Ganim Final Article

8/3/2019 Ganim Final Article

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Evolving the School

Kate Ganim | Thesis Article v.4 | 19 December 2011


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Abstra

Beyond modifcations to its skin to allow or more light and resh air, the schoolbuilding has been stuck in arrested development or centuries. Public schools aroserom Henry Fords industrial model, such that the raw material (in this case, youngchildren) enter on one end, they are processed through the learning actory, andeventually they emerge at the other end, the product o public education and readyto enter the workorce. In line with this manuacturing model is the educational pro-cess itsel which, similar to an assembly line, ollows a linear ramework with qualitycontrol check-points (in the orm o testing and metric assessment) along the way.This model had proven to be quite eective in preparing children to enter the work-orce, but its efcacy has diminished over the last ew years due to drastic changesin the job market. Despite these changes, the traditional school continues to prepareits students or the job market that existed twenty or fty years ago. In his TED Talk,

Sir Ken Robinson makes the point that, i youre not prepared to be wrong, youllnever do anything original. He argues that, through their linearity and preoccupa-tion with assessment, schools are actually educating out o innovation and creativ-ity. These qualities, he argues, are as important as literacy in todays job market andmust be developed. The school must evolve with the times.

In addition to the issue o preparation to enter an increasingly dwindling job market,there is a disjunction between public education and the cultural and social values itimposes as children prepare to enter our cultural and social community. The tradi-tional school model is prescriptive and works in opposition to concepts o democ-racy, collaboration, ree-will, individual ity, responsibi lity, and even exerting controlover ones own environment. These are cultural values our society holds very dearand, in light o this, the alternative model explore ways to urther these values ratherthan to subvert them.

The educational paradigm is broken down along two axes: ormal and inormal set-ting, and ormal education and inormal learning. Current schools are situated rela-tive to one another according to these axes. From there, ormal classroom spaceis analyzed, along with a number o precedents whose mechanisms counteract thetraditional schools. These are primarily considered to be inormal. Inormality in itsvarious orms is discussed to reduce its ambiguity in order to analyze it and use it asa generative tool or design.

The conventional school has perected some mechanisms over the years and thomechanisms are extremely eective or learning. As such, this thesis does not seto dispose o the traditional school altogether, but rather to maintain certain aspo the school while integrating it with a more innovative other. To this end, the goo this thesis is to design an educational space that mediates between traditiona(measurable, linear, uniorm) and alternative models o learning.An analysis o the current school typology is the starting point, to examine theuniormity and hierarchy imposed across a range o scales. The our scales to beanalyzed are: material and human, classroom, building organization, and site. Su

sequent precedent studies o radically dierent qualities at each scale (both schand non-school) will be conducted, such that elements may be extracted to devan alternative educational space that can exist in conjunction with the traditionamodel. From there, aspects o the traditional school will be unitized, or experimtation dealing with the integration o space-making elements that are undamendistinct.


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The Problem

1 The school has not changed2 The mechanism o the school3 The waning efcacy o the modern school7 Competing interests8 Opportunizing a new intelligence9 (Class)Room or improvement

The Analysis: Traditional Schools

12 Claiming a territory13 Clariying Inormal space14 Understanding the conventional school

15 Material and human scale16 Interior scale17 Organizational scale18 Urban relationship

The Analysis: Opposing Precedents

20 School precedents21 Inormal: the loose ft22 Inormal: rogue intervention23 Conceptual antithesis24 Programmatic antithesis

Design Experimentation: Unwrapping the School

26 Experiment: The loose ft27 Experiment: The rogue intervention28 Experiment: Conceptual antithesis

29 Moving orward30 Appendix: Spring Studio Proposal31 Bibliography

Table o Contents

There can be few building types that have so poorly evolved during the past hundred

years as schools. It was only in the closing decade of the 20th century that we saw devia-

tions from a type that has been standard since the year dot. Only the form, particularly

that of the exterior, moved with the times. How schools were organized was evidently

unassailable.

HermanHertzberger,SpaceandLearning(2008)


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The Problem


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Over the last century, dramatic advances have been made the felds o human development and pedagogical thinkinProject-based learning, a greater sensitivity to individual dopment, learning styles, and skill sets, a redefned understing o intelligence, and notions o working with, rather thagainst, a childs nature, have become increasingly prevalethe world o education.

Despite this urry o pedagogical change around and withthe school building stands resolute: unchanged and unrespsive besides, perhaps, allowing more natural light and venttion or its students. Either school designers rom over a cetury ago were incredibly orward-thinking, or weve got soserious catching up to do.

The school has not chang


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Hierarchical Uniormity

B+

MetricAssessment

Working under the assumption that the schools goal is to pare its students to enter the workorce, it has historically quite successul. However, its past efcacy has come to intere with its progress.

