Summary

The importance of school building quality is unquestionable when more than 7.6 million school children, or 16% of Korea's population spend at least 8 hours a day in school buildings. School building quality has a huge influence on students' academic achievement (Lance W. Roberts, 2008), and this is arousing public interest in school building quality in Korea, a country where people have great fervor for education and the location of schools has a big impact on local communities.
The function and role of school are changing according to various future-oriented education models such as open-ended learning cycle, community learning center, re-schooling, network system and de-schooling, which reflect recent social demands related to discussions on sustainability, low birth rate and ageing.
However, most schools in Korea are being designed and managed based on the school building design standards set more than 10 years ago. School buildings constructed as BTL (Build-Transfer-Lease) projects, a method introduced for financing, tend to focus only on external appearance, including exterior materials and shape, due to the flaws of the BTL process.
It is important to design and manage school buildings according to the needs of users expressed in the planning and design process, so that users can have a greater satisfaction with school buildings. In Korea, however, only architect and officials of local education authorities participate in the process, and users, their needs and changes in social conditions are ignored.
Therefore, a more systematic design quality management is required to design and construct school buildings that address and respond to various social and cultural needs. We need to begin with taking a close look at the needs for school buildings, current state of school building design and its quality management.

This study suggests "cooperative system for well-designed school" as a process of enhancing the participation of stakeholders in order to increase user satisfaction as well as design quality by reflecting design experts' experience. It also proposes four methods for the implementation of the cooperative system suggested above: rational and flexible design standards and review criteria, continuous quality management through review and monitoring in the design process, support for experts who can make up for any shortcomings of participants, and reflection of users'
opinion through feedback on the design.

 

Key words : school building, design quality management, design quality, monitoring and involvement in design process.

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