As the first strategy implemented from a recently completed facility master plan, Dickinson Middle School embodies the collaborative and community-driven approach to educating young people in this western North Dakota community. Recognizing that the district wanted a school to deliver next-generation learning environments, we engaged staff and stakeholders to design learning environments that would meet the needs of individual students by encouraging opportunities, self-discovery, and collaboration.

The evolving nature of education and subject matter agility demanded spatial transformation and reconfiguration through innovative wall systems. Uber-flexibility woven into academic clusters will bring a new generation of learning spaces, allowing teachers and students to adjust their environment to support more active pedagogies. While the edges of each cluster are defined, it is what is afforded within that will allow each peer group of 120 students and four teachers the chance to collaborate and explore curricula together.