Evolving the School

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

Abstract
Beyond modifications to its skin to allow for more light and fresh air, the school building has been stuck in arrested development for centuries. Public schools arose from Henry Fords industrial model, such that the raw material (in this case, young children) enter on one end, they are processed through the learning factory, and eventually they emerge at the other end, the product of public education and ready to enter the workforce. In line with this manufacturing model is the educational process itself which, similar to an assembly line, follows a linear framework with quality control check-points (in the form of testing and metric assessment) along the way. This model had proven to be quite effective in preparing children to enter the workforce, but its efficacy has diminished over the last few years due to drastic changes in the job market. Despite these changes, the traditional school continues to prepare its students for the job market that existed twenty or fifty years ago. In his TED Talk, Sir Ken Robinson makes the point that, if youre not prepared to be wrong, youll never do anything original. He argues that, through their linearity and preoccupation with assessment, schools are actually educating out of innovation and creativity. These qualities, he argues, are as important as literacy in todays job market and must be developed. The school must evolve with the times. In addition to the issue of preparation to enter an increasingly dwindling job market, there is a disjunction between public education and the cultural and social values it imposes as children prepare to enter our cultural and social community. The traditional school model is prescriptive and works in opposition to concepts of democracy, collaboration, free-will, individuality, responsibility, and even exerting control over ones own environment. These are cultural values our society holds very dear and, in light of this, the alternative model explore ways to further these values rather than to subvert them. The educational paradigm is broken down along two axes: formal and informal setting, and formal education and informal learning. Current schools are situated relative to one another according to these axes. From there, formal classroom space is analyzed, along with a number of precedents whose mechanisms counteract the traditional schools. These are primarily considered to be informal. Informality in its various forms is discussed to reduce its ambiguity in order to analyze it and use it as a generative tool for design. The conventional school has perfected some mechanisms over the years and those mechanisms are extremely effective for learning. As such, this thesis does not seek to dispose of the traditional school altogether, but rather to maintain certain aspects of the school while integrating it with a more innovative other. To this end, the goal of this thesis is to design an educational space that mediates between traditional (measurable, linear, uniform) and alternative models of learning. An analysis of the current school typology is the starting point, to examine the uniformity and hierarchy imposed across a range of scales. The four scales to be analyzed are: material and human, classroom, building organization, and site. Subsequent precedent studies of radically different qualities at each scale (both school and non-school) will be conducted, such that elements may be extracted to develop an alternative educational space that can exist in conjunction with the traditional model. From there, aspects of the traditional school will be unitized, for experimentation dealing with the integration of space-making elements that are fundamentally distinct.

Table of Contents
The Problem 1 2 3 7 8 9 The school has not changed The mechanism of the school The waning efficacy of the modern school Competing interests Opportunizing a new intelligence (Class)Room for improvement

The Analysis: Traditional Schools 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Claiming a territory Clarifying Informal space Understanding the conventional school Material and human scale Interior scale Organizational scale Urban relationship

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 deviations 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. Herman Hertzberger, Space and Learning (2008)

The Analysis: Opposing Precedents 20 21 22 23 24 School precedents Informal: the loose fit Informal: rogue intervention Conceptual antithesis Programmatic antithesis

Design Experimentation: Unwrapping the School 26 27 28 29 30 31 Experiment: The loose fit Experiment: The rogue intervention Experiment: Conceptual antithesis Moving forward Appendix: Spring Studio Proposal Bibliography

The Problem

The school has not changed

Over the last century, dramatic advances have been made in the fields of human development and pedagogical thinking. Project-based learning, a greater sensitivity to individual development, learning styles, and skill sets, a redefined understanding of intelligence, and notions of working with, rather than against, a childs nature, have become increasingly prevalent in the world of education. Despite this flurry of pedagogical change around and within it, the school building stands resolute: unchanged and unresponsive besides, perhaps, allowing more natural light and ventilation for its students. Either school designers from over a century ago were incredibly forward-thinking, or weve got some serious catching up to do. 1

B+

The mechanism of the school

Hierarchical Uniformity Metric Assessment

Working under the assumption that the schools goal is to prepare its students to enter the workforce, it has historically been quite successful. However, its past efficacy has come to interfere with its progress. Public schools descended from Henry Fords industrial model, such that the raw materials (in this case, young children) enter on one end, they are processed through the learning factory, and eventually they emerge at the other end, the products of public education, ready to enter the workforce. The educational process itself parallels an assembly line, with lessons taught in a linear framework with a series of quality control check-points (in the form of testing and metric assessment) along the way. Until recently, this model proved to be quite effective in preparing children to enter the workforce. The traditional school was successful because of its hierarchical nature, and its focus on uniformity and metric assessment. These qualities are reinforced as much by its recent architecture as its dated pedagogy. 2

The waning efficacy of the modern school

The Changing Job Market: 1950-2000
Other

Manufacturing

Service
Today, however, the efficacy of this model has diminished. The job market has changed drastically in recent years: manufacturing jobs, which used to account for a third of US jobs, have dropped to around ten percent.