Public schools descended rom Henry Fords industrial mosuch that the raw materials (in this case, young children)enter on one end, they are processed through the learningactory, and eventually they emerge at the other end, theproducts o public education, ready to enter the workorceThe educational process itsel parallels an assembly line, wlessons taught in a l inear ramework with a series o qualitcontrol check-points (in the orm o testing and metric ass

ment) along the way. Until recently, this model proved to bquite eective in preparing children to enter the workorce

The traditional school was successul because o its hierarcal nature, and its ocus on uniormity and metric assessmThese qualities are reinorced as much by its recent architeture as its dated pedagogy.

The mechanism o the scho


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Other

Service

Manufacturing

Other

Service

Manufacturing

Job Market in 1950

Job Market in 2002

The Changing Job Market: 1950-2000

The waning efcacy o the modern scho

Today, however, the efcacy o this model has diminished. job market has changed drastically in recent years: manuaturing jobs, which used to account or a third o US jobs, hdropped to around ten percent.

The types o jobs that public schools prepare their studenor (more rote or task-based work) are dwindling, due to icreased automation and oshoring. Machines are complettasks that people previously completed by hand, with exponential speed and accuracy. I not lost to automation, jobs increasingly being shipped overseas due to lower labor cosabroad and increased ease in implementing a globalized sytem. In some industries, the quality o workmanship is highdespite the disparity in labor costs.

Schools teach skills that are more conducive to certain typo jobs than others. It teaches students their place in a strierarchy, and places a strong value on uniormity and meassuccess. The job market, historically based in agriculture a

manuacturing, valued these skills.

Our job market is no longer one based in agriculture or maacturing. This shit has given rise to a new set o valued cadidate qualities, based on the new job market. Yet, the schcontinues to teach toward a job market that no longer existhe US.


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22.4%

Unemployed

22.0%Working;

no degree

required

55.6%

Working;

degree

required

Employment Rate:

College graduates under age 25

0

10

20

30

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

Year

Percent

ofUS

population

25-29

years

Batchelors degree or more

High school degree or more

Increases in Educational Attainment: 1950-2005

Unemployment or college graduates under age 25 has beabove 20%. O those who are employed, a similar number aworking jobs that do not require a college degree.

With a high school degree, most people in the 1950s whowanted a job could get one. With a college degree, a respeable job was guaranteed.

Though there has been an increase in the number o jobs t

require traditional skilled labor, educational attainment hasincreased disproportionately in the US, resulting in an oveuration o the skilled job market. There are more people wadvanced degrees than there are jobs that require such degrees. A bachelors degree today hardly gives any advantain the saturated job market; in many cases, advanced degrhave become the standard or employment.


Recent NY Times Headlines:

Job Prospects Uncertain for New College Graduates

Outlook is Bleak Even for Recent College Graduates

Recent College Graduates Wait for their Real Careers to Begin

Plan B - Skip College


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Furthermore, developing countries are surpassing the US iterms o the quality o their public education. With the continuing decline o public education institutions in the US, athe decline o the US as a superpower while India, China, athe rest o Asia steadily rise, the US can no longer competwith these countries in industry, but it can hold its ground education. The US may not be in a position economically tinvest the necessary unds to bring all US public education

programs up to adequate standards, but that does not mewe are out o the running. Rather, i the US is to maintain itstake as a global superpower, it must capitalize on the innotion it is known or. We must seek to change the rules o thgame. To this end, available resources or education must binvested in new and alternative approaches that have a grepotential to maximize our return.



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0

1

2

3

7

6

5

4

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

Year

Employees(

inmillions)

Science and Technology Employment: 1950-2000 The high tech industry has also had an impact. Not only hauenced the job market directly with its explosive growth the 1990s, but the feld has revolutionized the way and spwith which we live. The high tech industry has brought ourworld to evolve at an unprecedented speed. The advent ointernet and mobile technologies has brought fnance, commerce, communication, and others entirely new user interaccessible at any hour o the day. Technologies are emergiaster than we can fgure out how to utilize them. Constantupgrading and implementation o these technologies chanthe way we interact with our environment and each other.Because o this, there is a growing need to adapt, create, ainnovate in order to keep up with or stay ahead o the curv

Strict hierarchy, uniormity, and narrow defnitions o succe

are obsolete in this new job market. Collaboration, creativand innovation have taken their place.

Pedagogical shits have begun to push education in this dition, but architecture is unresponsive to these changes. Aneective school building is one that acilitates and is in aligment with the pedagogical methods it contains. I architecis to maintain its relevance in education, it must progress wsociety. Otherwise, the school serves as a mere shell, emblatic o the educational institution it houses, but unctionalinconsequential to it.

Over the last 50 years, the job market has changed entirelyThe traditional school model continues to teach towards thjob market that existed then. Students today graduate in u

precedented numbers, unprepared and unable to enter thenew job market. Educational architecture has sat stagnant blind to these changes. Assuming that the schools goal is prepare its students to enter the workorce, it must responto and evolve with the job market. With todays technologcapabilities and corporate educational programs, is it so aetched that the unchanged school could become obsolet

Human communities depend on a diversity of talent,

not on a singular conception of ability.

