Paris studio Yoonseux Architectes added wooden surfaces and red floors to this school classroom building in the French city of Livry Gargan, to echo the autumnal tones of neighbouring trees (+ slideshow).
Built to accommodate the expanding number of pupils attending J. Jaurès Primary School, Yoonseux Architectes‘ extension occupies a site between two of the school’s existing buildings.
It provides a sheltered courtyard and three classrooms, linked together by a long corridor that faces the playground from the front of the building.
A wall running along the back of the site provides a backdrop for the carefully positioned trees, which can be seen from inside each of the classrooms.
“We conceived of the project as an ‘open edge’, not as a ‘wall to divide’,” said the architects. “To ensure this idea we made a garden along the boundary. All of the new classes orient toward this garden.”
Large windows along the back wall of the classrooms frame views of the trees, while knotted timber boards clad the walls to enhance the connection between the interior and the garden.
“[With] this choice of material it is our intention to extend the garden to be inside the building,” said the architects. “Visible from the classrooms, its architectural treatment identifies the garden as a value-adding landscape element extending up to the sky.”
The underside of the roof covering the courtyard and the wall adjacent to the building’s entrance are also covered in wood to create a warm and welcoming space for children to play.
Just two concrete columns support the 15-metre span of the roof, offering minimal disruption to the space underneath.
Horizontal metal bars separate the courtyard from the garden and allow sunlight to filter through, creating a pattern of light and shadow on the ground.
The corridor that extends past the classrooms features a translucent glass wall that permits partial views of the playground.
In this space, the use of wood continues on the doors and their surrounds, as well as low storage units and simple wooden coat pegs that are fixed to the wall in two staggered rows.
This movie by Mexican film agency Nation tours the school of art, design and architecture that Japanese architect Tadao Ando completed last year at the University of Monterrey in Mexico.
The Centro Roberto Garza Sada, also known as the Gate of Creation, is a chunky concrete block designed by Tadao Ando with triangular slices across its two sides to create the appearance of a twisted structure.
Rectangular voids at each end expose stairwells and an open-air amphitheatre, while entrances are located beneath the shelter of the building’s raised underside.
The six-storey interior is organised so that each floor accommodates different departments, encompassing digital facilities, visual arts, textiles, photography, model-making and fashion. Overall, the building accommodates studios and teaching rooms for 300 students.
British firm John McAslan + Partners has converted a stone barn into a library and added a contrasting stained timber extension, as part of its redevelopment of a university campus in Cumbria, England (+ slideshow).
During the first stage of a masterplan for updating the University of Cumbria‘s Ambleside Campus, John McAslan + Partners refurbished the traditional Cumbrian barn, which was constructed in 1929 and had until recently been used as a student union.
Informed by the campus’s setting in a National Park, the architects endeavoured to minimise alterations to the existing barn’s stone exterior and added an extension with a pitched roof and large windows overlooking a new courtyard.
“The reconfiguration, a contemporary interpretation of Cumbrian vernacular, respects the original stone fabric of the building while enhancing the character and quality of the space,” said the architects.
Timber beams supporting the roof of the barn were exposed to increase the interior volume and contribute to a spacious upper storey that is filled with light from the redesigned windows.
The single-storey addition with its steeply sloping roof is clad in black-stained timber that provides a contrast to the stone barn and surrounding buildings.
“John McAslan + Partners’ design for the new library and student hub respects the original stone fabric of the building, while enhancing the character and quality of the space,” said the university’s head of facilities management, Stephen Bloye.
Full-height windows brighten the interior of the cafeteria and allow views across the landscaped courtyard towards the rest of the campus.
New stone floors used throughout the ground floor of the library and the cafeteria unite the interiors of the two spaces.
Pale wood covering the walls and ceiling of the cafeteria recurs in fitted furniture including rounded booths on the library’s ground floor and the cladding of the circulation areas.
As part of the ongoing masterplan the architects will continue to repair and refurbish other buildings around the university campus and improve landscaping and connections around the site.
Library and student hub, Ambleside Campus, University of Cumbria
A newly opened library and student hub marks the completion of the first phase of the practice’s masterplan for the Ambleside Campus at the University of Cumbria.
