually if you live to 80, you're going to spend 79.
six of your years in the built environment. And so I think we focus so much on the digital environments and whether they're good for us or bad for us and manipulating us in this way or that way. And it's like, well, your grocery store is manipulating you from the second you walk up to the front door or your school classroom is heavily factoring into how well you're going to perform on this test or on this subject matter.
your design of your living room is shaping the relationship you have with your family members. And so I think it's underappreciated given how ubiquitous it is and how much we are products of our environments. And so for me as an architect, was, yeah, of course I can go design fancy buildings all over the world. And I've worked for the architects who did that, but that feels so hollow. And
I see design as a tool. It's a tool for solving problems. And so let's use architecture that way. It is a wonderful tool. can actually shape and guide behavior and thought and wellbeing and health and positively influence ourselves and our friends and our families and our communities. And so, yeah, for me, it's how do you use design as a tool to make life better?
Louka Parry (04:11)
Mmm.
love that. I'm, something I'm really curious about always is like, how do we see, you know, like, see a, so I think part of your work, what I'm hearing is you need to be able to see the connection and the ways that space is influencing behavior. And so I'd love you to take us into some examples of common ways. And, know, we can start with the school space or the community space or the workspace, but come common ways that we're still designing things that undermine well-being, belonging or learning. You know, what are some of the kind of
Danish Kurani (04:36)
Hmm.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Hmm.
Louka Parry (04:55)
false steps or the, you know, myths perhaps that we think are good bust.
Danish Kurani (04:58)
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, and by the way, like it's, there's enough quantitative data out there on this, but there's also our own lived experiences that we all have. And to your point, if we start to become aware of how much our lived experience is being shaped by the environment around us, right? So because we've got a lot of educators listening, I'll tell the story when I was in kindergarten.
I was five or six years old. And I, one day in class, like I realized like, I have to pee. I gotta go to the bathroom. And our bathroom was at the back of our class. So I was sitting on the front and the, you know, on the rug, we were having story time or something. And so I get up and, you know, I'm going to the bathroom in the back and, um,
As soon as I open the door and I walk in, another kid walks into the bathroom. It's a single occupancy bathroom, by the way, meant for one person at a time. Another kid walks in from a door opposite our door. And I think that's when I realized that, ⁓ this bathroom is shared between these two classrooms. And this kid had to go. Like he walked in and his pants were at his ankles and he started peeing everywhere. And he's just...
peeing left and right all over the place and and and I'm just standing there getting peed on by this kid and I couldn't even get out of the way because it's such a small bathroom and like it's and and the the the crazy part about this is like it wasn't even that kid's fault you know ⁓ so I you know I got peed on I'm soaking wet I had to like
Louka Parry (06:24)
wow, okay.
my god.
Danish Kurani (06:49)
try to sneak back to my spot on the rug and like, hope no one noticed that I'm all wet. My teacher, she was this matronly lovely woman, Ms. Ray. She saw me, she kind of pulled me aside and you know that she had like a pair of pants for kids who have accidents. like, it was the early nineties. So was like acid washed jeans, but like everyone knows like you, you had an accident. And so it was like so uncomfortable, embarrassing, humiliating.
Louka Parry (06:55)
wow.
Danish Kurani (07:17)
But then as I got older, I thought about it and then it's like, well, it wasn't really that boy's fault. Actually, the designers are the ones to blame. The ones who created this environment for a six-year-old. Like you want me a six-year-old who's like full bladdered, ready to do my business. You want me to be able to not only lock my door, but to think about locking a second door. I mean, most, most adults are going to get that wrong. Right. And so.
Louka Parry (07:33)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Danish Kurani (07:44)
That that was like one of my first experiences where like design just ruined my day. So forget the stats. It's it's it happens to us all the time. ⁓ you know, if we do want to get into even the, research behind this before we get into schools, I'll tell you even in our daily lives. Cause often when we think about the built environment, I feel like when we're talking about architecture, people think it's just.
