MEET THE SPEAKER
What if a well-designed school still isn’t a well-performing learning environment?
Schools invest heavily in buildings, campuses and learning spaces. Architects carefully consider how they look and function. Yet one question is often harder to answer: are these environments actually supporting the way people learn? Understanding that gap between what we design and what learners experience has been a defining part of Ar. Alastair Blyth’s work for more than three decades.
Ar. Alastair Blyth
A UK-registered architect, researcher and educator whose work over three decades has explored how learning environments are designed, evaluated and used.
From architectural practice to academia, and from school building programmes to international education policy, Alastair has worked across the many layers that shape the places where people learn.
From Architecture to Education Policy
Alastair is Emeritus Fellow of the School of Architecture and Cities at the University of Westminster, where he also served as Assistant Head of School.
In 2007, he joined the OECD’s Centre for Effective Learning Environments in Paris as a Policy Analyst, later returning to lead the Learning Environments Evaluation Programme (LEEP).
At the OECD, he coordinated comparative research across education systems and led national policy reviews of school building programmes in Portugal and Mexico. His work also contributed to analytical tools for evaluating the physical environments in which people learn.
His OECD case studies, frameworks and instruments—drawing on decades of work around school design—remain important reference points for policymakers and designers.
What Makes His Perspective Worth Exploring?
Alastair sits at an unusual intersection.
He understands architecture through practice.
Education through research.
And learning environments through the lens of policy, evidence and evaluation.
That creates a different way of looking at school design.
Not simply: Does this space look right?
But perhaps: What is this environment enabling—and how do we know?
What Alastair Brings to PULSE?
At PULSE 2026 | Where Culture Meets Learning, Alastair brings a perspective that moves beyond the individual building to examine the wider relationship between education, environment and the decisions that shape them.
For architects, educators, school leaders, policymakers and anyone involved in planning or developing learning environments, his experience offers an opportunity to question some of the assumptions behind how schools are designed and evaluated.
And that is where the curiosity begins:
What can decades of looking at learning environments across education systems teach us about designing better places to learn?
That is a conversation worth being part of.
PULSE 2026 | Where Culture Meets Learning
5–7 October 2026 | Sheraton Grand Palace, Indore
Mr. Alastair Blyth joins PULSE 2026.