Stephen Bloye, Head of Facilities Management, University of Cumbria, comments: “John McAslan + Partners’ design for the new library and student hub respects the original stone fabric of the building, while enhancing the character and quality of the space.”
The existing timber roof structure has been exposed, greatly increasing the building’s overall volume. In addition, new stone floors have been installed and windows redesigned to maximise natural light, creating an attractive working environment and improve energy use.
Generous glazing provides views out onto the adjacent courtyard space, one of the new landscape spaces created as part of the campus redevelopment, and beyond over the mature landscape of the campus.
The reanimated university campus will comprise Business Enterprise and Development, Outdoor Studies, Environmental Sciences and the National School of Forestry, creating a 21st-century university campus within the National Park.
Phase One of the masterplan has also delivered improved access and services infrastructure across the campus, including disability access for 75% of all teaching accommodation, induction loop systems, illuminated pedestrian routes, disabled parking provision and level access into and within all buildings where possible.
The University’s revitalised buildings will accommodate community events and lectures out of hours, enhancing the opportunities for adult learning in the community.
Opinion: as the market for design education explodes and schools struggle to keep up, we need to work out what a designer actually is and what they need to learn says Lucas Verweij.
Design has expanded in all imaginable directions, but the world of education doesn’t know how to respond to the new situation. What on earth should you teach future designers? For what profession are we actually educating them? Will they be entrepreneurs? Or artists? Engineers? Writers? Innovators? Researchers? There’s no time to reflect on the answer, because courses and programmes must be developed quickly in response to the crazy growth in the market for design education.
Design has expanded. In the digital domain we’ve seen the emergence of interaction design, game design and app design. Managerial tools now include design thinking and business model design. In the humanitarian domain we now have service design, human-centred design and social design. None of these new directions bear much relation to the roots of the profession in industrial or product design. Instead, we are increasingly coming to view design more as a mentality than a skill. And while education struggles with this shift, the market for education keeps on growing.
Half a century ago, universities established courses in design largely as offshoots of mechanical engineering. In addition to technology, designers received academic instruction in design methods. Design freedom was therefore limited. Academies of art established courses grounded in ceramic and graphic design, which were both practical and artistic in orientation. For decades just two professional profiles existed alongside each other: a designer was either a creative engineer or a practitioner of an applied art.
The design explosion disrupts education. Teachers and administrators in the field of education disagree about what to teach designers. In Eindhoven the battle even culminated in a personal shootout among the academy’s management. While individual teachers and administrators harbour explicit, personal opinions, there is no shared vision about what to teach designers.
Is collaboration with other disciplines the most important aspect? Or is it still creative ability? Should programming be a compulsory subject? Or understanding of production processes? Is a knowledge of materials still important? Which entrepreneurial, journalistic and research skills should students learn? And should they be instructed in a more didactic setting than has been the case up to now?
While schools are driven to desperation, the market for design education is growing explosively. Århus, Bern and Amsterdam have all seen the emergence of creative business schools boasting names like Kaospilots and Knowmads, with a clear vision of creative and social entrepreneurship. Students are capable of writing business plans, learn about management strategies for online start-ups, and are blessed with a mentality of engagement. Leadership skills are also on the syllabus. Businessweek rates them as “top design schools”.
Start-up schools and bootcamps have come up with new learning formats for prototyping commercial ideas. Courses are internal and last about half a year. Students pay for their tuition with shares in the business they plan to set up. Admission is determined on the basis of ideas proposed by prospective students, and courses focus entirely on the elaboration of one single idea.
Hasso Plattner has initiated schools for design thinking and design innovation known as the Institute of Design and the School of Design Thinking. This is where one of the best-selling apps of 2010 – Pulse Reader – was created. In addition, over 80 courses in interaction design have emerged, usually through the addition of a design component to an existing course in technology.
Even though most designers think that service design “has nothing to do with design”, the Royal College of Art in London recently established a course in this field. Similarly, Domus Academy, the birthplace of Memphis, is doing its bit by offering a course in business design. In New York courses in design criticism were established recently, and a course in curating and writing will launch this year in Eindhoven. Design thinking is offered as a subject at many American universities. So although fundamental questions remain unanswered, new courses are popping up everywhere like mushrooms. It makes you wonder just how good all those courses really are.