SirKenRobinson,BringontheLearningRevolution,2010



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City

Government

Prioritize uniformity and metric

assessment to secure state and

federal funding

Prioritize overall student growth

and learning to be successful

entering the workforce

Collective,Institution-focused

Individual,Student-focused

School Admin

Teachers

Students

School

Building

Parents

Competing interes

Though they are not inherently in opposition and have, in

been in alignment in the past, there are competing interestcurrently which have caused resistance to change. The priminterest o the city and school administration is the maintenance and urtherance o the educational institution itsel. Tthis end, they must receive unding, and to receive undingthey must demonstrate the academic achievement o theirstudents, which is generally recognized through perormanon standardized tests measuring prescribed educational stdards. Parents and students, however, tend to hold a greatinterest in the development o the individual and his/her scess upon entering the workorce. Teachers oten straddle line between these interests, leaning towards alignment wtheir higher-ups because the imposed hierarchy rewards thor doing so. The school building stoic and unyielding to litical pressures rests in the middle. Its persistence over t

(most school buildings in this country are over orty years and its iconic image speak to its power as an institution anect on the greater community it is in. Ideally, on a day-to-basis, the school would work to support the individual studin her growth as a learner. The school has already establishitsel on the side o the persisting institution; its care or invidual development must root itsel as deeply.


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Opportunizing a new intelligen

The situation in the US sounds dire, but it has presented a tmendous opportunity to the US i we are willing to take advantage o it. We must recognize and adapt to these changUnderscoring that notion, Sir Ken Robinson states that, Toits about recognizing that there is a much richer conceptioo intelligence and ability available to us than is promoted conventional education.

An example o one such attempt is the integration o the plarized (though contested) theory o multiple intelligences(MI) into educational design. MI recognizes nine areas o hman intelligence: logical/mathematical, spatial, interpers

intrapersonal, existential, verbal/linguistic, musical, naturaland bodily/kinesthetic. Applications o this theory have at-tempted to appeal to the ull range o these intelligences ieducation, whereas the traditional school would primarily cus on logical/mathematical and verbal/linguistic intelligenonly. According to this theory, academic success could verwell have its basis not in who is smartest, but rather in whintelligences align best with the traditional academic mod

Given the variety o ways that humans are able to learn roand experience their environments, the inadequacy o ormized educations narrow defnition and pursuit o intelligenis gaining recognition as such. It has primarily been discusin terms o pedagogical change or revolution, by thinkers sas Sir Ken Robinson (Do Schools Kill Creativity?, 2006) aArthur Cropley (Creativity in education & learning, 2004). rigidity and uniormity o the conventional educational mohowever, is imposed by the architecture as much as the pegogy: the amiliar series o isolated desks acing the ront rectangular classroom located o o a long corridor ull osame. The architectural implications o this pedagogical shhave only just begun to enter the discourse.

There is no reason why everyone should be interested in the geogra-

phy of Venezuela on the same day and hour unless there is some news

event there, such as a revolution.

BuckminsterFuller,EducationAutomation,1962

You cant expect children to learn 21st century skills in schools built for

the 1950s. We need schools designed for 21st century success.ChadP.Wick,PresidentandCEOofKnowledgeWorksFoundation


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Nonformal

Informal

Formal

Pedagogies

Places and Spaces

Processes

(Class)Room or improveme

In his TED Talk, Sir Ken Robinson makes the point that, i

youre not prepared to be wrong, youll never do anything inal. He argues that, through their linearity and preoccupawith assessment, schools are actually educating children oo innovation and creativity. These qualities, he argues, areimportant as literacy in the new job market and must be cvated, not repressed. In her research paper, Marjaana Kangexplains that learning can be seen as a phenomenon thatnot be isolated rom the activity, culture, and context in wit takes place. It is a tool-dependent and social phenomenAs such, she calls or the integration o more inormal settwithin a school and increased opportunity or inormal leaing. She describes three types o education: ormal (institualized, imposed curriculum), nonormal (organized, voluntaprograms outside o school), and inormal (everything elselearning outside o a curricula), which operate independeno ormal, nonormal, and inormal settings. For example, iormal learning can occur in a ormal setting (a child teachanother in the classroom a trick or tying his shoes), or oreducation in an inormal setting (a history lesson is movedoutdoors on a nice day). As Kangas posits, learning is lessrepetition o what is already known and more the producto something new, interesting, and relevant.

At the end of the day, education, besides being about reading, writing, and arithmetic,

is about exploring the world. It is not just obtaining insight that is important but, increas-

ingly, accumulating interest and love for the riches the world has to offer. This happens

in interactive situations that could be stimulated more by the physical environment than

designers are prepared to concede.

HermanHertzberger,SpaceandLearning(2008)

Education must shift from instruction to discovery to probing and exploration.