Louka Parry (07:49)
Hmm.
Danish Kurani (08:12)
fancy high rises in Miami or cultural centers or places of worship, you know, these places that make you go, ⁓ like, you know.
Louka Parry (08:21)
Yeah,
Danish Kurani (08:22)
And yeah,
and, and it's that's architecture is so much more than that. is literally every window you look out of every doorway you walk through. It's that ugly building in your neighborhood. You never notice it's the, it's the highway you drive on the bridge, you cross the, warehouse as well as the museum. Like it's everything. Right. And
And I think we forget that like it's at every scale. is the, you know, it could be the chair you're sitting on or the sofa you're sitting on, which was designed for a six foot two Scandinavian and you're five foot nine. And so you're having back problems because it's so deep that you're laid back like this. Right. but it's also the, way your city is laid out, right. And that urban planners and politicians have decided like, this is how our city is going to be.
Louka Parry (09:02)
Totally. Yeah.
Danish Kurani (09:16)
You know, there's studies they did in LA that when you sit in rush hour traffic driving home, and I don't know where all your listeners are, but in America, the majority of people that go to work commute and sit in rush hour traffic. And we have urban sprawl everywhere, suburban sprawl. When you sit in rush hour traffic on your way home, domestic violence goes up by 9%. So.
Like we want to talk about how influential our spaces can be. It can literally drive you to higher rates of domestic violence, right? Because of what it's doing to you here. ⁓ you know, there's, let's say in schools, when we talk about creativity, there's studies that show that if I put a learner and anyone, a worker learner under a high ceiling, they can be.
Louka Parry (10:13)
Mm-hmm.
Danish Kurani (10:14)
up to 25 % more creative, better at connecting dots between different subjects and things. ⁓ You know, in schools, like kids actually on average only hear about 75 % of what you tell them, like what the teacher says because of poor acoustics. So imagine like, just because of the environment, you're already at the 75 % mark of like comprehension because you're missing.
Louka Parry (10:22)
amazing.
Wow, before any other very, yeah.
Danish Kurani (10:43)
before anything else. ⁓ You know, so there's so much data that shows us that whether it's school, workplace, your neighborhood, just the way you move around, right? ⁓ The walking versus driving and ⁓ feelings of community, like there's so much that it influences us.
Louka Parry (11:06)
I wonder, Danish, I want you to put this, I think there's a myth here, right? Which is, well, I have character and my character can overcome context. And I think what you're saying is that context in the behavioral sciences, these are, know, in psychology, there's so much interesting work on this, but your context actually is a huge driver of behavior and very rarely can we even operate from a character oriented place because
Danish Kurani (11:20)
you
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Louka Parry (11:36)
the context drive, it'd be that psychological, physical or whatever else. So I think there's something there about, cause you might be like, oh, well actually I wouldn't do that, Danish. I'm more in control of my actions than the normal person, which is probably what people would say, right? I'm a well educated, I'm an educator. wouldn't, I'm not influenced. And yet bad design is everywhere. And I think once you can see it, you can't unsee it.
Danish Kurani (11:40)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. mean, for, well, for the educators, I'd say how good of a job do you do staying off of Instagram and social media?
Louka Parry (11:58)
Double-edged sword, perhaps.
Danish Kurani (12:08)
because that's a digital environment and you'd like to think mind over matter and that I can control this and you know how addictive it is, right? Don't lie. Like you know how addictive it is. And that's an environment that was designed to do that, right? And so the same way you walk into a grocery store, I can tell you, no matter who you are, you're gonna buy more things that are at eye level. And that's why the grocery store has placed their highest profit.
Louka Parry (12:15)
Mm-hmm.
Danish Kurani (12:35)
items at eye level or the size of the shopping cart. It signals to you how much you should buy or fill up or the fact that most grocery stores you walk in and the produce is there first because once you buy something healthy, you feel licensed to buy some junk food later on your journey or think about where the milk and the eggs are. Where are they in your grocery store?