Now that the education market is totally globalised, schools are recruiting students all over the world. Everybody who pays is welcome. In Europe, European students bring in less money than real foreigners, so students from further afield are more lucrative. Tuition fees for a masters course at Domus costs €17,000 for students from Europe, but €25,000 for students from everywhere else. That’s cheap compared to design criticism, where you’ll pay $18,000 per semester.
The multicultural make-up of the student population is often seen as a criterion for quality. But is learning in a class with lots of nationalities really better? I don’t think so. Something else is expected of designers in Seoul or Dubai than in Paris. Around the world there are vast differences in levels of professional freedom, in the role of clients, in how critical a design can be.
You don’t go to school in Hong Kong if you want to become a chef in Montpellier. But that’s precisely what’s happening in design. And the upshot is the globalisation of masters courses, which are churning out jetlag designers who lack a cultural framework.
Academies of art educate students to master specific skills such as game design, interaction design, business design, social design or service design. Graduates become practitioners of applied arts in the old sense of the term. Universities turn out managers and engineers, who have never quite been able to master the unpredictability of design and creativity.
It would be better to leave design thinking to schools of management, and leave interaction and game design to schools of computer science.
Design criticism could be instructed at schools of journalism, and social design at teacher-training colleges. A creative and design dimension to these professions can develop or evolve organically in such places. Design has become a mentality that can be applied in courses structured to impart specific skills. That is better than the reverse, which is now the case.
Design no longer belongs to anybody. Design no longer belongs to the people, places of education or lobby groups that have represented and tutored it for decades. Let it go. The time has come to give design away.
Lucas Verweij has been teaching at schools of design and architecture around Europe for over 20 years. He was director of a master’s programme in architecture and initiated a masters course in design. He is currently professor at the Kunsthochschile Weißensee and teaches master’s students at Design Academy Eindhoven. He has initiated and moderated various seminars devoted to designing design education.
Ahead of the opening of the Designs of the Year 2014 exhibition tomorrow, here’s a look back at one of the standout projects – a floating school on a Nigerian lagoon by architecture studio NLÉ (+ slideshow).
NLÉ, the studio founded by Nigerian-born architect Kunlé Adeyemi, developed the Makoko Floating School as a prototype for building in African regions that have little or no permanent infrastructure, thanks to unpredictable water levels that cause regular flooding.
Half-building, half-boat, the floating structure provides teaching facilities for the slum district of Makoko, a former fishing village in Lagos where over 100,000 people live in houses on stilts. Prior to this the community had just one English-speaking primary school that regularly found itself under water.
“In many ways, Makoko epitomises the most critical challenges posed by urbanisation and climate change in coastal Africa. At the same time, it also inspires possible solutions and alternatives to the invasive culture of land reclamation,” said the architects.
NLÉ developed a structure that can accommodate up to 100 adults, even in bad weather conditions. It is primarily used as a school, but can also function as an events space, a clinic or a market, depending on the needs of the community.
Built by a team of local residents, the structure was put together using wooden offcuts from a nearby sawmill and locally grown bamboo.
Base of the building during construction
A triangular profile allows the building to accommodate three storeys whilst remaining stable over the water. “It is an ideal shape for a floating object on water due to its relatively low centre of gravity, which provides stability and balance even in heavy winds,” said the designers.
Structural framework
The lower level houses a space for play, while a sub-dividable space on the middle floor accommodates up to four classrooms and the upper level contains a small group workshop. A staircase on one side connects the three levels.
Community gathers to test the building
Here’s the project description from NLE:
Makoko Floating School
Makoko Floating School is a prototype structure that addresses physical and social needs in view of the growing challenges of climate change in an urbanising African context. It is a movable ‘building’ or ‘watercraft’ currently located in the aquatic community of Makoko in the lagoon heart of Africa’s second most populous city – Lagos, Nigeria. It is a floating structure that adapts to the tidal changes and varying water levels, making it invulnerable to flooding and storm surges. It is designed to use renewable energy, to recycle organic waste and to harvest rainwater.
An estimated 100,000 people reside in Makoko in housing units built on stilts. Yet the community has no roads, no land and no formal infrastructure to support its day-to-day survival. In many ways, Makoko epitomises the most critical challenges posed by urbanisation and climate change in coastal Africa. At the same time, it also inspires possible solutions and alternatives to the invasive culture of land reclamation.