Job Market in 1950

Other Manufacturing

The types of jobs that public schools prepare their students for (more rote or task-based work) are dwindling, due to increased automation and offshoring. Machines are completing tasks that people previously completed by hand, with exponential speed and accuracy. If not lost to automation, jobs are increasingly being shipped overseas due to lower labor costs abroad and increased ease in implementing a globalized system. In some industries, the quality of workmanship is higher despite the disparity in labor costs. Schools teach skills that are more conducive to certain types of jobs than others. It teaches students their place in a strict hierarchy, and places a strong value on uniformity and measured success. The job market, historically based in agriculture and manufacturing, valued these skills. Our job market is no longer one based in agriculture or manufacturing. This shift has given rise to a new set of valued candidate qualities, based on the new job market. Yet, the school continues to teach toward a job market that no longer exists in the US. 3

Service

Job Market in 2002

The waning efficacy of the modern school

Employment Rate: College graduates under age 25

Increases in Educational Attainment: 1950-2005

100

Percent of US population 25-29 years

90

80

70

60

22.4% Unemployed
High school degree or more

50

40

30

20

22.0% Working; no degree required

Batchelors degree or more
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

55.6% Working; degree required

Unemployment for college graduates under age 25 has been above 20%. Of those who are employed, a similar number are working jobs that do not require a college degree. With a high school degree, most people in the 1950s who wanted a job could get one. With a college degree, a respectable job was guaranteed. Though there has been an increase in the number of jobs that require traditional skilled labor, educational attainment has increased disproportionately in the US, resulting in an oversaturation of the skilled job market. There are more people with advanced degrees than there are jobs that require such degrees. A bachelors degree today hardly gives any advantage in the saturated job market; in many cases, advanced degrees have become the standard for employment. 4

10

Year

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

The waning efficacy of the modern school

Furthermore, developing countries are surpassing the US in terms of the quality of their public education. With the continuing decline of public education institutions in the US, and the decline of the US as a superpower while India, China, and the rest of Asia steadily rise, the US can no longer compete with these countries in industry, but it can hold its ground with education. The US may not be in a position economically to invest the necessary funds to bring all US public educational programs up to adequate standards, but that does not mean we are out of the running. Rather, if the US is to maintain its stake as a global superpower, it must capitalize on the innovation it is known for. We must seek to change the rules of the game. To this end, available resources for education must be invested in new and alternative approaches that have a greater potential to maximize our return. 5

The waning efficacy of the modern school

Science and Technology Employment: 1950-2000
7
The high tech industry has also had an impact. Not only has influenced the job market directly with its explosive growth from the 1990s, but the field has revolutionized the way and speed with which we live. The high tech industry has brought our world to evolve at an unprecedented speed. The advent of the internet and mobile technologies has brought finance, commerce, communication, and others entirely new user interfaces, accessible at any hour of the day. Technologies are emerging faster than we can figure out how to utilize them. Constant upgrading and implementation of these technologies changes the way we interact with our environment and each other. Because of this, there is a growing need to adapt, create, and innovate in order to keep up with or stay ahead of the curve. Strict hierarchy, uniformity, and narrow definitions of success are obsolete in this new job market. Collaboration, creativity, and innovation have taken their place. Pedagogical shifts have begun to push education in this direction, but architecture is unresponsive to these changes. An effective school building is one that facilitates and is in alignment with the pedagogical methods it contains. If architecture is to maintain its relevance in education, it must progress with society. Otherwise, the school serves as a mere shell, emblematic of the educational institution it houses, but functionally inconsequential to it. Over the last 50 years, the job market has changed entirely. The traditional school model continues to teach towards the job market that existed then. Students today graduate in unprecedented numbers, unprepared and unable to enter the new job market. Educational architecture 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 job market. With todays technological capabilities and corporate educational programs, is it so farfetched that the unchanged school could become obsolete? 6

Employees (in millions)

1950

1960

1970 Year

1980

1990

2000

Human communities depend on a diversity of talent, not on a singular conception of ability. Sir Ken Robinson, Bring on the Learning Revolution, 2010

Competing interests Collective, Institution-focused Individual, Student-focused

Prioritize uniformity and metric assessment to secure state and federal funding

Prioritize overall student growth and learning to be successful entering the workforce

School Admin City Government

School Building

Students Parents

Teachers

Though they are not inherently in opposition and have, in fact, been in alignment in the past, there are competing interests currently which have caused resistance to change. The primary interest of the city and school administration is the maintenance and furtherance of the educational institution itself. To this end, they must receive funding, and to receive funding they must demonstrate the academic achievement of their students, which is generally recognized through performance on standardized tests measuring prescribed educational standards. Parents and students, however, tend to hold a greater interest in the development of the individual and his/her success upon entering the workforce. Teachers often straddle the line between these interests, leaning towards alignment with their higher-ups because the imposed hierarchy rewards them for doing so. The school building stoic and unyielding to political pressures rests in the middle. Its persistence over time (most school buildings in this country are over forty years old) and its iconic image speak to its power as an institution and reflect on the greater community it is in. Ideally, on a day-to-day basis, the school would work to support the individual student in her growth as a learner. The school has already established itself on the side of the persisting institution; its care for individual development must root itself as deeply. 7