Louka Parry (12:52)
interesting.
at the back of the fridge.
Danish Kurani (13:02)
In the back, of course. Yeah. There's some refrigeration needs, but those are actually the staples. They know every time you come in, you're more likely to need some milk and eggs. It's going to force you to walk all the way through the store. And usually, and usually it's perpendicular to all the other aisles, right? So as you're walking along the milk and dairy aisle, it's perpendicular. You, you see down every single other. Yeah. So, I mean, we, we may think this, that like,
Louka Parry (13:11)
Of course.
Yes, it's true. Yeah.
It's flagging all the others. Of course.
Danish Kurani (13:29)
I am like responsible for my own destiny, but in large part, like our digital environment has shown us, we are not in control the way we hope and aspire to be. And the same is actually true of your physical environment. I mean, if I put you in a city where the norm is walking because you can access everything, you're going to be healthier. You're going to be physically more healthy. Right. ⁓
Louka Parry (13:43)
Mmm.
Mmm.
Danish Kurani (13:59)
If I move the TV from being the central focus in your living room to not being the central focus, you're more likely to talk to your family and have conversations and do other things, right? ⁓ And so it's inescapable and it's extremely influential. Now, the good part about this, all of this sounds like, gosh, like
Louka Parry (14:12)
Wow.
Danish Kurani (14:28)
you know, in this nature versus nurture debate and nurture plays such a big role and the environment is influencing us like we're screwed and it's no, we're not like we designed all of these environments so we can redesign them.
Louka Parry (14:31)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. I love, I love it. For me, the empowerment comes in capacity to become aware. How do I see? And then to realize you can redesign. know, obviously now I would call myself a designer after perhaps 10 years of doing design thinking and, and that kind of space because it is a mindset. Yeah. Well,
Danish Kurani (15:00)
And I think educators are designers. Educators are
designers, by the way, because you're designing experiences and you're designing a way for someone to learn something.
Louka Parry (15:11)
Well, I not surprising. I agree with you, Danish, although I don't think, I think there's a couple of camps in the education space. I'm on, I'm with you on the, design an environment, you design an experience in which there are particular elements that are instructive. But the other camp is I'm an instructor. So I transact, which is I have some content knowledge and you need to absorb that content knowledge. And so from a.
Louka Parry (15:39)
From a kind of archetypal standpoint, I think there's a huge loss when you don't think of yourself as a designer. Educator as designer, I think is a foundational worldview. It's a mindset versus, actually I've got some content curriculum to get through. I'm going to teach it. And you know, if you teach and your view of teaching is instructive or transactional, well, we're missing the social fabric. We're missing kind of the other, the design principles, perhaps.
Danish Kurani (15:46)
Yeah, that's a shame because if you think of it as just purely transactional in that sense that like I'm going to give you the content and it's up to you to absorb this. That's like me telling them I'm going to, ⁓ you know, I'm going to have you read some text and in one up and like the text is going to be this tiny. And if you can't see it.
Louka Parry (16:09)
we would care about.
Danish Kurani (16:34)
sucks. then I get, you know, like the years. Yeah. I mean that that's, ⁓ versus like I'm going to design it graphically so that has nice contrast on the page. The font size is extremely legible. The, the, you know, paragraphs aren't so wide that your eye loses track of where you are. Like I can make it much easier for you by designing it. Of course. Yeah.
Louka Parry (16:37)
Yeah. Yeah.
Interesting. Yeah.
Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised. I don't think many people listening to this conversation would be operating in that transactional frame very much. I mean, there is a transaction that has to happen in education spaces, but I think it needs to be part of a larger principles of design and, and, you know, social cognition. You know, we learn best together in a safe environment where there's motivation and rigor, not compliance culture. so yeah, I, I, want, I'm really curious about, yeah. So I, I just think that's my kind of reflection on like where we're at. And certainly the future calls for us to become learning designers or learning architects is words that we use. You're literally architecting an experience and then people get to walk around in the experience you've created, you know, social, emotional, cognitive, physical potentially as well. forget about the body. So, you know,
Louka Parry (17:52)
That was a part of the issue. You know, we're not embodied in these physical spaces, whereas we are sitting in our body where we could, should be, be. So I'd love you to take us into, into a bit, and especially kind of the idea of some of the ideas you put in the book, you know, the spaces that make us. Like, what do we know about great learning environments? What are some of the design features? Cause I think on occasion you go like, well, it's some furniture and how you arrange the desks and we're done, but take us more into the design principles conversation, perhaps.
Danish Kurani (17:56)
Yeah, I actually think, by the way, that's one of the problems in the way schools and education spaces get designed today is too many people just buy flexible furniture, which just means like stuff on wheels that's modular, throw it in a classroom and say, look, modern learning environment. And that, that falls very short of what we should be doing. And of course there's some, so much data on
good acoustics, natural light so that students circadian rhythms ⁓ are staying in balance, ⁓ views of nature and views to the distance, which actually help your brain sort of reset. ⁓
views of nature help with creativity and calming, the ability to move. So one of the things that I like doing in schools and even workplaces is creating what I call a pace track, which is essentially a route you can take, ideally outside, around a courtyard or somewhere where you can just pace to think. And I do this here in my courtyard too.
Louka Parry (19:17)
that's nice.
Danish Kurani (19:30)
And it actually increases blood flow to the brain and that circulation being ambulatory in that way helps with creativity, helps with focus, just mental performance. ⁓ and I find that actually helps me crack problems sometimes, like something I've been thinking about at my desk. And it's like, I need to get out there and pace and then I can, I can really get through it. and you know, one of the other things is that.
Danish Kurani (20:00)
There are so many different goals in education. Of course, there's like the one primary goal, which is to educate people. But then within that, there's so many, like I've had Google, for example, ⁓ they've been one of my partners for the last 10 years. They realized we have this problem in Silicon Valley where we don't have enough black and brown.
representation. It's very white. It's very Asian. Like we need more diversity in the people who actually designed the tech that we all get to use. And so they realized we need to increase the level of computer science education in high schools, especially in these communities that are primarily black and brown. And so for them, like they're educating, but they have a very specific purpose.
which is to increase the number of minority students who go study computer science in college. They wanted to combat imposter syndrome. So make these kids feel like, well, just because you don't look like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, like that's okay. You belong in tech. You can be in this industry that.
Danish Kurani (21:17)
You should think more like a maker and not just a consumer. So get into a maker mindset to instill confidence in them because actually schools kind of beat the confidence out of you. You know, it's very Sir Ken Robinson. Like we start off as divergent thinkers, then you're told there's one right answer on this test and you become convergent thinkers, right? So it gets the confidence out of you.
And so they had several goals like that. And another one was getting kids to fall in love with computer science and just say, is something I would love to do for a career. Those are very different goals than I had another client also in the Bay Area. was a foundation called the Reset Foundation. And they realized that when we send men to prison,
Danish Kurani (22:08)
when they get out of prison, the recidivism rates, the chances that they end up back in prison are very high. And this punitive system we have in America doesn't really work. And so they were convincing the court system to give them these young men so that they can put them on a campus and give them education and therapy and skills training.
Again, it's still education and the ultimate goal is the same, but that flavor of education looks a little bit different than what I was doing with Google. So I think one of the key things in designing is to deeply, truly understand what is the problem I'm trying to solve with this space and who is it for? like, what is, what are their daily rhythms? What is their
Danish Kurani (23:01)
What are their friction points? What prevents them from learning well? What makes it hard for them to teach well? You know, the same way, Louka, if I was, if I came over and I was designing your home for you and your family, I would get to know your daily rhythms and, and who you aspire to be. You might say, I want to be healthier. You're pretty fit anyways, but let's say you, you said, I wanted to be healthier. ⁓ and you said, you know,
Louka Parry (23:24)
Hahaha
Danish Kurani (23:28)
Help me design me a space that can make me healthy. Right. And so we would look at like, are all the moments throughout the day where Louka kind of, ⁓ makes unhealthy choices and how can we make it the default for you to be healthy? Right. ⁓ like one thing I started doing years ago, two things I'll tell you.