MarshallMcLuhan


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On top o ailing to prepare students to enter the new jobmarket, schools ail to prepare students to enter the socialand cultural community. There is a stark disjunction betwepublic education and the cultural and social values it imbuIn most schools, children fnd themselves in a dictatorial seting closer to what one might experience in a prison than iree, democratic society. The traditional school model is prscriptive and works in opposition to concepts o democraccollaboration, ree-will, individuality, responsibility, and evethe basic ability to exert control over ones own environmeThese are cultural values our society holds dear and, in ligthis, the alternative model will explore ways to embrace thvalues rather than to subvert them. In his piece, Schugurendescribes a School o Citizenship, which enacts a particitory democracy on the smaller scale o a school as a mean

teaching ownership and the efcacy o participation in poprocesses to students. In this example, the students learn bdoing, by actively shaping their own community. This has tadded beneft o empowerment, by giving the students coover some part o their environment. In one o Schugurensexamples, he describes an instance where the students aregiven the opportunity to redesign an area o the school whhad previously been an underutilized between space. Thchildren transormed it to a very active space which quicklbecame a avorite hang out area in the school. Not only wthe children engaged by this opportunity, it gave them a ger stake in and sense o pride or their school.

Despite its current inefciencies, the traditional school modoes certain things well. The traditional classroom setup hchanged because it is an eective and efcient system thaserves a particular purpose. Certain (more abstract) subjecsuch as math, would be difcult to teach outside o a classroom setting. The things that the school does well are unqtionably worth holding on to. This proposal aims to maintasome o those qualities and expand on them in an eort toacilitate this new conception o intelligence.

(Class)Room or improveme

To this end, the goal of this thesis is to reconsider the makeup of the traditional school

and explore opportunities for increased pedagogical alignment and diversied types of

learning.


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The Analysis: Traditional Schools


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Formal Education

FormalSetting

Traditional School

InformalSetting

Informal Learning

Potteries Thinkbelt

Bright Works

High School for

Recording Arts

Montessori

Hertzberger

Waldorf

Danfoss Universe

Museums, Galleries, Exploratoria Unschooling

Home schooling

Nature

Schools

The Public

School

Ideas Circus

Claiming a territo

This cross-axis considers ormal and inormal setting alonghorizontal, and ormal education and inormal learning acrits vertical axis. A range o noteworthy projects and more neric educational types have been positioned on the chathat their relationships to one another are clear.

Looking at the educational types included in the diagramtraditional schools are located in the top let corner, at theextremes o both ormal education and setting. Its polar o

site is seen to be unschooling, which is a curriculum-ree oo homeschooling, based in the premise that children are iherently curious and exploratory and will learn or themsewhatever and whenever they desire to. Homeschooling is athe nexus o ormal education and inormal setting. Galleriand museums are in the opposite corner rom that, at the etremes o ormal setting and inormal learning.

It is through a deep understanding o the mechanisms o ttraditional school and its ormality, coupled with an under-standing o inormal settings, learning, and space, that anevolved educational model can begin to emerge.

This thesis will likely position itsel around the periphery ochart, maintaining and integrating its extremes. Traditionalucation is eective in part because it is highly ormalized, as inormal spaces acilitate their own type o interaction bcause o their inormality. The juxtaposition o these extremwill reinorce the strength o each by comparison. The terrtowards the center o the chart, where a blending occurs, continue to be present in the dialogue as a potential opponity or exploration.


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Clariying Inormal SpacDespite its requent use in architectural discourse, the term inormal is ambigu-ous, particularly defning it in positive terms. As its name reinorces, it is defned noton its own merit, but rather in opposition to the ormal. The ormal is much sim-pler to defne; it speaks to conventions, regularity, adherence to expectations, and

the physical maniestations o orm. We are thus let with a defnition o inormal asunconventional, irregular, unexpected, and non-physical: a much more amorphousbeast.

Bernard Tschumi and Stan Allen are regarded as the primary contemporary thinkerson this topic. In the chapter entitled Field Conditions in his Points and Lines (1985),Stan Allen discusses the potential or a loose ft o program with orm. He de-scribes the grid and the feld condition as tools to achieve this, where porosity andlocal interconnection are key and through which orm emerges rom the bottom-up.The spatial matrix he describes is infnitely expandable, as its units are serial and canbe repeated. Tschumis piece entitled Abstract Mediation and Strategy speaks to asimilar point by proposing to implement a structure that exists independent o useor program. He sees this as a way to oppose the typical causal relationship betweenorm and program, suggesting the point grid as a means o erasing authorship, cen-trality, and hierarchy. These types o inormal orm will be described as the loose

ft.

The next understanding o inormal takes its meaning in direct opposition to theormal, the expected, the status quo. It interrupts what is there as a means o sub-verting it, and its signifcance can only exist through this contrast. It can be consid-ered bottom-up in the sense that an outside party is acting on an existing settingthat is under someone elses control. This type o inormality that is based in theunexpected will be known as the rogue intervention.

