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Kate GanimEvolving the School

Brian Price, Latent Politics

Over the last century, dramatic advances have been made in the elds ofhuman development and pedagogical thinking. Yet, the school building

stands stagnant. Either school designers from over a century ago wereincredibly forward-thinking, or weve got some serious catching up to do.

Buffer

School Building PlaygroundPlayground

The centralizedresourceplan

The courtyard plan The classroom-clustering plan

The courtyardwithclassroom

clusteringplan

The dumbbellplan

The spineplan

Materiality: Prescribed classroom materials with

uniform performance: durable, washable, anti-sceptic, long-lasting, child-resistant

Ergonomics: Adult furniture scaled down to achilds size. Differences in a childs movement andbehavior are not addressed or accounted for.

Uniformity of classroom layout:lecture or groupwork format

Uniformity of organization:double-loaded corridor strategy

Parking as means of monastic isolationfrom the adjacent community

Recognizing Mechanisms and Limits: An analysis of the traditional school based on educational design litera ture

Material and Human Scale Interior Scale Organizational Scale Urban Relationship Scale

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

MaterialandHuman

Interior

Organization

UrbanRelationship

Non-School PrecedentsInformality:

The Loose t

Informality:

Rogue Interventions

Conceptual Antithesis Programmatic Antithesis

(Typologies)

Bernard Tschumi

Parc de la Villette

The Imagine Bus Project LeCorbusier

Venice Hospital

Urban Transit Network

MVRDV

Villa VPRO

The Great Mosque

of Cordoba

Michael Townsend

One Kinsley Avenue

Adventure Playgrounds Museum

Stephane Malka

Self Defense

H. Roy Kelley

RAND Corporation

Mall

Andy Goldsworthy

Fall Leaves

Olafur Eliasson

Your Blind Passenger

PlaygroundLebbeus Woods

System Wein

Unwrapping the School: A Design Experiment Narr

ative

Experiment #1: Conceptual AntithesisExperiment #2: The Loose Fit Experiment #3: The Rogue Intervention

Other

Service

Manufacturing

Other

Service

Manufacturing

JobMarketin 1950

JobMarketin 2002

The Changing Job Market: 1950-2000

Source: USA Today, U.S. manufacturing jobs fading away fast, 2002

0

1

2

3

7

6

5

4

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

Year

Employees(inmillions)

Science and Technology Employment: 1950-2000

0

10

20

30

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

Year

PercentofUS

population

25-29

years

Batchelors degree or more

High school degree or more

Increases in Educational Attainment: 1950-2005

Source: The US Science and Technology Workforce, Report for Congress, 6/30/2009

Source: The US Census Bureau, Current Population Survey and1950 Census of the Population

22.4%

Unemployed

22.0%

Working;

no degree

required

55.6%

Working;

degree

required

Employment Rate:

College graduates under age 25

New York Times, Outlook is Bleak Even for Recent College Graduates, 2011

Hierarchical Uniformity

B+

MetricAssessment

The Argument

School Precedents

Mark Horton, The Little School

Mark Horton, The Little School

The Public School

Arkitema, Hellerup Skole

Assuming that the schools goalis to prepare its students to enterthe workforce, it has historicallybeen quite successful. Its efcacyhas lessened its need for change.

The traditional school was successful be-cause of its hierarchical nature, and its focuson uniformity and metric assessment, whichare reinforced by its architecture. The jobmarket, historically based in agriculture and

manufacturing, valued these skills.

The job market has changed

drastically in the last halfcentury. Manufacturing

jobs, which used to accountfor a third of US j obs, have

dropped to around ten per-cent. This is attributed toincreased automation andoffshoring.

While there has been an increase in the number ofjobs that require skilled labor, educational attainmenthas increased disproportionately in the US, resultingin an oversaturation of the skilled job market .

The high tech industry has also had an impact. Not only has it playeda larger role in the job market with its fast growth, but the evolution

of the eld itself is the fastest of any the world has seen. Our world isevolving at an unprecedented speed. There is a growing need to adapt,create, and innovate in order to keep up with or stay ahead of thecurve. Uniformity and narrow denitions of success are obsolete inthis new job market; creativity and innovation have taken their place.

Over the last 50 years, the job market has changed entirely. Thetraditional school model continues to teach towards the jobmarket that existed then. Students today graduate, unpreparedand unable to enter the new j ob market. Educational architec-ture has sat stagnant and blind to these changes. Assuming

that the schools goal is to prepare its students to enter the

workforce, it must respond to and evolve with the emerging

job market. With todays technology and corporate educationalprograms,is it so far-fetched that the unchanged school couldbecome obsolete?

City as School