Louka Parry (23:39)
Yeah.
Danish Kurani (23:48)
I started sitting on the floor more at home. There, there's studies out there with where they study twins over their lifetimes and the twin that sits on the floor actually live longer because you have better ⁓ mobility as you age stronger, lower body. And, know, for example, the Japanese they've traditionally slept on like this Shiki futons on the floor. So I lowered my bed and I stopped sitting on the couch as much. I sit on a cushion on the floor.
Louka Parry (23:52)
That's
Absolutely.
Danish Kurani (24:16)
I also before bed, I will fill up a bottle of water and I will put it near my desk and I'll put my phone at my desk as well. So I won't bring my phone into the bedroom. And when my alarm goes off in the morning, I've got a full bottle of water that triggers me to chug it and start the day hydrated. Right? So basically like week, but
Louka Parry (24:17)
That's great.
Yeah. Yeah.
Danish Kurani (24:42)
I knew like these are some of my goals. Like I want to live a long time. want to stay healthier throughout the day. I want to hydrate more. I want to sleep better. So I don't want my phone. It distracts me. I start looking at work texts and emails, you know? So you have to figure out like who you're designing for and like what they aspire to and then design around that with intention.
Louka Parry (24:55)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do you find, Dinesh, that was really interesting. Not surprisingly, we have designed features in our home, things like tech-free bedroom, no technology in the bedroom. ⁓ In fact, yeah, absolutely. And our phones are in the office, right? So we have to get up when the alarm goes off before we go to the gym. I do Celtic sea salt with creatine and a small glass of water every time I go. So it's so true. It's kind of like the habit formation.
Danish Kurani (25:14)
Mm-hmm.
You guys do that? Yeah, nice. Yeah, nice. Yeah.
Louka Parry (25:32)
You know, and in some ways removing friction of certain things and increasing friction in other ways. The challenge I see is that most design because of the incentive model, we talked a bit about digital technology, most design pushes us towards decisions that maximize attention, perhaps if it's a digital product, that's about time on platform, right? So it's, you know, so, you know, you can design for somebody, but actually in the private sector, I try to be slightly skeptical and go, well, okay, this is, they're solving a problem for me, but also I'm also the product here, depending on how the model works. And so I don't know. I wonder a bit about like, for me, it's, you have to become design literate to realize, yeah, I can see what's happening here. I can see why it's so easy to fall into an Instagram real, you know, because of the way that it haps into our intimate rewards and dopamine and the social fabric and network theory.
Louka Parry (26:29)
So it's the same in physical environment. think the supermarket one you talked about was really interesting as well, you know, and of course the chocolates are at eye level for children and I don't know, and the magazines, you know, just one last thing. And so it's just design is everywhere.
Danish Kurani (26:38)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
by the way.
For chocolates, they even did studies where they showed that if you take a chocolate bar and you round the edges, the corners, it tastes better to people. It tastes sweeter by rounding the edges. Like since we're talking about design, that is design, right? It's a design choice. Like I'm going to have a rectangular, you know, square corners, or I'm going to have rounded corners. And the rounded corners taste sweeter.
Louka Parry (26:55)
All right?
Yeah, 100%.
Danish Kurani (27:14)
Right. ⁓ and by the way, like to your, to your point about the, ⁓ habit formation, right. So for anyone that's read atomic habits, James clear, he even talks about this where he said, I think for himself, like if the apples he wants to eat more fruit, if the apples are in the crisper in the fridge,
Louka Parry (27:18)
Wow.
