Yep, I think that about nails it!
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I hope the design is not just for the hallways to get narrower but for the ceilings to get lower, too.
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To some extent, things have gone the other way, with the “curly streets going nowhere” approach dominating modern suburbs. The school might be 500 feet away as the crow flies, but you have to walk half a mile out of your way to get there without cutting through someone else’s yard.
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I am reminded of this passage from Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash:
"Big slowdown at the intersection of CSV-5 and Oahu Road, per usual, only way to avoid it is to cut through The Mews at Windsor Heights.
"TMAWHs all have the same layout. When creating a new Burbclave, TMAWH Development Corporation will chop down any mountain ranges and divert the course of any mighty rivers that threaten to interrupt this street plan – ergonomically designed to encourage driving safety. A Deliverator can go into a Mews at Windsor Heights anywhere from Fairbanks to Yaroslavl to the Shenzhen special economic zone and find his way around.
"But once you’ve delivered a pie to every single house in a TMAWH a few times, you get to know its little secrets. The Deliverator is such a man. He knows that in a standard TMAWH there is only one yard – one yard – that prevents you from driving straight in one entrance, across the Burbclave, and out the other. If you are squeamish about driving on grass, it might take you ten minutes to meander through TMAWH. But if you have the bails to lay tracks across that one yard, you have a straight shot through the center.
“The Deliverator knows that yard. He has delivered pizzas there. He has looked at it, scoped it out, memorized the location of the shed and the picnic table, can find them even in the dark – knows that if it ever came to this, a twentythree-minute pizza, miles to go, and a slowdown at CSV-5 and Oahu – he could enter The Mews at Windsor Heights (his electronic delivery-man’s visa would raise the gate automatically), scream down Heritage Boulevard, rip the turn onto Strawbridge Place (ignoring the DEAD END sign and the speed limit and the CHILDREN PLAYING ideograms that are strung so liberally throughout TMAWH), thrash the speed bumps with his mighty radials, blast up the driveway of Number 15 Strawbridge Circle, cut a hard left around the backyard shed, careen into the backyard of Number 84 Mayapple Place, avoid its picnic table (tricky), get into their driveway and out onto Mayapple, which takes him to Bellewoode Valley Road, which runs straight to the exit of the Burbclave. TMAWH security police might be waiting for him at the exit, but their STDs, Severe Tire Damage devices, only point one way- they can keep people out, but not keep them in.”
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Now being re-adopted in New Zealand as the Classroom of the Future, to prove that the Ministry of Education is all about flexibility and post-20th-century learning styles.
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Well, um, I guess it’s good preparation for your future of ‘hot desking’ in some cacophonous open-plan data mine? 21st century, vocationally relevant, skills?
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Looks great: just outfit all the halls with HR Giger-type imagery and dim lighting, and you’re done!
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You should see Giger’s house…
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Killer game of Octoball in the gym today, guys!
Reminds me of a piece a while back from a guy working on pavement layout for a campus. Basically said that you should watch how people would use shortcuts on the lawns of already built examples using aerials, and design the pavement accordingly. Something something about angles, as well. Humans don’t work well with a rectangular layout, ok, but the news was that there was a specific angle which popped up everywhere in nature (from tree branches over corals to footpaths).
Vague memory, though. Pity. But the overall idea seems simple. Let the swarm inspire you, and then design.
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Yay internet. It has a a word, and a TED talk. 
I learned the word from Adam Savage, he’s brought up the term a few times on a podcast of his on Tested 
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Yes, like Boston!
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The “modern”, vaguely brutalist, middle school that I went to had a lot in common with these designs. Many classrooms were designed as open “quads” with no walls between them. There were few “hallways” – one just cut through open classroom spaces to get from one area to another. Several classrooms were triangular in shape, making it challenging for all the seats to face an unambiguous “front”. And there were no windows at all except in the administrative offices upstairs, meaning that, during a power outage you were treated to a good 4 or 5 seconds of planetarium-level darkness before the emergency lights kicked on.
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