Opportunizing a new intelligence

The situation in the US sounds dire, but it has presented a tremendous opportunity to the US if we are willing to take advantage of it. We must recognize and adapt to these changes. Underscoring that notion, Sir Ken Robinson states that, To me, its about recognizing that there is a much richer conception of intelligence and ability available to us than is promoted by conventional education. An example of one such attempt is the integration of the popularized (though contested) theory of multiple intelligences (MI) into educational design. MI recognizes nine areas of human intelligence: logical/mathematical, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, existential, verbal/linguistic, musical, naturalist, and bodily/kinesthetic. Applications of this theory have attempted to appeal to the full range of these intelligences in an education, whereas the traditional school would primarily focus on logical/mathematical and verbal/linguistic intelligences only. According to this theory, academic success could very well have its basis not in who is smartest, but rather in whose intelligences align best with the traditional academic model. Given the variety of ways that humans are able to learn from and experience their environments, the inadequacy of formalized educations narrow definition and pursuit of intelligence is gaining recognition as such. It has primarily been discussed in terms of pedagogical change or revolution, by thinkers such as Sir Ken Robinson (Do Schools Kill Creativity?, 2006) and Arthur Cropley (Creativity in education & learning, 2004). The rigidity and uniformity of the conventional educational model, however, is imposed by the architecture as much as the pedagogy: the familiar series of isolated desks facing the front of a rectangular classroom located off of a long corridor full of the same. The architectural implications of this pedagogical shift have only just begun to enter the discourse. 8

There is no reason why everyone should be interested in the geography of Venezuela on the same day and hour unless there is some news event there, such as a revolution. Buckminster Fuller, Education Automation, 1962

You cant expect children to learn 21st century skills in schools built for the 1950s. We need schools designed for 21st century success. Chad P. Wick, President and CEO of KnowledgeWorks Foundation

Informal

Nonformal Formal Pedagogies

(Class)Room for improvement

Places and Spaces

Processes
In his TED Talk, Sir Ken Robinson makes the point that, if youre not prepared to be wrong, youll never do anything original. He argues that, through their linearity and preoccupation with assessment, schools are actually educating children out of innovation and creativity. These qualities, he argues, are as important as literacy in the new job market and must be cultivated, not repressed. In her research paper, Marjaana Kangas explains that learning can be seen as a phenomenon that cannot be isolated from the activity, culture, and context in which it takes place. It is a tool-dependent and social phenomenon. As such, she calls for the integration of more informal settings within a school and increased opportunity for informal learning. She describes three types of education: formal (institutionalized, imposed curriculum), nonformal (organized, voluntary programs outside of school), and informal (everything else, learning outside of a curricula), which operate independently of formal, nonformal, and informal settings. For example, informal learning can occur in a formal setting (a child teaches another in the classroom a trick for tying his shoes), or formal education in an informal setting (a history lesson is moved outdoors on a nice day). As Kangas posits, learning is less a repetition of what is already known and more the production of something new, interesting, and relevant. 9

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, increasingly, 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. Herman Hertzberger, Space and Learning (2008)

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

(Class)Room for improvement

On top of failing to prepare students to enter the new job market, schools fail to prepare students to enter the social and cultural community. There is a stark disjunction between public education and the cultural and social values it imbues. In most schools, children find themselves in a dictatorial setting closer to what one might experience in a prison than in a free, democratic society. The traditional school model is prescriptive and works in opposition to concepts of democracy, collaboration, free-will, individuality, responsibility, and even the basic ability to exert control over ones own environment. These are cultural values our society holds dear and, in light of this, the alternative model will explore ways to embrace these values rather than to subvert them. In his piece, Schugurensky describes a School of Citizenship, which enacts a participatory democracy on the smaller scale of a school as a means of teaching ownership and the efficacy of participation in political processes to students. In this example, the students learn by doing, by actively shaping their own community. This has the added benefit of empowerment, by giving the students control over some part of their environment. In one of Schugurenskys examples, he describes an instance where the students are given the opportunity to redesign an area of the school which had previously been an underutilized between space. The children transformed it to a very active space which quickly became a favorite hang out area in the school. Not only were the children engaged by this opportunity, it gave them a greater stake in and sense of pride for their school. Despite its current inefficiencies, the traditional school model does certain things well. The traditional classroom setup hasnt changed because it is an effective and efficient system that serves a particular purpose. Certain (more abstract) subjects, such as math, would be difficult to teach outside of a classroom setting. The things that the school does well are unquestionably worth holding on to. This proposal aims to maintain some of those qualities and expand on them in an effort to facilitate this new conception of intelligence. 10

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 diversified types of learning.

