A two-story, 55,597-square-foot public elementary school with a prekindergarten.

The schoolhouse as we know it has been upended in Leutschenbach, Switzerland, a quiet suburban corner north of metropolitan City of Zurich, Switzerland, where the city is transforming a former industrial site into a mixed-use, middle-class neighborhood infused with green spaces.

Set back from the road, Zaha Hadid's Evelyn Grace Academy in South London zigzags across its small site with jagged angles of bare concrete, glass, and silver-spray-painted aluminum.

On an unseasonably warm December day, Phoebe Beierle is making the rounds at various facilities in the Boston public school system.

A three-story public technical high school with 212,000 square feet—82,000 renovated, 130,000 new—including classrooms, offices, science labs, a library, a gymnasium, a wood shop, and an auto shop.

“Who are you?” asked a Machias Elementary School first grader as she ran out of her classroom on the way to recess and spotted out-of-place adults.

In a district plagued by years of bond failures and overcrowding, a high school initiates a fresh start with collegiate learning tracks and a complementary campus.

Instead of the boxlike apartment and commercial towers in cities everywhere, architect Yansong Ma, principal of Beijing-based MAD, prefers structures that are “organic and soft.”