Until now Makoko has been served by one English-speaking primary school, built on uneven reclaimed land, surrounded by constantly changing waters. Like many homes in Makoko, this has rendered the primary school building structurally precarious and susceptible to recurrent flooding. Sadly, the inability of the building to effectively withstand the impact of increased rainfall and flooding has frequently threatened local children’s access to their basic need – the opportunity of education.
Vision for a cluster of four structures
In response to this and in close collaboration with the Makoko community, NLÉ has developed a prototype floating structure that will serve primarily as a school, whilst being scalable and adaptable for other uses, such as a community hub, health clinic, market, entertainment centre or housing. The prototype’s versatile structure is a safe and economical floating triangular frame that allows flexibility for customisation and completion based on specific needs and capacities.
Vision for a community of floating buildings
The 220m A-frame or pyramid building is 10m high with a 10m x 10m base. It is an ideal shape for a floating object on water due to its relatively low centre of gravity, which provides stability and balance even in heavy winds. It also has a total capacity to safely support a hundred adults, even in extreme weather conditions.
The building has three levels. The 1st level is an open play area for school breaks and assembly, which also serves as a community space during after hours. The 2nd level is an enclosed space for two to four classrooms, providing enough space for sixty to a hundred pupils. A staircase on the side connects the open play area, the classrooms and a semi enclosed workshop space on the 3rd level.
The simple yet innovative structure adheres to ideal standards of sustainable development with its inclusive technologies for renewable energy, waste reduction, water and sewage treatment as well as the promotion of low-carbon transport. Furthermore a team of eight Makoko-based builders constructed it using eco-friendly, locally sourced bamboo and wood procured from a local sawmill.
Construction began in September 2012 with floatation mock-ups and testing. Recycled empty plastic barrels found abundantly in Lagos were used for the building’s buoyancy system, which consists of 16 wooden modules, each containing 16 barrels. The modules were assembled on the water, creating the platform that provides buoyancy for the building and its users. Once this was assembled, construction of the A-frame followed and was completed by March 2013. Makoko Floating School is now in regular use by the community as a social, cultural and economic centre and will soon welcome its first pupils for use as a primary school.
Concept diagram
The project was initiated, designed and built by NLÉ in collaboration with the Makoko Waterfront Community, in Lagos State. The project was initially self-funded by NLÉ and later received research funds from Heinrich Boll Stiftung as well as funds for its construction from the UNDP/Federal Ministry of Environment Africa Adaptation Programme (AAP).
Makoko Floating School is a ‘prototype’ building structure for NLÉ’s proposed ‘Lagos Water Communities Project’ and its ‘African Water Cities’ research project.
When I look at schools, I walk into schools, when I interact with schools, I feel like they belong to a different universe. As soon as I set my foot in a school, it feels like I’ve stepped out of the real world and into a something alien and unnatural.
Most people call it an institution, in the same way that we call a hospital or a prison “an institution.”
Institution—this says it all. A public or private place for the care or confinement of inmates, especially mental patients or other disabled or handicapped persons.
Throughout history, it seems like we’ve been dead set on designing educations and education facilities as to make the students feel locked-in, both body as well as soul.
It doesn’t sound very inviting or inspiring, it normally doesn’t look very inviting or inspring, and still we want students of all ages to spend a lot of time in these place, we want them to want to learn, to get inspired, to grow as human beings and to become the next generation when building our society. Yet hardly anything about the ordinary education facilities can be called inspiring, or showcase which direction we want our society to go.
For many years, one of of the questions roaming around in my mind on a daily basis has been, ‘How can we create an good education that builds the sort of minds we want and need in our society, when we don’t even seem to know which sort of society we want?’ Which leads to: How can we go about re-arranging our education over and over and over again, without seemingly taking into account that education and society are undeniably intertwined?
This leads back to what I wrote in the very beginning: How come we have been designing institutions that separates, and in some cases, alienates, rather than intertwines education and education facilities with society? And how can we integrate education in such a way that it becomes a more natural, and less alien, base pillar of the society we want to create?
Is it just me, or is this something that we need to start a serious discussion about that crosses national, social and occupational borders…?
British studio Jonathan Tuckey Design worked with a small team and a tight budget to build this timber-lined gatehouse for a west London primary school.
