* Find out when your school was built and explore how life at that time may have affected its design. Are the rooms designed for small or large groups? What communal spaces are there and what might they have been used for? What is the exterior made of? Are there many windows? What are the interior surfaces? Are the classrooms light and airy?

* How does the school fit in with its surroundings? Is it part of a small community? Is it intended to serve a larger catchment area?

* Now look at the playground. What furniture does it contain? Does it serve its purpose well? What would you add to improve it?

Secondary

The same kind of investigations could be pursued in a cross-curricular art and design and geography project. As part of their investigation into the history of the school, students could be asked to think about the kind of problems architects have to solve when designing a school for a community as well as focusing on specific aspects such as:

* Designing an object for a school corridor that draws attention to the space in which it is displayed. One way to achieve this would be by emulating the quality of the space - a Victorian painting for a building of the same period. Equally effective might be a contrast - the placing of one “busy” painting in an empty featureless space.

* Creating designs for play structures which are pleasing to look at.

When designing new playground structures, students could look at other work by Liam Gillick such as the bench and table structures he designed for the garden in front of the Clore Gallery at Tate Britain as part of an installation called “Annlee You Proposes”. His “furniture” exists at the juncture of art and design; it has not fully assumed its functional character so it could equally well be viewed simply as a composition of coloured shapes.

Very often, the brightly coloured elements in an unused public play space possess this quality. Without the children they exist on the threshold of art.