Architects Go Back to School and Design the Classroom of the Future
During a lunchtime assembly President Barack Obama will announce to students, teachers and parents, "I'm working hard to fix up your classrooms... ...but you've got to do your part too." Fortunately for him, a global network has spent the better part of a year already doing their part.
The 2009 Open Architecture Challenge, a biennial design competition, brought together more that 7000+ K-12 students, teachers and building professionals to work on upgrading and expanding their learning environments into innovative, cost-effective and sustainable classrooms for the future.
Lead by Architecture for Humanity, Orient Global and a consortium of 30 partners, this initiative created over 400 buildable solutions -- from safe and sustainable alternatives to the ubiquitous portable trailers to urban upgrading in Colombia and India. From June to August an international jury of design professionals, educators and K-12 students went through every scheme before settling on eight finalists. Each finalist was thoroughly vetted and this week a winner was selected.
So this morning, an hour before the President takes the stage, a small independent non-profit school in Victor, Idaho (pop. 1200) will be holding their own special 'back to school' assembly to celebrate winning this international competition. The school, the Teton Valley Community School, receives $50,000 to help fund their new classroom and the winning design team, Section Eight [Design], is awarded $5,000 to help implement the scheme.
By providing cost-effective and sustainable teaching spaces the designers have looked to extend the learning environment beyond the four walls of the classroom. Movable panels allow students to reconfigure their space as needed. The building itself is designed to be a learning tool. The mechanical room, a building component normally closed from view, can be seen from the science lab allowing students to learn how heating and cooling systems function first hand. Their design for a potentially off-the-grid stand alone classroom will allow the school to emerge out of their existing structure, a remodeled house, into a space designed specifically for their students and teachers.
The lack of access to education is not only here in the United States but it is a global problem. The World Bank and the United Nations estimates more than ten million classrooms in one hundred countries need to be built just to give every child the basic right to primary education. Tens of millions more are in dire need of repair or improvement. The competition showed the sheer diversity of opportunities from tensile structures for the children of salt pan workers, a fog-catching school in San Francisco to an earthquake resistant traditional earthen school in Bam, Iran. Most schemes were priced $50,000 to $150,000 in the West and $2,000 to $8,000 elsewhere. Additionally by open sourcing these ideas we can transform and support the lives of more children around the world. All competition entries are held under a creative commons license, allowing designers to share their innovations with those who need them most.
This year long effort has shown that there is certainly not a lack of skill or desire -- it is, as always, the hurdles of enabling strong political will and committed long term financial support. We can either wait for the stars to align and for strong leadership to right the ship OR allow agile non-profits, progressive school boards and social ventures to collaborate and push the system in the right direction.
When six million children in this country are taught in portable trailers, many of which increase the risk of cancer, I'm not willing to wait. We, spurred on by the competition, are starting a $6M classroom upgrade fund with the hopes of improving at least 300 learning spaces around the world.
If the current administration truly believes that the United States has "the best schools in the world" then we should be encouraged to lead by example.
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Check out the winners and finalists here.
Challenge Winner: Teton Valley Community School, Victor, Idaho, USA designed by Section Eight [design], Victor, Idaho, USA
Founders' Award: The Corporacion Educativa y Social Waldorf, Bogota, Colombia designed by Arquitectura Justa, Bogota, Colombia
Best Urban Classroom Upgrade Design: Rumi School of Excellence, Hyderabad, India designed by IDEO, San Francisco, CA, USA
Best Rural Classroom Design: Building Tomorrow Academy, Wakiso and Kiboga, Uganda designed by Gifford LLP, London, UK
Best Re-locatable Classroom Design: Druid Hills High School, Georgia, USA designed by Perkins and Will, Georgia, USA
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10am Update: Here is a photo from the Teton Valley Community School 'back to school' assembly.
Follow Cameron Sinclair on Twitter: www.twitter.com/casinclair
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Our non profit, the Modular Building Institute, was proud to work with Architecture for Humanity on this competition. As one of the judges, I was able to view many exciting ideas and concepts. Someone mentioned earlier in a post that the only problem now is money. That's always the excuse.
We are contributing towards the cost of building of the winner entry in the relocatable design competition in hopes that we can get a proto- type built. We think this will help advance further improvements in learning environment.
I would take exception with one thing Cameron continues to say - linking portable trailers to an increased risk of cancer. Properly installed and maintained portables pose no greater threat to kids than any other classroom. The 1999 EWG report he cites is based on mobile homes and makes inaccurate assumptions about portables.