The Analysis: Traditional Schools

Formal Education Traditional School Home schooling Potteries Thinkbelt

Claiming a territory
Montessori Hertzberger Waldorf Nature Schools Informal Setting Formal Setting
This cross-axis considers formal and informal setting along its horizontal, and formal education and informal learning across its vertical axis. A range of noteworthy projects and more generic educational types have been positioned on the chart so that their relationships to one another are clear. Looking at the educational types included in the diagram, traditional schools are located in the top left corner, at the extremes of both formal education and setting. Its polar opposite is seen to be unschooling, which is a curriculum-free form of homeschooling, based in the premise that children are inherently curious and exploratory and will learn for themselves whatever and whenever they desire to. Homeschooling is at the nexus of formal education and informal setting. Galleries and museums are in the opposite corner from that, at the extremes of formal setting and informal learning. It is through a deep understanding of the mechanisms of the traditional school and its formality, coupled with an understanding of informal settings, learning, and space, that an evolved educational model can begin to emerge. This thesis will likely position itself around the periphery of this chart, maintaining and integrating its extremes. Traditional education is effective in part because it is highly formalized, just as informal spaces facilitate their own type of interaction because of their informality. The juxtaposition of these extremes will reinforce the strength of each by comparison. The territory towards the center of the chart, where a blending occurs, will continue to be present in the dialogue as a potential opportunity for exploration. 12

High School for Recording Arts Bright Works

The Public School Ideas Circus Danfoss Universe Museums, Galleries, Exploratoria Informal Learning Unschooling

Despite its frequent use in architectural discourse, the term informal is ambiguous, particularly defining it in positive terms. As its name reinforces, it is defined not on its own merit, but rather in opposition to the formal. The formal is much simpler to define; it speaks to conventions, regularity, adherence to expectations, and the physical manifestations of form. We are thus left with a definition of informal as unconventional, irregular, unexpected, and non-physical: a much more amorphous beast. Bernard Tschumi and Stan Allen are regarded as the primary contemporary thinkers on this topic. In the chapter entitled Field Conditions in his Points and Lines (1985), Stan Allen discusses the potential for a loose fit of program with form. He describes the grid and the field condition as tools to achieve this, where porosity and local interconnection are key and through which form emerges from the bottom-up. The spatial matrix he describes is infinitely expandable, as its units are serial and can be repeated. Tschumis piece entitled Abstract Mediation and Strategy speaks to a similar point by proposing to implement a structure that exists independent of use or program. He sees this as a way to oppose the typical causal relationship between form and program, suggesting the point grid as a means of erasing authorship, centrality, and hierarchy. These types of informal form will be described as the loose fit. The next understanding of informal takes its meaning in direct opposition to the formal, the expected, the status quo. It interrupts what is there as a means of subverting it, and its significance can only exist through this contrast. It can be considered bottom-up in the sense that an outside party is acting on an existing setting that is under someone elses control. This type of informality that is based in the unexpected will be known as the rogue intervention. An investigation into additional types of informality continues to be conducted, and will play a significant role in the project moving forward. Once it is more fully broken down and analyzed, its strategies can be experimented with, manipulated, and forced back together with the formal. The other categories outlined in the precedent analysis section include conceptual and programmatic antitheses. These aim to consider the mechanism that is working in the traditional school on a conceptual and programmatic level, and flip it on its head by way of precedent (for conceptual antithesis) or typology (for programmatic antithesis). The mechanisms working at each scale in the conventional school include impositions of order, discipline, isolation, and hierarchical control. Opposition to these mechanisms would include disorder, the unexpected, social interaction, and democratic or controllable space.

Clarifying Informal Space

13

Understanding the conventional school

In this plastic, everchanging shape, the child enters school, the organized social institution that proposes to instruct him systematically in heritage, resources, ways and possibilities of society and to assist him in becoming the person that he potentially can be. Planning Elementary School Buildings, 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. Planning Elementary School Buildings, 1953

An analysis of the current school typology is the starting point, as a means of examining the uniformity and hierarchy imposed across a range of scales. This will attempt to uncover the latent politics embedded in conventional school design despite its stated goals to the contrary (see quotes to the left). The four main texts that are drawn from as the basis for this analysis include: Planning Elementary School Buildings by N. L. Engelhardt (1953), School Ways: The Planning and Design of Americas Schools by Ben E. Graves (1993), School Design by Henry Sanoff (1994), and Building Type Basics for Elementary and Secondary Schools by Bradford Perkins (2001), all of which are comprehensive instructional manuals for designing schools, intended for inexperienced designers and/or clients. There are four scales to be analyzed: material and human, interior, organization, and urban relationship. 14

Material and human scale

In terms of the material and human scale, above is a catalogue of materials prescribed for each surface in a classroom (assuming, of course, that the classroom is a necessary unit). These materials closely resemble what one might find in a prison. They impose a uniformity across learning spaces. They are durable and easy to clean, resisting the destructive or messy childs actions, and antiseptic, resisting his germs, thereby reducing his responsibility to learn to treat his environment with care and respect. Child ergonomics, as presented in the above diagram, are framed in a general way and seem to be applied in isolation from the way children interact with objects and experience their environments. For example, many children treat chairs differently than adults do. They do not generally sit as neatly as the child in the diagram above: a child might pull herself on to the chair on her knees then flop over to her seat, or kneel on the chair instead of sitting, or sit on one leg. Children generally fidget and have a lot more micro-movement than adults do. The simple scaling down of adult furniture to a childs size is not sufficient to suit their needs. Furniture that attempts to restrict the childs action will be less conducive to the childs attention than furniture that accommodates his movement. 15

