Multistudio + CAST

The Deck of Spaces™ is a set of card decks designed to bring awareness to our physical environment’s influence on how students learn. It is a community engagement tool that helps foster increased sensitivity to the power of space, helping design teams include stakeholders at the beginning of a project and guide the process. The cards translate the needs of the many different groups involved in a learning environment: students, educators, administrators, community members, and designers. They provide a jumping-off point to encourage focused conversation, prioritization of needs, and new ideas to discuss together. Multistudio recently used the Deck of Spaces™ to identify essential priorities in space design in the San Francisco Unified School District’s (SFUSD) Mission Bay School, including the need for flexible spaces and a “heart” of the school. The engagement with SFUSD demonstrated the value of the Deck’s flexibility and inspired the second edition of the K–12 Deck.