The new gabled structure provides an activities centre and crèche at the entrance to Wilberforce Primary School in Westminster and is the first of two new buildings by Jonathan Tuckey Design.
Project architect Nic Howett subsumed the roles of quantity surveyor and project manager to keep costs down, working only with a local builder and a small team of engineers to construct the single-storey building.
“The project was coordinated by ourselves, proving that good education buildings can be built for little money without the need for bureaucratic processes, framework agreements and multiple consultants,” Howett told Dezeen.
“All that is really needed are designers with a good level of care and sensitivity to design,” he added. “This could be a model for the way small-scale education work is procured in the future.”
Built around a simple timber frame, the exterior of the building is clad with corrugated fibre-cement panels, while walls and ceilings inside feature a continuous plywood surface.
A long rear wall provides a pin-up area where pupils can show off their work. This sits opposite a wall of glazing that opens the space out to a narrow playground.
Three skylights puncture the roof to bring in both daylight and ventilation, contrasting with the building’s predecessor, which Howett says was a dark portakabin that needed artificial lighting all year around. “It really was quite a depressing space for kids to be in,” he explained.
Here’s a project description from Jonathan Tuckey Design:
A new after-school activities centre and crèche for a City of Westminster primary school in West London.
Envisioned as a new gate-house for the school this project was designed with two ambitions in mind: to provide the school with much-needed additional space and to help the school engage with the wider community.
The first phase of the project, which includes an activities centre and crèche, is designed to inspire young minds through the provision of generous natural light combined with intriguing volumes and shapes throughout.
An entire wall is given over to displaying pupils’ work; another is fully glazed and, as a sliding wall, allows learning and play to take place both inside and out. Materials were selected to deliver a completed building for £1600/m2. Profile sheeting was used externally whilst inside a plywood interior that needed little finishing was fitted. Both were detailed to give these materials a finely finished appearance. The materials ground the Annexe firmly in the context of the site whilst providing Wilberforce Primary with a durable building.
“I was impressed by the extensive research they had done. They clearly understood the needs of the staff and users of the building, and this was reflected in the design which was not only fit for purpose, but also beautiful” – Angela Piddock, Wilberforce Primary Headteacher.
The building is primarily timber, consisting of a timber frame and clad internally with FSC and PEFC certified plywood from sustainable sources. Externally the building is clad in Marley Eternit fibre cement profile sheeting, which achieves an A+ rating in the BRE Green Guide. The resulting lightweight structure meant that minimum foundations were required. Forbo Marmoleum flooring was used which achieves a Cradle-to-Cradle silver certificate. Openable roof lights in the building allow for all spaces to be naturally lit and ventilated.
The second stage is to complete the new entrance building to the site which houses a community centre that will give the school a welcome and revitalised presence on the street. This work is on going.
Dutch firm Korteknie Stuhlmacher Architecten covered the facade of this school in Rotterdam with black and white tiles arranged in patterns that reference typical Dutch interior decoration (+ slideshow).
The new A.J. Schreuderschool was designed by Korteknie Stuhlmacher Architecten for children with learning disabilities, and the tiled decoration was added to give the exterior spaces a more domestic and familiar appearance.
“The pattern is based on classical patterns used in many traditional Dutch houses for various purposes, usually entrances, and kitchens,” architect Mechthild Stuhlmacher told Dezeen.
“We used the tiles on the exterior as an ornament but also to make the outdoor spaces more room-like, as if we are referring to an interior,” she added.
The architects also invited pupils to create unique colourful tiles that are incorporated into the facade near the entrance.
“We proposed the involvement of the pupils, because we were impressed by the artistic production and the creativity of the mentally handicapped children who happen to be taught by a very engaged, creative art teacher,” said Stuhlmacher. “The black and white pattern has been designed as a rather powerful framework to integrate the pupil’s work in a larger whole.”
The school is situated in the postwar neighbourhood of Lombardijen and was laid out to establish a stronger relationship with its surroundings than the majority of its 1960s-built neighbours.
Two connected buildings housing the classrooms and a large sports hall are positioned on opposite corners of the plot, creating a pair of outdoor spaces that are partly enclosed by the two blocks.
The courtyard facing the street at the front of the school acts as a playground and public square leading to the main entrance.
At the back of the school is a larger space used as a garden for play and teaching activities centred on nature and sustainability.