Students perception of their environment, whether supportive or hostile, interesting or boring, is integral to an understanding of the school environment. School Design, 1994

Interior scale

Clearly, there are disadvantages to students on the periphery: less classroom participation 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. School Design, 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 flexibility... 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 file cabinets to create more traditional classroom settings. School Ways: The Planning and Design of Americas Schools, 1993

The traditional classroom setup is hierarchical if anything: the teacher sits in the front of the room and the students sit in regular rows, making their surveillance easy. These layouts lend themselves very well to a lecture presentation format, where most students can easily see the board at the front of the room. Movable desks and rectangular rooms are recommended so that the room can be easily reconfigured as needed (articulated rooms, it is said, make arranging furniture more difficult and should be avoided). The ideal classroom size is between 750 and 1,000 square feet, and should accommodate between 20 and 25 children. In a classroom, the space allocation for each child ranges from 35 to 42 square feet. 16

Organizational scale

The centralized resource plan

The dumbbell plan

The spine plan

The courtyard plan

The classroom-clustering plan

The courtyard with classroom clustering plan

Avoid designing corridors so they have no other use but circulation. Building Type Basics for Elementary and Secondary Schools, 2001

As the classroom is the archetypal interior unit in a conventional school, the double-loaded corridor is the archetypal strategy for organization. Program is generally located off of doubleloaded corridors for efficiency and ease of student surveillance during the school day. Individual classrooms tend to be adjacent but separate, though more modern recommendations call for flexible walls between adjacent classrooms for collaboration, if desired. Modern trend calls for smaller community clusters within the school, often called neighborhoods, as demonstrated in the spine plan or the classroom-clustering plan. Generally, all space is programmed, and programmed for a single use. These organizational models take the classroom, circulation, and shared facilities (eg cafeteria, gymnasium) as distinct and necessary components of an educational facility. 17

Urban relationship

Playground

School Building

Playground

Buffer

Security truly begins at the perimeter of the school site. The site should be laid out to ensure 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. Building Type Basics for Elementary and Secondary Schools, 2001

Lastly, the school tends to be monastically autonomous. Justified by safety reasons, parking is positioned around the school to act as somewhat of a buffer between children and their greater community, while accommodating the varied needs of vehicular traffic. Playgrounds are generally fenced in, and there are minimal entrances (usually one) to enter and exit the school building. Despite its intent to teach students about the world, education is generally very inward-looking, focusing its attention on textbooks, teacher presentations, and the occasional classroom experiment or project rather than engaging with and drawing lessons from the surrounding world. 18

The Analysis: Opposing Precedents

Precedent studies (both school and non-school) will be conducted that analyze radically different qualities than those of the traditional school at each scale. The intent is that elements may be extracted, reinterpreted, and held up against the traditional school model towards the development of an alternative educational space that can exist in conjunction with components of the conventional model.

School precedents

Material and Human Scale Mark Hortons The Little School

Interior Scale Arkitemas Hellerup Skole

Mark Hortons The Little School uses a thickened wall to define and transition between spaces. By providing child-size openings at varying elevations and extruded details to help them climb freely, this wall reconciles child ergonomics with their playful nature and imagination. The Hellerup Skole, designed by Arkitema and completed in 2002 in Denmark, is one of the few open-plan schools that has been successful. Rather than the typical empty plan with movable walls that was the demise of the 1970s open plan movement, this design articulates and differentiates spaces although they are open through the use of different materiality and types of furniture. Spatial and lighting qualities change from one area to the next, which makes particular areas more or less suitable to a given program looking to occupy a space. This is in stark contrast to the uniform rectangular classroom and its familiar desk layout, which is prescribed for a single use and functions as much as a holding cell as a learning space. At the organizational scale, another look is given to Mark Hortons The Little School. He has replaced the typical doubleloaded corridor with a solid wall that has child-sized openings. In this scheme, classrooms are located amidst play spaces. Transition through the wall are generally between class and play. The Public School considers the city itself as a school. Being everywhere and nowhere at once, any place in the city can become a lab or a classroom; spaces are appropriated as needed. The intent is to experience and glean from the richness of the city. This contrasts with the monastic autonomy of the school as it takes an attitude of isolation from its immediate cultural and social context. 20