Danish Kurani (27:34)
he's less likely to see them than if he puts them on a table somewhere, right? And they're out. So the same as a grocery store. I think what the point about the digital environments, unfortunately, it feels like most of our digital environments are designed to manipulate us and profit off of us. I will say for our built environment,
Louka Parry (27:39)
Yeah. Yeah.
Danish Kurani (28:00)
Of course, there examples like the grocery store, right? Where they are incentivized to make money and profit. And more often than not, actually we end up with environments, physical environments, architecture, urban design, interior design, that's bad for us. Not out of malice, but out of ignorance.
Louka Parry (28:02)
So, so.
Mm.
Gotcha.
Danish Kurani (28:21)
And of
course, sometimes it's economics, right? ⁓ We have very bland, flat, boring buildings that look cookie cutter and like no sense of charm or character or place, right? That's economics, right? ⁓ And also ignorance. But I would say largely, like the reason we have
Louka Parry (28:24)
Yeah, you can't do everything.
Yeah. Yeah.
Danish Kurani (28:44)
the negative impacts of our environments is mostly out of ignorance. To your point, like people didn't, see what they were doing, didn't realize.
Louka Parry (28:48)
Yeah.
Can you take us into the, painted me a picture then, Danish, because I think, know, people, you know, what, what area you can try, if you're an educator, teacher, listening to this, you can control the kind of four walls of your classroom. If you're a leader, you might be able to think more broadly about departments or perhaps an entire school or a new master planning process or refurbishment. Like what are, you know, we want healthy, happier, more conducive spaces for learning. What do they look like?
Louka Parry (29:21)
And I know that, you know, it'll be different depending on who, what, who the cohort is as we've spoken to, but what are the universal design principles that you'd say you have? You've talked about natural light, for example, talked about ability to kind of move in some way, not just move furniture around on wheels. What's the kind of, yeah, take paint me a picture of like, I want to walk into a space of school of the future and the learning future. And they're like, what is it? What could it look like?
Danish Kurani (29:24)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mmm, sure.
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, you know, we've, we've got certain physiological needs that need to be met. I need to be able to hear what someone's teaching. I need to feel comfortable temperature wise, not too hot, not too cold. Otherwise it's hard to focus. Right. By the way, like when I'm pacing around the courtyard to think if it's a very cold day or very windy day.
I can't focus because I'm focused on the stimuli, the wind, right? And so it's almost like minimizing the feeling of any stimuli. That's right. Like if you imagine like being in a sensory deprivation chamber, you can really think, right? And so if you've got, if you're at work,
Louka Parry (30:15)
Bye.
Mm-hmm, yeah, I get that.
Yeah, I love those. They're wild.
Danish Kurani (30:34)
or at school and this could be school, you're in a classroom or you're in an admin office. If there's a vent above you blowing air on you, it's kind of hard to focus, right? So taking care of what I would call these like basic physiological needs of like just making sure people are comfortable and that they can see what they need to see. They've got enough light, the acoustics are good, temperature wise, they're good.
Danish Kurani (31:00)
Then I think it gets to the fun stuff, which is like, okay, what kind of education are we trying to cook up? Are we at the type of school that we're just, kids are just being lectured at and moving from class to class? Or is this hands-on, project-based learning, real-world relevant, students driving this with their interests? Then that starts to look very different, right? Then you start to question even what's a classroom.
Louka Parry (31:24)
Can I, can I just interrupt?
Well, yeah, this, just want to get your point on this, you know, like, cause schools do do things differently, but do you have a view on the better way? Or do you just say it's a thousand flowers blooming, you know, and that's sufficient because he knows.
Danish Kurani (31:36)
I do. Yeah. No, no, no. I,
I, I do. I do. And yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, keep in mind, like my K through 12, I went through that. I'll call it traditional, like being lectured at shuttling from one hour of math to one hour of science to one hour of art.