An investigation into additional types o inormality continues to be conducted,and will play a signifcant role in the project moving orward. Once it is more ullybroken down and analyzed, its strategies can be experimented with, manipulated,and orced back together with the ormal.

The other categories outlined in the precedent analysis section include conceptualand programmatic antitheses. These aim to consider the mechanism that is work-

ing in the traditional school on a conceptual and programmatic level, and ip it onits head by way o precedent (or conceptual antithesis) or typology (or program-matic antithesis). The mechanisms working at each scale in the conventional schoolinclude impositions o order, discipline, isolation, and hierarchical control. Oppositionto these mechanisms would include disorder, the unexpected, social interaction, anddemocratic or controllable space.


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Understanding the conventional scho

An analysis o the current school typology is the starting pas a means o examining the uniormity and hierarchy impoacross a range o scales. This will attempt to uncover the lpolitics embedded in conventional school design despite istated goals to the contrary (see quotes to the let). The omain texts that are drawn rom as the basis or this analysisinclude: Planning Elementary School Buildings by N. L. Enghardt (1953), School Ways: The Planning and Design o Amcas Schools by Ben E. Graves (1993), School Design by He

Sano (1994), and Building Type Basics or Elementary anSecondary Schools by Bradord Perkins (2001), all o whiccomprehensive instructional manuals or designing schoolintended or inexperienced designers and/or clients. Thereour scales to be analyzed: material and human, interior, ornization, and urban relationship.

In this plastic, everchanging shape, the child enters school, the organized social institu-

tion that proposes to instruct him systematically in heritage, resources, ways and possibili-

ties of society and to assist him in becoming the person that he potentially can be.

PlanningElementarySchoolBuildings,1953

Since the early thirties, a new kind of elementary school building has been in the making,

the characteristics of which are inspired by democratic concepts of human relationships...

The environment has become that of the childs world in which all the desired educational

objectives can be achieved.

PlanningElementarySchoolBuildings,1953


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Material and human sca

In terms o the material and human scale, above is a catalo

o materials prescribed or each surace in a classroom (asing, o course, that the classroom is a necessary unit). Thesmaterials closely resemble what one might fnd in a prisonThey impose a uniormity across learning spaces. They aredurable and easy to clean, resisting the destructive or meschilds actions, and antiseptic, resisting his germs, thereby ducing his responsibility to learn to treat his environment wcare and respect.

Child ergonomics, as presented in the above diagram, areramed in a general way and seem to be applied in isolatiorom the way children interact with objects and experiencetheir environments. For example, many children treat chaidierently than adults do. They do not generally sit as neaas the child in the diagram above: a child might pull herselto the chair on her knees then op over to her seat, or kne

the chair instead o sitting, or sit on one leg. Children geneally fdget and have a lot more micro-movement than aduldo. The simple scaling down o adult urniture to a childs sis not sufcient to suit their needs. Furniture that attemptsrestrict the childs action will be less conducive to the childattention than urniture that accommodates his movement

Students perception of their environment, whether supportive or hostile, interesting or

boring, is integral to an understanding of the school environment.

SchoolDesign,1994


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Interior sca

Clearly, there are disadvantages to students on the periphery: less classroom participa-

tion and impaired learning ability. Consequently, with more students in the classroom,

peripheries are more extended and remote... Since students need some spatial separation,

increased density could lead to negative student reactions to the classroom, and to their

ability to learn within it.

SchoolDesign,1994

Probably no educational philosophy caused more controversy during the past 30 years

than the open-plan school. The concept was heralded as the answer to the need for ex-

ibility... Because young teachers have always been trained to look forward to the time

when they would get their own private classroom, many of them resisted or resented the

open plan. Teachers [began] to use bookcases and le cabinets to create more traditional

classroom settings.

SchoolWays:ThePlanningandDesignofAmericasSchools,1993

The traditional classroom setup is hierarchical i anything: teacher sits in the ront o the room and the students sit inregular rows, making their surveillance easy. These layoutsthemselves very well to a lecture presentation ormat, whemost students can easily see the board at the ront o theroom. Movable desks and rectangular rooms are recomme

so that the room can be easily reconfgured as needed (arlated rooms, it is said, make arranging urniture more difcand should be avoided). The ideal classroom size is betwe750 and 1,000 square eet, and should accommodate betw20 and 25 children. In a classroom, the space allocation oeach child ranges rom 35 to 42 square eet.


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The centralized resource plan

The courtyard plan The classroom-clustering plan The courtyard with classroom clustering plan

The dumbbell plan The spine plan

Organizational sca

Avoid designing corridors so they have no other use but circulation.