Mark Hortons The Little School Organizational Scale

The Public School Urban Relationship

LA Class Locations

Informal: the loose fit

System Wein by Lebbeus Woods was an installation that used a grid system to occupy and infiltrate the gallery space. Circulation is the loosely-fit program, and the other people moving through the space would parallel the program elements present in other examples. In this sense, other people occupying the exhibit become just as much a part of it as the metal rods themselves. Figure and ground lose their distinction from one another and the boundaries of the installation are not clearly defined. Porosity and openness are key concepts, along with the democracy and fluidity of space. Stan Allen extols this work for its superpositioning of multiple grid systems as a means of organizing program in a flexible and open way, without being pre-deterministic of what program can happen in which areas. The grid overlap produces moments of intensity that would be unattainable using the singular Modernist grid. The column grid acts as a loose organizer within the space. It can be infinitely expanded as needed without impacting the existing space. MVRDVs concept is based on the idea of working improvisation of use into the design. By creating a loose fit between program and form, MVRDV affords the buildings occupants some play in how the space is used, and gives them the ability to change it over time as the needs of their organization evolves. In his project, the Parc de la Villette, Tschumi uses a grid as a means of organization and connection to the urban context. He used the point grid as a tool to subvert the traditional causal relationship between form and program. He also liked that it could be infinitely expanded, and that it does not have an implicit center or hierarchy to it. It simultaneously provided a system for organization while directly opposing much of what the site and program called for. 21

Material and Human Scale Lebbeus Woodss System Wein

Interior Scale The Great Mosque of Cordoba

MVRDVs Villa VPRO Organizational Scale

Tschumis Parc de la Villette Urban Relationship

Informal: rogue intervention

Material and Human Scale Andy Goldsworthys Fall Leaves

Interior Scale Michael Townsends One Kinsley Ave.

Goldsworthys work aims to intervene on nature and produce an unexpected and temporal effect. In nature, disorder is the expected, it is the status quo. By organizing certain elements to form some type of geometric order, this intervention becomes legible against the contrasting natural disorder of a forest. RISD professor Michael Townsend built a hidden, fully furnished, 750 square foot apartment in an unused space off of a parking garage in a mall in Providence, RI. He and some friends lived there on and off for over three years before mall security found out and evicted them. The apartment was embedded deep within the poche between the garage and the mall. This intervention was intended to be a social commentary on consumerist society, pushing consumerism to a new extreme by living within the mall. Without the backdrop of the mall, this project would have been meaningless. This project seeks to intervene on La Defense, a political building in Paris. The opening through the middle invites such an intervention, almost. Self Defense is the implementation of a shantytown within that void. Units are plugged into the wall and stacked along one side of the void. Their arrangement allows for easy vertical and horizontal circulation. Again, this project would not be of note were it not for its invasion of a political icon. The Imagine Bus Project is a bus that was converted to a mobile arts classroom. An act of defiance against the lack of arts education in the city, it travels around the city to bring arts education to urban communities. It is radically different from the traditional school in its mobility and openness to the city. Its mobility permits it to surface at schools, unsolicited, and depart just as quickly and easily. 22

Stephane Malkas Self Defense Organizational Scale

The Imagine Bus Project Urban Relationship

Conceptual antithesis
Olafur Eliassons Your Blind Passenger is a sensory-intensive exhibit that is a passage through a series of enclosed spaces that are filled with fog and brightly colored lights. Users were essentially blinded by the fog and intense lighting as they found themselves edging their way through this novel and disorienting environment. This contrasts with the rigid, institutional materiality of the traditional school that deprives the senses more than appealing to or attempting to overwhelm them. Material and Human Scale Olafur Eliassons Your Blind Passenger Interior Scale Adventure Playgrounds Adventure playgrounds are intended to let children play and build creatively, providing them with the supplies and support they need to construct forts, towers, and whatever else they desire. They are given free range to paint, build, and play on whatever is there. Relating back to the conventional school, adventure playgrounds dispose of the imposed hierarchy and the monofunctional objects and furniture in the classroom. They are meant to empower. Their form changes over time, and is entirely contingent on the imagination and whim of the children in them. The RAND Corporation is a thinktank for which an office building was constructed in the 1950s. The facility was designed as a system to foster chance interaction between individuals and departments as a way to encourage interdisciplinary thinking. This was achieved by democratizing space and increasing the redundancy of routes while maintaining their efficiency in length. In addition to the circulation pictured in blue, access was also available through the exterior courtyards, pictured in dark grey. This model relies on the double-loaded corridor, but exploits it for increased social interaction and in doing so made the corridor a compelling, desirable, and active space. With his Venice Hospital, LeCorbusier experimented with the notion of a dispersed, non-figural building that is better integrated with its surroundings rather than reading as a singular object placed on the site. He worked with a set unit of hospital rooms, and arranged them in such a way that fingers extend into the site, increasing direct sunlight and dispersed access. 23

