What Radically Student Centered™ Means to Lydia Burns – LearningSCAPES 2025
December 3, 2025

In this episode, Jeff Kubiak interviews
Lydia Burns, an architect and designer from Bassetti Architects in Portland, Oregon. Lydia shares her insights on creating student-centered school environments, emphasizing the importance of engaging students directly in the design process.
She discusses creative strategies for gathering student input, such as surveys, hands-on workshops, and design thinking curricula. Lydia highlights a standout project where students in a CTE (Career and Technical Education) program collaborated on designing and building a tiny home, which was later donated to a homeless village. Throughout the conversation, Lydia underscores the value of including diverse voices—students, staff, alumni, and community members—in school design, and reflects on the sense of ownership and pride students gain from participating in these projects.
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