Louka Parry (31:42)
Well tell us that piece, because you know, where do you put your flag in the sand and say, actually, based on everything I've learned, this is more important.
Yeah, me too.
Danish Kurani (32:06)
So I experienced that, but then for undergrad and grad school, I went to design school, which is project-based learning. We are going to give you a challenge. You're going to research it. You're going to ideate. You're going to brainstorm with your peers. You're going to prototype. You're going to get some feedback. You're going to continue designing, and then you're going to present it to the community and get, you know, feedback and learn that way. So that was a great.
educational experience, which was challenging, stimulating. You feel like you're in control. When I was in primary and secondary school, especially secondary, when I was in high school, I thought I hated reading. And then later I realized I didn't hate reading. just hated reading what you told me to read, right? Because it didn't feel relevant to read Wuthering Heights and Heart of Darkness and these things.
Danish Kurani (32:58)
But when I get to read about design or business or sociology or things that I care about, I love it. So yeah, I do, I don't work with schools that are doing that traditional model. And I like to work with schools, educators, nonprofits that think they have a better way of doing things. And I tell them, I say, look, you're designing this amazing software.
Danish Kurani (33:27)
I'm going to give you the hardware that you can run it on that it's going to run perfectly. Right. And you need that. Like you're creating a product that you're putting out into the world. Like people will experience your product, students and families. And that software needs the right hardware to really fly. Right. So I do, I'm not agnostic to learning models. Like I, I've experienced enough. I've seen enough in action to, to have a take. And I think.
Louka Parry (33:31)
Nice. Yeah.
Danish Kurani (33:57)
maybe Louka even bigger than that is what we've been doing hasn't worked very well. So I want to partner with the ones who say we're going to try something different. Right.
Louka Parry (34:08)
Yeah.
Yeah, it's great. It's definitely this, ⁓ I think this moment for all of us as we, as we look at the cognitive augmentation revolution, sometimes the cognitive offloading revolution, right? Which is the downside to that. You know, we're seeing those impacts as well. We might have an easier life, but we might not be as intelligent. There's some interesting data on, you know, reverse Flynn effect and cognitive decline in young people. So there's all that kind of stuff, right? You know, so I think a lot about productive friction.
Danish Kurani (34:21)
Yeah,
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Louka Parry (34:37)
and unproductive friction. you know, I think the issue is, I think what we're doing sometimes in the user centered design model is I'm going to remove friction in the short term, which feels unproductive, but in the long term, it's actually incredibly productive. And so in the end, don't, you don't grapple enough. don't see someone grappling, but motivated grappling. You know, that's, that's the kind of gold star world that I believe in. ⁓ I'll come to the end. ⁓
Danish Kurani (34:53)
productive.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Louka Parry (35:07)
Darnish, I could talk to you all day, But I'm curious just if you were to kind of scenario us out based on what you're working on and how you see signals and trends happening around the future of learning spaces. If we're this conversation in 2040, you know, when a toddler today is graduating from secondary school through high school, what do you think might be different? Perhaps what do you hope might be different in that future state for learners?
Danish Kurani (35:14)
So I remember this was, I think, a year before I started writing The Spaces That Make Us. I met this gentleman in the Bay Area who is a professor, science professor at university, but he writes science curriculum for middle schoolers.
And he told me that when he goes to different states to say, hey, you know, use my textbook for your science curriculum for middle school, because every 10 years or so they, they re-up their contracts. He said, when he went to Texas, the school boards basically looked at his curriculum and said, you have to redact everything about fossil fuels and sustainability. Otherwise we can't use this in our schools.
And that was the first time, and maybe I'm naive for this, that was the first time where I realized that textbooks, when I was in school, I thought textbook is truth, right? That's how it's pitched to you. mean, it's the textbook, like this is fact. And when I was in school, I didn't realize that there's so many agendas behind textbooks and curriculum.