H. Roy Kelleys The RAND Corporation Organizational Scale

LeCorbusiers Venice Hospital Urban Relationship

Programmatic antithesis

Material and Human Scale Playground

Interior Scale Museum

If the furniture of a school is intended to promote order and stillness, the playground acts in stark opposition. It invites children to run, jump, climb, and play as they see fit. If the classroom desk signifies stillness, the playground signifies nonstillness. It demands physical movement. The interior of a classroom is meant to contain. It is prescriptive in how students interact with it, and how they are led to perceive of themselves in it; desk placement necessarily indicates hierarchy between student and teacher, and uniformity between peers. The placement of desks restricts movement within the classroom, instead encouraging students to sit and be still in order to learn. The museum typology gets at learning through another means: through movement. Museums rely on movement through the space to tell the story they aim to convey. Though it might prioritize certain exhibits or works of art, it does not lend any hierarchy to the users within it. The school uses the double-loaded corridor as a means of efficiency, to streamline student movement between two points within the building. The use of a single pathway limits options for the direction of movement. Malls, on the other hand, forego efficiency in favor of meandering pathways, past many stores in an attempt to pique customer interest. They force users to go out of their way to get to the next escalator. The broadness of their walkways invite slow movement, and multiple paths on each horizontal plane give options for meandering movement. In contrast to the withdrawn isolation of the school, the urban transit network reaches out in all directions into the city. It serves as its connective tissue, binding together certain parts of the city that might not be otherwise. It is active and vital to the city, and intends to serve it. 24

Mall Organizational Scale

Public Transit Network Urban Relationship

A series playing with the envelope

Design Experimentation: Unwrapping the School

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Experiment: The loose fit

This experiment takes the units of the traditional school and organizes them within a grid. Programmatic adjacencies frame open courtyard-type spaces, permitting collaboration across these courtyards or expansion of an adjacent program element into them. The double-loaded corridor has been abandoned, and circulation weaves through the implied courtyard spaces. 26

Experiment: The rogue intervention

This experiment locates the typical classroom unit on top of an exhibition at a museum of natural history. Students are able to learn from the exhibit from their classroom-perch above it. Their similar glass enclosure causes the classrooms and their occupants to in turn become a part of the exhibit, observed by museum-goers passing through the space. 27

Experiment: Conceptual antithesis

The typical school-as-visually-isolated format is broken, as the enclosure is transformed to enclose the interstitial spaces between program elements. Elements are stacked to add programmatic adjacencies in section. This experiment leaves the program exposed for observation, both for students to observe their community and vice-versa. The double-loaded corridor, generally the most public place within the school, becomes privatized since it is not visually accessible to program elements and it does not take the typical linear format of the double-loaded corridor that enables its surveillance. 28

Moving forward

Taking the units of a traditional school forward with me, I will continue to seek out, define, and explore types of informal space. As a means of generative design, I will use the units of the traditional school as building blocks, and experiment with different ways of creating and integrating informality. Ambiguity of space, blurred boundary conditions, and user (student) manipulability will be the focus, though other types of informality will be studied as well. The ultimate goal of this project is to produce the next step in the evolution of school design, to push it past its current state of stagnation. The next evolution of school design will be responsive to advances in child development as well as studies connecting the efficacy of learning to attributes of a physical design. This will take the form of a school building, focusing primarily on changing the organization of the school, though shifts on the other scales will be imperative to the design. 29

Appendix: Spring Studio Proposal

1. Argument:
Over the last century, dramatic advances have been made in the fields of human development and pedagogical thinking. Project-based learning, a greater sensitivity to individual development, learning styles, and skill sets, a redefined understanding of intelligence, and notions of working with, rather than against, a childs nature, have become increasingly prevalent in the world of education. Despite this flurry of pedagogical change around and within it, the school building stands resolute: unchanged and unresponsive besides, perhaps, allowing more natural light and ventilation for its students. Either school designers from over a century ago were incredibly forward-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 of uniformity, reinforced as much by its recent architecture as its dated pedagogy. The traditional school is analyzed to understand its limits such that these conventions can support alternative strategies. 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 diversified types of learning.

2. Design Trajectory:
This thesis intends to explore ways of integrating hyper-formal and hyper-informal settings. Both will be powerful settings for learning, but they will facilitate different types of learning. The analysis of the traditional school at the different scales will be leveraged such that units from the traditional school (or aspects of) will be maintained and will be coupled with different types of informal space. Informal space will be further broken down, defined in positive terms, and analyzed independently from the formal before formal and informal are put together. A series of experiments will be conducted at each of the four scales, and across the different types of informal intervention. Through this method, limits and strengths of the conventional school can be determined such that these conventions can support alternative strategies.

3. Site:
San Francisco will be the site for this project since it supports and fosters innovation and new approaches, and generally places a high value on education. It is home to a number of alternative local schools that have modified the traditional schoolhouse. Brightworks, for example, is opening its doors to its first class this fall; this program seeks to turn the traditionally inward-looking, isolated school model outward into the community, and will use a comprehensive project-based curriculum. There are Montessori and Waldorf schools, which have found success in the Bay Area and worldwide, and which have adapted the school with the intention of facilitating education, based on their respective pedagogies. Within the city, the site will have to be urban so that there are opportunities for interaction and integration with the citys richness. This may be near a cultural hub or landmark, or area with a strong sense of community and ownership. Specific site options will be determined over the break.