Nonetheless, there is certainly much room for improvement and I hope our organization can help advance and support future efforts like this one.
Now.......
The good news: they love high school. Yeah....th
This is another example of trying to "fix" education by tinkering with a hundred year old model of education based in the industrial age, the factory/assembly line school model. This is 30 kids/class of the same age, working as individuals, marching from class to class, to the rhythm of the bell schedule, memorizing outdated facts from teachers who have 150 other students and are following political mandates from state capitals and are otherwise constrained by administrators, unions, etc. Al Shanker once commented that one would never "fix" a factory where only 50% of the product worked by running an extra shift of the factory, why do we expect this to work for education. Students need to learn in the real world where people are ages 0-99, some learning takes 15 min and some much longer, with projects, internships, trip to the woods, personal responsibility, team work, and on and on focused on the issues of today. Don't fix the "schools" fix education.
It's been known for a while that architecture can contribute significantly to our psychological state (ref: Ken Kesey and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest) which is particularly important when it comes to the setting for learning. Unfortunately I think are trying to create idealized students and ignoring that there are those for whom shools and schedules just dont work. I refer to those who have been tagged with the terrible appelation of ADHD, as if they were disfunctional instead of otherwise functional. Why? Of course every person who gets their degree in education (having not capacity for math that would lead them into legitimate engineering or science) try to use the so called science of sociology to create idealized learning environments and now are using drugs to create idealized students who can learn in them.
I love that Teton School. You don't need a degree in education to know that an environment like that makes kids want to learn. But that school's architecture in an urban environment with irrelevant teaching approaches would still fail. Let's get some real science into learning psychology and stop feeding those with ADHD the drugs we think they need and instead find the kind of wall-less environment where they can express their natural selves and learn by being outside doing stuff meaningful to them. For those who like everything nice and orderly your excellent grades will depend on how nicely you line up your peas on your dinner plates.
As a teacher that works in a school building which is more than 50 years old I hope we can implement these countrywide. The only problem, of course, is money.
Nice to see an article on Architecture here. Would like to see more.
Been there, done that in every decade. #1 we need to get rid of government indoctrination centers and allow people to choose their own schools. The design can then follow function and the curriculum.
I hear this all the time, form follows function, but never from an Architect. What is the form that follows function? Architecture and our built environment, shape society, for better or worse, in ways many outside of the profession don't comprehend on a conscious level. I applaud this effort to re-think the classroom - to embrace the concept that maybe fuction follows form.
K-12 students and teachers are probably the most underutilized design resource in the world. Building committees are top heavy with administrators and board members, and too many firms practicing in this market "know what works." THESE ENTRIES SHOW HOW IMPORTANT THE USER'S CONTRIBUTION IS TO DOING GREAT DESIGN.
See Diana Bianchini's Profile
Providing children of the world with classrooms to learn and thrive in I believe is the foundation to solving all of our global and country based issues and problems. We need this and I am proud that the Architecture For Humanity community and all the Challenge teams, students, teachers, and design firms across the world are doing something right now! -Diana
Education IS a basic human right and no child should be told they cannot learn due to sub-par facilities. It is our job as designers and as human beings to create spaces that are functional, beautiful and affordable for the communities they serve so that no child will grow up without an education. The only way we will life communities and countries out of poverty is through education. It's such an easy thing to do and Architecture for Humanity and the Open Architecture Challenge are doing it - Bravo Ladies and Gentlemen. Bravo and Thank you from my children's children.
We celebrate LEED schools at $300 per square foot. AFH's open architecture competition format produces the green schools we need for a fraction of that cost, then makes the competition results available to every community that needs a school. How cool is that?
This is such a great step toward bringing good design and sustainablity to all. This project brings out the best in humanity, we should all stop and take a moment to check out all the hard work that went into all the designs submitted to this competition. Pass the word around, this should be the standard for all schools accross the nation and accross the world.
Designers CAN and DO Care....a refreshing and exciting project that will help bring better designed learning environments to kids around the world! I hope President Obama and other leaders and educators will model collaborative efforts like the one fostered by Architecture for Humanity into their own plans to improve our education systems. Congrats to Section Eight Design on your winning entry....w
Architecture for Humanity has successfully pulled communities together with many of their projects, it is great to see them at it again. Schools should not be deprived of great design, and children need an environment that will support their learning and will be a comfortable, welcoming place. Thank you Architecture for Humanity for the challenge and for all the submitting teams.
Keep your mind open.
Design like you give a damn!
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