“The two outdoor spaces have a very different character – one is very open to the neighbourhood while the enclosed garden on the other side is much more private,” explained Stuhlmacher. “For pupils with a mental handicap both qualities are essential, and the school can divide groups according to the abilities of the children.”
Inside the main school building, the reception area connects to a corridor that leads past labs dedicated to skills including art, music and computing, towards classrooms that face the street or the garden.
On the other side of the reception is the entrance to the sports hall, which features windows at floor level and a roof supported by chunky timber beams.
Circulation spaces at the centre of the school feature large skylights that introduce natural light to both levels of the building.
Materials throughout have been chosen for their muted tones and to help reduce noise levels in line with the needs of many pupils for a neutral and tranquil environment.
On the site of a former technical school in Rotterdam Lombardijen a new school for children with learning disabilities has been built. Lombardijen is a typical post-war neighbourhood consisting of a repetitive mix of low-rise and high-rise blocks of flats.
The neighbourhood is urgently in need of technical, spatial and social transformation. This especially applies to the public space; as in many neighbourhoods of the 1960s the area between the building blocks is rather large and unarticulated, poorly maintained and hardly used. The problem is partly caused by the existing architecture that fails to establish a mutual relationship between indoor and outdoor space. The project for the new school attempts to rethink this relationship while engaging with the existing context.
The project consists of two loosely connected volumes, a two storey compact building block, which is the actual school building, and a double sports hall. Both volumes are placed in the far corners of the generously dimensioned plot. The buildings are complemented by two semi-enclosed outdoor spaces. Facing the Spinozaweg there is an open, paved and rather urban square that will be used as playground.
On the other side there will be a large, intensively planted, enclosed garden. This garden offers space for recreation and play and serves as an outdoor ‘classroom’ for the subject ‘green’ that will be part of the curriculum in the new school. The design of the façades, entrances and the plinth supports the desired close relationship between inside and outside.
The curriculum focuses on three main subjects: living, working and leisure. These subjects are taught in specific classrooms, such as the living room, the kitchen and the art studio. These classrooms are situated on the ground floor facing the street and establish, quite literally, the connection between the school and the outside world.
The rest of the school, with all regular classrooms facing the garden, has a more private character. Specific attention has been paid to the design of the spacious circulation area in the centre of the building. Generous roof lights and voids allow for daylight to reach the ground floor, while respecting the need of many of the pupils for a calm environment avoiding stimuli such as noise, too vivid colours and forms.
Within the budgetary limits of public school buildings we designed a sustainable structure with flexible and timeless plans and a low energy installation; in the future the school can easily be adjusted to the needs of other types of education. The sports hall combines a regular steel structure with an expressive timber roof and appears as a completely timber-lined, roof-lit space. The plinth around the building has been clad with ceramic tiles in different black and white patterns made by the remarkably artistic pupils.
If Cambridge seems a little brighter today, it’s because Olafur Eliasson is in town. The artist will be at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) through Friday to accept the 2014 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts. In addition to collecting a check for $100,000, taking part in public programs, and attending a gala (hosted by the likes of diplomats from Denmark, Iceland and Germany; Agnes Gund; and Anne Hawley, director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), Eliasson is taking part in a residency that focuses on his art and social business enterprise Little Sun, a portable, solar powered lamp that he calls “a work of art that works in life.” He’ll be on campus to discuss sustainable development, community engagement, design, product engineering, and social entrepreneurship in developing economies, and, in a lecture today at 5:00 p.m., “Holding hands with the sun.” continued…
It was the great design scholar Ferris Bueller who once said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” New York’s School of Visual Arts is heeding the need for speed and the importance of looking around with a one-year MA in design research, writing, and criticism. The new graduate program, which launches this fall, is an evolution of D-Crit (the two-year MA program in design criticism that has been sharpening design minds since 2008) streamlined into two semesters and eight months of studying images, objects, and environments, and learning ways to construct multi-format narratives that bring them to life from a faculty that includes Steven Heller, MoMA’s Paola Antonelli, and Murray Moss. “The program’s curriculum charts the cutting edge of design practice and is responsive to exciting developments in the media landscape,” says Alice Twemlow, the program’s founding chair. Learn more at next Sunday’s open house and info session.
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