BuildingTypeBasicsforElementaryandSecondarySchools,2001

As the classroom is the archetypal interior unit in a convenal school, the double-loaded corridor is the archetypal straor organization. Program is generally located o o doublloaded corridors or efciency and ease o student surveil-lance during the school day. Individual classrooms tend to adjacent but separate, though more modern recommendacall or exible walls between adjacent classrooms or col-laboration, i desired. Modern trend calls or smaller comm

nity clusters within the school, oten called neighborhoodas demonstrated in the spine plan or the classroom-clusteplan. Generally, all space is programmed, and programmeda single use. These organizational models take the classrocirculation, and shared acilities (eg caeteria, gymnasium)distinct and necessary components o an educational acili


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Buffer

School Building PlaygroundPlayground

Urban relationsh

Security truly begins at the perimeter of the school site. The site should be laid out to en-

sure lines of sight across main parking and play areas... A single point of entry for visitors

allows visual control by limiting unobserved access to any other areas of the building.

BuildingTypeBasicsforElementaryandSecondarySchools,2001

Lastly, the school tends to be monastically autonomous. Jfed by saety reasons, parking is positioned around the scto act as somewhat o a buer between children and theirgreater community, while accommodating the varied needo vehicular trafc. Playgrounds are generally enced in, an

there are minimal entrances (usually one) to enter and exitschool building. Despite its intent to teach students about world, education is generally very inward-looking, ocusingattention on textbooks, teacher presentations, and the occsional classroom experiment or project rather than engagiwith and drawing lessons rom the surrounding world.


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The Analysis: Opposing Precedents

Precedent studies (both school and non-school) will be coducted that analyze radically dierent qualities than thosethe traditional school at each scale. The intent is that elemmay be extracted, reinterpreted, and held up against the ttional school model towards the development o an alternaeducational space that can exist in conjunction with compnents o the conventional model.


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Material and Human Scale

Mark Hortons The Little SchoolInterior Scale

Arkitemas Hellerup Skole

Mark Hortons The Little SchoolOrganizational Scale

The Public SchoolUrban Relationship

LA Class Locations

School preceden

Mark Hortons The Little School uses a thickened wall todefne and transition between spaces. By providing child-sopenings at varying elevations and extruded details to helthem climb reely, this wall reconciles child ergonomics witheir playul nature and imagination.

The Hellerup Skole, designed by Arkitema and completed 2002 in Denmark, is one o the ew open-plan schools thatbeen successul. Rather than the typical empty plan with mable walls that was the demise o the 1970s open plan movment, this design articulates and dierentiates spaces alththey are open through the use o dierent materiality andtypes o urniture. Spatial and lighting qualities change roone area to the next, which makes particular areas more orsuitable to a given program looking to occupy a space. Thin stark contrast to the uniorm rectangular classroom andamiliar desk layout, which is prescribed or a single use anunctions as much as a holding cell as a learning space.

At the organizational scale, another look is given to Mark Htons The Little School. He has replaced the typical doubloaded corridor with a solid wall that has child-sized openIn this scheme, classrooms are located amidst play spaces.Transition through the wall are generally between class andplay.

The Public School considers the city itsel as a school. Bein

everywhere and nowhere at once, any place in the city cancome a lab or a classroom; spaces are appropriated as neeThe intent is to experience and glean rom the richness o city. This contrasts with the monastic autonomy o the schas it takes an attitude o isolation rom its immediate cultuand social context.


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Lebbeus Woodss System WeinInterior Scale

The Great Mosque o Cordoba

MVRDVs Villa VPROOrganizational Scale

Tschumis Parc de la VilletteUrban Relationship

Inormal: the loose f

System Wein by Lebbeus Woods was an installation thatused a grid system to occupy and infltrate the gallery spacCirculation is the loosely-ft program, and the other peoplemoving through the space would parallel the program ele-ments present in other examples. In this sense, other peopoccupying the exhibit become just as much a part o it as tmetal rods themselves. Figure and ground lose their distinrom one another and the boundaries o the installation arclearly defned. Porosity and openness are key concepts, awith the democracy and uidity o space.

Stan Allen extols this work or its superpositioning o multgrid systems as a means o organizing program in a exibland open way, without being pre-deterministic o what program can happen in which areas. The grid overlap producemoments o intensity that would be unattainable using tsingular Modernist grid. The column grid acts as a loose ornizer within the space. It can be infnitely expanded as neewithout impacting the existing space.

MVRDVs concept is based on the idea o working improvition o use into the design. By creating a loose ft betweprogram and orm, MVRDV aords the buildings occupantsome play in how the space is used, and gives them the abity to change it over time as the needs o their organizatioevolves.

In his project, the Parc de la Villette, Tschumi uses a grid a means o organization and connection to the urban cont

He used the point grid as a tool to subvert the traditional cal relationship between orm and program. He also liked thit could be infnitely expanded, and that it does not have aimplicit center or hierarchy to it. It simultaneously providedsystem or organization while directly opposing much o wthe site and program called or.


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Andy Goldsworthys Fall LeavesInterior Scale

Michael Townsends One Kinsley Ave.

