Where space projects get stuck

Beautiful spaces can underperform.

Flexible areas become leftover circulation. Innovation becomes a furniture choice. Consultation happens after the biggest assumptions have already been made. Staff feel asked, but not understood. Students inherit spaces that look different, but do not meaningfully change what they can do.

What NoTosh does

We define the experience before the space is designed.

We gather user insight, challenge assumptions, create design principles and help leaders become clearer clients for their architects and design teams.

The result is a stronger brief, sharper decisions and spaces that are more likely to be used as intended.

We push boundaries so architects can draw them.

Architects design beautiful spaces. We help ensure those spaces support the learning, culture and daily behaviours your community needs.

We work before and alongside architects to uncover the educational purpose of a project, translate stakeholder insight into design principles, and prepare people to use new spaces well.

We do not replace the design team. We strengthen the educational intelligence of the project so architects have clearer input, sharper criteria and better evidence from the people who will use the space.

Masterplans should design the whole experience, not just the space.

A conventional masterplan can show what should be built, where it should go and how much it may cost.

But a learning environment needs more than that.

It needs a shared answer to bigger questions:

What kinds of learning should this place make possible?
How should people feel when they arrive, gather, move, focus, collaborate or perform?
Which practices should the space protect?
Which habits should it gently disrupt?
Where does the building need to express the institution’s strategy, identity and values?
What will staff and students need to practise before the space opens?

These questions shape the difference between a project that looks impressive and a project that changes what people can do.

What we can help create

Every project is different, but our work can include:

• educational visioning
• stakeholder engagement and user insight
• learning walks and observations
• student, staff and community workshops
• design principles
  
• educational briefing
• spatial priorities
• learning environment typologies
• user journeys and use cases
• adjacency implications
• design review
• change readiness planning
• professional learning for new spaces
• transition planning
• post-occupancy reflection

Our support can scale to the needs of the project. Sometimes we help at the earliest visioning stage. Sometimes we stay involved through design review, transition planning and post-occupancy reflection.

What we help you avoid

School, campus and public learning-space projects often go wrong early, long before anything is built.

We help clients and design teams avoid:

• copying what worked somewhere else
• designing space before defining the experience
• treating the brief as a wishlist
• planning each space in isolation
• using words like flexible, collaborative or future-ready without defining what they mean in practice
• consulting the community without translating their insight into design decisions
• opening new spaces before people know how to use them

The goal is not just to create a better building. It is to design a better experience of learning, working and belonging.

Experience from schools, universities, governments and design teams

Since 2010, NoTosh has helped clients around the world connect people, pedagogy and place.

Our work has included masterplanning, campus vision, educational briefing, community consultation, spatial change and design principles for schools, universities, governments and design teams. Recent selected work includes UWCSEA Singapore, Trinity College Western Australia, UNIS Hanoi, ISKL Kuala Lumpur, Nanjing International School and Presbyterian Ladies College in Western Australia.

At UWCSEA Singapore, NoTosh helped turn a complex new campus ambition into a values-led vision and six design principles that BVN Architects used to frame the conceptual masterplan and schematic design.

At Nanjing International School, our process helped develop design principles for Early Years learning spaces that supported greater learner autonomy, play-based learning and stronger indoor-outdoor connections.

NoTosh worked with the South Australia Government on STEM learning environments, using workshops, interviews and observations to identify principles for spaces that support clarity, collaboration and communication. For the Western Australia Government we created the Education Brief for every new and refurbished space in the State.

Awards and recognition

Our collaborations with architects and education partners have been recognised by the international Association for Learning Environments, Learning Environments Australasia, and government partners.

Projects involving NoTosh and our architecture partners have received awards for innovation, new initiatives, renovation, modernisation and major learning environment design.

Awards are not the point. But they are useful evidence that a deeper process can lead to spaces with stronger ideas behind them.

2022: WINNER

Kelly Tanner Award Innovation Award: Best New Initiative

Association for Learning Environments, International Awards, NoTosh and EIW Architects. Project: Nanjing International Award, Nanjing, China.

2021: WINNER

Construction over $8M

Learning Environments Australasia, NoTosh and EIW Architects. Project: Iona Presentation College, Perth, Australia.

2020 WINNER

Renovation / Modernisation under $5 MILLION

Learning Environments Australasia, in partnership with EIW Architects. Project: Nanjing International School Early Years and Hub, Nanjing, China.

2020 COMMENDATION

Innovation in Education Initiative

Learning Environments Australasia, in partnership with Department for Education, South Australia. Research-informed approaches to STEAM, Project: What Works for STEM Works.