4. Program:
The program will be a primary educational facility. Younger children have the greatest need for alternative types of learning, particularly before they are fully literate. Before they know how to read and write, they rely on other sensory, social, and experiential inputs to learn. They interact very differently with their environments than adults do, yet they are put into adult-friendly environments whose only accommodation is to scale down the size of the furniture and put some brightly colored paint on the walls. Children tend to be more free with their imagination, behavior, and interpretation of the world. According to Sir Ken Robinson, with their singular conception of intelligence and focus on uniformity and metric assessment, schools are actually teaching out of creativity starting at a very early age. The earlier that that creativity can be fostered, the better. For these reasons, primary educational facilities seem to be in the greatest need of architectural intervention, and will be the focus of this project. 30

Architectural theory, history, precedent

Abbas, Ackbar. Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1997. Print. Allen, Stan. Field Conditions. Points + Lines Diagrams and Projects for the City. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural, [20]. 2-12. Print. Allen, Stan. Reading MVRDV. Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City. New York: Princeton Architectural, 1999. 83-87. Print. David, T. G. and C. S. Weinstein. The Built Environment and Childrens Development. In Spaces for Children: The Built Environment and Child Development, edited by C. S. Weinstein and T. G. David. New York: Plenum, 1987. Engelhardt, N. L. Planning Elementary School Buildings. New York: F. W. Dodge, 1953. Print. Fiske, E. B. Systemic School Reform: Implications for Architecture. In Designing Places for Learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1995. Forty, A. Spatial Mechanics: Scientific Metaphors in Architecture. in Peter Galison and Emily Thompson, ed., Architecture and Science. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999, p 213-232. Graves, Ben E., and Clifford A. Pearson. School Ways: the Planning and Design of Americas Schools. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993. Print. Hertzberger, H. Space and Learning. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2008. Kim, Jong-Jin. Bodyscape. Seoul: Damdi, 2007. Print. Mostaedi, Arian. Preschool & Kindergarten Architecture. Barcelona: Carles Broto, 2006. Print. Perkins, L. Bradford. Building Type Basics for Elementary and Secondary Schools. New York ; Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2001. Print. OWP/P Architects, VS Furniture, and Bruce Mau Design. The Third Teacher: 79 Ways You Can Use Design to Transform Teaching & Learning. New York: Abrams, 2010. Print. Building Type Basics for Elementary and Secondary Schools by Bradford Perkins (2001) Robinson, Sir Ken. Bring on the Learning Revolution! TED Talks. Feb. 2010. Speech. Robinson, Sir Ken. Changing Educational Paradigms. TED Talks. Oct. 2010. Speech. Robinson, Sir Ken. Do Schools Kill Creativity? TED Talks. Monterey, CA. June 2006. Speech. Sanoff, Henry. School Design. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1994. Print. Suri, Jane Fulton. Thoughtless Acts?: Observations on Intuitive Design. San Francisco: Chronicle, 2005. Print. Tschumi, Bernard. Architecture and Disjunction. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2001. Print. Woods, Lebbeus. The Storm and the Fall. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2004. Print.

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Allidoti, Mara. The Meaning of Social Climate of Learning Environments: Some Reasons Why We Do Not Care Enough about It. Learning Environments Research 13.2 (2010): 89-104. Web. Bekerman, Zvi, Nicholas C. Burbules, and Diana Silberman-Keller. Introduction. Learning in Places: the Informal Education Reader. New York: P. Lang, 2006. 1-8. Print. Bekerman, Zvi, Nicholas C. Burbules, and Diana Silberman-Keller. This Is Our School of Citizenship. Learning in Places: the Informal Education Reader. New York: P. Lang, 2006. 163-82. Print. Cropley, A. J. Creativity in Education & Learning: a Guide for Teachers and Educators. London: Kogan Page, 2001. Print. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Print. Gislason, N. Architectural Design and the Learning Environment: A Framework for School Design Research. Learning Environments Research 13.2 (2010): 127-45. Web. Gislason, N. (2009a). Mapping school design: A qualitative study of the relationship between facilities design, curriculum delivery, and school climate. Journal of Environmental Education, 40(4), 1733. Gislason, N. (2009b). School design: History, case studies, and practice. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto, Canada. Hauptman, H. and Cohen, A. The synergetic effect of learning styles on the interaction between virtual environments and the enhancement of spatial thinking. Computers & Education. Vol 57(3), Nov 2011, pp. 2106-2117. Kangas, Marjaana. Finnish Childrens Views on the Ideal School and Learning Environment. Learning Environments Research 13.3 (2010): 205-23. Web. Konings, K., Brand-Gruwel, S., & van Merrienboer, J. (2005). Towards more powerful learning environments through combining the perspectives of designers, teachers and students. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 75, 645660. Lippman, Peter C. Evidence-based Design of Elementary and Secondary Schools. Hoboken, NJ: J. Wiley, 2010. Print. Rogolin, Alessadro, and Maxine Alloway. Children and Their Development as the Starting Point: A New Way to Think about the Design of Elementary Schools. Educational & Child Psychology 28.1 (2011): 64-76. Web. Toker, Umut, and Denis Grey. Innovation Spaces: Workspace Planning and Innovation in U.S. University Research Centers. Research Policy 37.2 (2008): 309-29. Web.

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