Stephane Malkas Sel DeenseOrganizational Scale

The Imagine Bus ProjectUrban Relationship

Inormal: rogue interventi

Goldsworthys work aims to intervene on nature and produan unexpected and temporal eect. In nature, disorder is texpected, it is the status quo. By organizing certain elemento orm some type o geometric order, this intervention becomes legible against the contrasting natural disorder oorest.

RISD proessor Michael Townsend built a hidden, ully ur-nished, 750 square oot apartment in an unused space o parking garage in a mall in Providence, RI. He and some rilived there on and o or over three years beore mall secuound out and evicted them. The apartment was embeddedeep within the poche between the garage and the mall. Tintervention was intended to be a social commentary on csumerist society, pushing consumerism to a new extreme bliving within the mall. Without the backdrop o the mall, thproject would have been meaningless.

This project seeks to intervene on La Deense, a politicalbuilding in Paris. The opening through the middle invites san intervention, almost. Sel Deense is the implementatio a shantytown within that void. Units are plugged into thwall and stacked along one side o the void. Their arrangemallows or easy vertical and horizontal circulation. Again, thproject would not be o note were it not or its invasion o political icon.

The Imagine Bus Project is a bus that was converted to a

mobile arts classroom. An act o defance against the lack arts education in the city, it travels around the city to bringeducation to urban communities. It is radically dierent rothe traditional school in its mobility and openness to the cIts mobility permits it to surace at schools, unsolicited, andepart just as quickly and easily.


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Olaur Eliassons Your Blind PassengerInterior Scale

Adventure Playgrounds

H. Roy Kelleys The RAND CorporationOrganizational Scale

LeCorbusiers Venice HospitalUrban Relationship

Conceptual antitheOlaur Eliassons Your Blind Passenger is a sensory-inten

exhibit that is a passage through a series o enclosed spacthat are flled with og and brightly colored lights. Users wessentially blinded by the og and intense lighting as theyound themselves edging their way through this novel andorienting environment. This contrasts with the rigid, institual materiality o the traditional school that deprives the semore than appealing to or attempting to overwhelm them

Adventure playgrounds are intended to let children play anbuild creatively, providing them with the supplies and suppthey need to construct orts, towers, and whatever else thedesire. They are given ree range to paint, build, and play owhatever is there. Relating back to the conventional schooadventure playgrounds dispose o the imposed hierarchy athe monounctional objects and urniture in the classroomThey are meant to empower. Their orm changes over time

and is entirely contingent on the imagination and whim o children in them.

The RAND Corporation is a thinktank or which an ofce bing was constructed in the 1950s. The acility was designea system to oster chance interaction between individuals departments as a way to encourage interdisciplinary thinking. This was achieved by democratizing space and increasthe redundancy o routes while maintaining their efcienclength. In addition to the circulation pictured in blue, accewas also available through the exterior courtyards, picturein dark grey. This model relies on the double-loaded corridbut exploits it or increased social interaction and in doingmade the corridor a compelling, desirable, and active spac

With his Venice Hospital, LeCorbusier experimented withnotion o a dispersed, non-fgural building that i s better ingrated with its surroundings rather than reading as a singuobject placed on the site. He worked with a set unit o hosrooms, and arranged them in such a way that fngers extinto the site, increasing direct sunlight and dispersed acce


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PlaygroundInterior Scale

Museum

MallOrganizational Scale

Public Transit NetworkUrban Relationship

Programmatic antithe

I the urniture o a school is intended to promote order anstillness, the playground acts in stark opposition. It inviteschildren to run, jump, climb, and play as they see ft. I theclassroom desk signifes stillness, the playground signifes stillness. It demands physical movement.

The interior o a classroom is meant to contain. It is prescrtive in how students interact with it, and how they are led tperceive o themselves in it; desk placement necessarily incates hierarchy between student and teacher, and uniormbetween peers. The placement o desks restricts movemenwithin the classroom, instead encouraging students to sit a

be still in order to learn. The museum typology gets at learthrough another means: through movement. Museums relymovement through the space to tell the story they aim to vey. Though it might prioritize certain exhibits or works o it does not lend any hierarchy to the users within it.

The school uses the double-loaded corridor as a means ofciency, to streamline student movement between two powithin the building. The use o a single pathway limits optior the direction o movement. Malls, on the other hand, oefciency in avor o meandering pathways, past many stoin an attempt to pique customer interest. They orce users go out o their way to get to the next escalator. The broado their walkways invite slow movement, and multiple patheach horizontal plane give options or meandering movem

In contrast to the withdrawn isolation o the school, the urtransit network reaches out in all directions into the city. Itserves as its connective tissue, binding together certain pao the city that might not be otherwise. It is active and vitathe city, and intends to serve it.