Danish Kurani (37:01)
As I've gotten older and started working with schools, I've seen the absurdity of even just the content. Like, why was I asked to learn trigonometry when you didn't teach me personal finance? You're like, you are not setting me up for success in life, right? If, if. And so I don't know. I would say in 2040, I hope that one, we are teaching the right things that actually matter.
Louka Parry (37:16)
That's a very interesting question that one. Yeah.
Danish Kurani (37:28)
And we are able to, as society, agree on what is truth. Cause I think this is broader than just education. This is everything in the world, right? We've come to this point where we can't even agree on, ⁓ during the pandemic, like what we should be doing and what's safe and what's not. And what's, what's right and what's wrong is we agree on truth. We can agree on that. and then we actually teach content that's worth.
Louka Parry (37:36)
Yes.
Danish Kurani (37:57)
worthwhile and worthy of the students time. Because if I'm giving you that much time, I'm going to be really pissed off if later in life I realize that that was a waste of my time.
Louka Parry (38:01)
Nice.
Danish Kurani (38:09)
And we have figured out how to teach it well. So designing those experiences, as you said, like educator as architect or educator as designer and set them up for success. So not just the software, but now also the hardware, right? The physical environment is right as well. So that'd be my hope. feel like ⁓ it doesn't sound like ⁓ I'm asking for much, but I recognize it is pretty aspirational.
Louka Parry (38:22)
Hey, we've got to have hope, know, it's like, for me, it's action based optimism. That's something I try to embody and remember, not just think the world will be better, but do something to bring it into being in whatever small way I can. Danish, thank you so much for joining us. Your book, The Spaces That Make Us, Why Design Is Broken and How We Can Create a Happier, Healthier World. I love, not just because it's... ⁓
Danish Kurani (38:43)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Louka Parry (39:09)
about here's some ideas on design or physical space, but because it's the idea that design is an operating system that we can see through. Um, and we didn't talk about it in this chat, but you know, Baham, this idea of everything is in tandem. We're always in systems working together, you know, in relationship with, you know, the character and the context, you know, we talked about that. So I want to, I want you to just close us out with just kind of a reflection you want to leave us with what's a take home message for the people that have taken the time out of their day.
to get into this conversation.
Danish Kurani (39:42)
I think it's, I'd love for everyone to one, develop an awareness and recognition of how much their surroundings are influencing them. And more than that, realize that we all have agency. So when I, when my mother's in the hospital for an illness, can I redesign the hospital in that moment? No.
But can I request that her recovery room be one that has a window facing nature? Because I know the studies that show she's going to heal faster, have less pain, have better long-term recovery and get out of there sooner if she's staring at nature versus a blank wall. Can I request that? Yes. In that moment, I have the agency to do that. As a teacher, can I change what's within my four walls? Of course.
As a school leader, a district leader, a superintendent, next time we're building a new school, I can think differently about it and make sure that I'm partnering with a thinker who's thinking about all of these things and not just replicating what's been done before. Or if I'm a parent, can I redesign my child's school? No, but I can go there and advocate that my child deserves a good learning environment that is going to set them up for success instead of hurting them.
Danish Kurani (41:08)
So we all have agencies somewhere. And so the challenge is think about where you have agency in your built environment and don't just, it's okay to be a product of our environments. We don't want to be victims of them, right? So redesign them wherever you can so that they shape us for the better.
Louka Parry (41:26)
Nice.
That's beautiful. It took me to a, know, as a parent, you can't design your child's school. You can advocate, but you can help them design their bedroom with certain features that support that. Yeah. Yeah. And one without technology. Yeah. Well, without a big TV on the wall, that'd be great. ⁓ don't need such a, such a pleasure to reconnect with you, mate. Thank you so much for this conversation on the learning future podcast, but also for the work you do.
Danish Kurani (41:42)
Absolutely, of course. You have agency over your home. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you, Louka. No, it's been my pleasure. It's always good seeing you.
