Alternative Learning Environments

Originally published in 1974, this volume presents viable alternatives to traditional attitudes and practices in environmental design and education. It contains 29 selections that reflect the thought and actions of leaders from many diverse disciplines and professions. Architects, landscape architects, urban planners, teachers and administrators, psychologists and social theorists address themselves to controversial and important issues facing our post-industrial society. The range of subjects explored in the volume is far-reaching:

• Environmental education in which the art of planning and designing itself becomes the curriculum
• Advocacy planning and community participation in both educational and design decision making
• Alternative educational institutions, ranging from community-centered schools and mobile schools to non-school learning networks that distribute the learning activity throughout the fabric of the city and the lifetime of the learner
• New developments in systematic design methods and evaluation research that promise to make the design process more public and responsive to the user-client

Professor of Architecture emeritus Gary J. Coates has long been recognized nationally and internationally as a leading voice in the movement to create socially, technologically and ecologically sustainable buildings, towns, cities and bioregions.

Coates’ contributions have been recognized with numerous awards. At Kansas State University, where he taught for 45 years, Coates was selected as the inaugural Victor L. Regnier Distinguished Faculty Chair. He has received national awards from the American Institute of Architecture (AIA) and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) for his innovative courses on sustainable and regenerative design. Coates was chosen as an ACSA Distinguished Professor of Architecture for a lifetime of "sustained creative achievement" through teaching, research, scholarship and service.

Professionally, Coates has consulted on town planning and architectural design projects, and collaborated with colleagues to help create a number of international professional organizations including: the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA); the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU); the Society of Building Science Educators (SBSE) and; the Architecture, Culture and Spirituality Forum (ACSF).