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A series playing with the env

Design Experimentation:Unwrapping the Scho


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Experiment: The loose

This experiment takes the units o the traditional school anorganizes them within a grid. Programmatic adjacencies ropen courtyard-type spaces, permitting collaboration acrothese courtyards or expansion o an adjacent program eleminto them. The double-loaded corridor has been abandoneand circulation weaves through the implied courtyard spac


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Experiment: The rogue interventi

This experiment locates the typical classroom unit on top an exhibition at a museum o natural history. Students are to learn rom the exhibit rom their classroom-perch aboveTheir similar glass enclosure causes the classrooms and thoccupants to in turn become a part o the exhibit, observemuseum-goers passing through the space.


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Experiment: Conceptual antithe

The typical school-as-visually-isolated ormat is broken, asthe enclosure is transormed to enclose the interstitial spabetween program elements. Elements are stacked to addprogrammatic adjacencies in section. This experiment leav

the program exposed or observation, both or students toobserve their community and vice-versa. The double-loadecorridor, generally the most public place within the schoolcomes privatized since it is not visually accessible to progrelements and it does not take the typical linear ormat o tdouble-loaded corridor that enables its surveillance.


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Moving orwa

Taking the units o a traditional school orward with me, I wcontinue to seek out, defne, and explore types o inormalspace. As a means o generative design, I will use the unitsthe traditional school as building blocks, and experiment wdierent ways o creating and integrating inormality. Ambity o space, blurred boundary conditions, and user (studemanipulability will be the ocus, though other types o inomality will be studied as well. The ultimate goal o this prois to produce the next step in the evolution o school desigpush it past its current state o stagnation. The next evolut

o school design will be responsive to advances in child deopment as well as studies connecting the efcacy o learnto attributes o a physical design. This will take the orm oschool building, ocusing primarily on changing the organition o the school, though shits on the other scales will beimperative to the design.

Appendix: Spring Studio Propo


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1. Argument:

Over the last century, dramatic advances have been made in the felds o human development and pedagogical thinking. Project-based learn-ing, a greater sensitivity to individual development, learning styles, and skill sets, a redefned understanding o intelligence, and notions o workingwith, rather than against, a childs nature, have become increasingly prevalent in the world o education. Despite this urry o pedagogical changearound and within it, the school building stands resolute: unchanged and unresponsive besides, perhaps, allowing more natural light and ventilation

or its students. Either school designers rom over a century ago were incredibly orward-thinking, or weve got some serious catching up to do.

The school model that has persisted over centuries is based in top-down learning and an imposition o uniormity, reinorced as much by itsrecent architecture as its dated pedagogy. The traditional school is analyzed to understand its limits such that these conventions can support alterna-tive strategies. To this end, the goal o this thesis is to reconsider the makeup o the traditional school and explore opportunities or increased peda-gogical alignment and diversifed types o learning.

2. Design Trajectory:

This thesis intends to explore ways o integrating hyper-ormal and hyper-inormal settings. Both will be powerul settings or learning, but theywill acilitate dierent types o learning. The analysis o the traditional school at the dierent scales will be leveraged such that units rom the tra-ditional school (or aspects o) will be maintained and will be coupled with dierent types o inormal space. Inormal space will be urther brokendown, defned in positive terms, and analyzed independently rom the ormal beore ormal and inormal are put together. A series o experiments willbe conducted at each o the our scales, and across the dierent types o inormal intervention. Through this method, limits and strengths o theconventional school can be determined such that these conventions can support alternative strategies.

3. Site:

San Francisco will be the site or this project since it supports and osters innovation and new approaches, and generally places a high value oneducation. It is home to a number o alternative local schools that have modifed the traditional schoolhouse. Brightworks, or example, is opening itsdoors to its frst class this all; this program seeks to turn the traditionally inward-looking, isolated school model outward into the community, and willuse a comprehensive project-based curriculum. There are Montessori and Waldor schools, which have ound success in the Bay Area and worldwide,and which have adapted the school with the intention o acilitating education, based on their respective pedagogies.

Within the city, the site will have to be urban so that there are opportunities or interaction and integration with the citys richness. This may benear a cultural hub or landmark, or area with a strong sense o community and ownership. Specifc site options will be determined over the break.

4. Program:

The program will be a primary educational acility. Younger children have the greatest need or alternative types o learning, particularly beore

they are ully literate. Beore they know how to read and write, they rely on other sensory, social, and experiential inputs to learn. They interact verydierently with their environments than adults do, yet they are put into adult-riendly environments whose only accommodation is to scale downthe size o the urniture and put some brightly colored paint on the walls. Children tend to be more ree with their imagination, behavior, and inter-pretation o the world. According to Sir Ken Robinson, with their singular conception o intelligence and ocus on uniormity and metric assessment,schools are actually teaching out o creativity starting at a very early age. The earlier that that creativity can be ostered, the better. For these rea-sons, primary educational acilities seem to be in the greatest need o architectural intervention, and will be the ocus o this project.

Appendix: Spring Studio Propo

BibliograpArchitectural theory, history, precedent


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