This is the third article in an ongoing series about working with kids by Copenhagen-based architect/designer/educator Moa Dickmark. Her last article was on the Future of Learning Environments.
There are a few things that one should think about when it comes to working on a project using co-creative processes. There are the basics, such as how you develop and structure them, and then there’s the small things that make the process go more smoothly. Sometimes these small things end up making a big difference, so I’m going to let you in on some of the ones that my colleague and I use more or less every time we are out working. Most (but not all) of them are applicable also when working with teachers, leaders, politicians etc.
The Necessities
Start the process with a few meetings with the headmaster and school leadership, where you can decide on a common goal and make sure that you are on the same page. A goal for a process can be something along the lines of:
Develop spaces that students and teachers feel comfortable in and that can be used in various ways depending on subject and the individual students needs.
Decide on a timeline, a budget, how many hours you will spend with the students per workshop and ask them to find a class with teachers that are open-minded and up for the project. No point in hitting your head against the wall with teachers who don’t want you to be there; the students will probably take on the sentiment of teacher and the process to reach the set goals will not be enjoyable for anyone.
Involvement
1.) Make sure that everyone involved in the project feels like they are truly a part of the project, and that they have an important role in the process and outcome.
When working with students, invite their parents for a meeting where you tell them about the project, tell them a bit about the basics of co-creative processes and what sort of things their kids are going to come home and ramble about. It’s really good to let them try what you are talking about, so let them do one of the exercise—i.e. a quick and dirty model-making session always bring out a lot of laughter—in order to provide a greater understanding of how fun it can be, and so they have something to talk about when their kid comes home from school.
This is also a good way to get them more involved—maybe one of the parents works at a warehouse and can arrange some sponsorship deal with the boss or something of the sort, or that some of them want to spend some of their free time helping out at one of the workshops. The more support you get from the parents, the better.
2.) Also make sure that people who are not directly involved of the project feel welcome.
For example, shortly after starting working with a 6 grade class in a small school in the middle of Jylland, Denmark, the biggest ambassadors for the project and for what the students were working on turned out to be the librarian and one of the cleaning ladies. They showed parents what their children were up to, and talked about the vision developed for the various areas.
American architect Steven Holl has completed his new building for the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland, where its geometric matte-glass exterior stands in contrast to the decorative sandstone facade of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterpiece across the street (+ slideshow).
Steven Holl‘s Reid Building provides modern studios for the Glasgow School of Art and was designed to forge “a symbiotic relationship” with the historic campus building completed by Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh a decade century earlier.
The new five-storey-high building replaces the school’s Newbery Tower and Foulis Building, but wraps around the three-storey stone Assembly Building, which houses the school’s popular student union.
One of the main aims of the design was to bring as much natural light as possible into the building, so Holl created three cylindrical shafts of light that he calls “Driven Voids”, which stretch right down from the roof to the basement.
Spaces inside the building were also arranged with respect to their lighting requirements, so the majority of studios and workshops are positioned along the northern edge of the plan, where they will receive more consistent levels of daylight.
A central network of staircases and ramps extends around, beside and across the three lightwells, helping students to orientate themselves within the building.
These link all of the floors, including the two basement levels, and lead up from the lobby, exhibition galleries and seminar rooms of the ground floor to workshops, studios, project rooms and a lecture room elsewhere in the building.
Artist and former Glasgow School of Art student Martin Boyce was commissioned by the architects to design a piece to mark the entrance to the new building, and his screen of painted steel and glass vines hangs down from the ceiling.
Describing the piece as “a flourish of coloured glass catching and projecting washes of light,” Holl explained: “We see this colour in positive contrast to the original colours of Mackintosh and an inspiration to students and the community.”
The architects are also planting a terrace outside the building, which is intended to resemble the grassy machair plains that are particular to parts of the British Isles.
Here’s some more information from the Glasgow School of Art:
The Reid Building Glasgow, United Kingdom (2009 – 2014)
Following an Estates Review that established, with the exception of the Mackintosh building, the School’s Garnethill estate of some nine separate buildings was no longer fit for purpose, a plan was developed with the aspiration to create a more focused campus of facilities to provide the GSA with world class spaces.
The core principle of Phase 1 of the campus plan was to create a new, purpose-built academic building housing a broad range of studios and teaching facilities for the School of Design, as well as workshops, lecture facilities, communal student areas and exhibition spaces for the School as a whole, and a new visitor centre.
Steven Holl Architects of New York, in association with Glasgow-based JM Architects and Arup Engineering, were selected in September 2009 to design and deliver the Phase 1 building, which will be called the Reid Building in honour of Dame Seona Reid who stood down as Director of the GSA in the summer of 2013, to sit fittingly opposite the category ‘A’ listed Mackintosh building.
The development (including costs incurred in the re-housing of the School of Design during the re-build) has been funded by a grant from the Scottish Funding Council. The development has been delivered on time and on budget.
The Design
The Reid Building, which replaces the Newbery Tower and Foulis Building, is in complementary contrast to Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art (1899 – 1909) – forging a symbiotic relation in which each structure heightens the integral qualities of the other. A thin translucent materiality in considered contrast to the masonry of the Mackintosh building – volumes of light which express the school’s activity in the urban fabric embodying a forward-looking life for the arts.
This project’s unique interior and exterior forces on the design are the catalysts for creating a new 21st century model for the art school. Working simultaneously from the inside out – engaging the functional needs and psychological desires of the programme – and the outside in – making connections to the city campus and relating to the Mackintosh building opposite – the design embodies the school’s aspirations in the city’s fabric.
Mackintosh’s amazing manipulation of the building section for light in inventive ways has inspired our approach towards a plan of volumes in different light. The studio/workshop is the basic building block of the building. Spaces have been located not only to reflect their interdependent relationships but also their varying needs for natural light. Studios are positioned on the north facade with large inclined north facing glazing to maximise access to the desirable high quality diffuse north light. Spaces that do not have a requirement for the same quality of natural light, such as the refectory and offices, are located on the south facade where access to sunlight can be balanced with the occupants needs and the thermal performance of the space through application of shading.
“Driven Voids of light” allow for the integration of structure, spatial modulation and light. The “Driven Void” light shafts deliver natural light through the depth of the building providing direct connectivity with the outside world through the changing intensity and colour of the sky. In addition, they provide vertical circulation through the building, eliminating the need for air conditioning.
Along the south elevation, at the same height as the Mackintosh main studios, a landscape loggia in the form of a Machair gives the school an exterior social core open to the city. The natural vegetation with some stonework routes the water into a small recycling water pond which will reflect dappled sunlight onto the ceiling inside.
A “Circuit of Connection” throughout the new GSA encourages the ‘creative abrasion’ across and between departments that is central to the workings of the school. The open circuit of stepped ramps links all major spaces – lobby, exhibition space, project spaces, lecture theatre, seminar rooms, studios, workshops and green terraces for informal gatherings and exhibitions.
Thom Mayne’s Los Angeles firm Morphosis has completed a new Hollywood campus for arts school Emerson College where a rectangular frame surrounds a curvaceous cluster of classrooms (+ slideshow).
Situated in the heart of the entertainment industry on Sunset Boulevard, Emerson College Los Angeles will accommodate over 200 undergraduate students from the renowned creative arts and communication school based in Boston, Massachusetts.
The building’s frame-like outer volume accommodates ten storeys of student housing, while the curving central sections contain teaching facilities and staff administration, amidst a series of terraces and connecting bridges.
“The building is designed to expand the interactive, social aspect of education,” said Thom Mayne. “We focused on creating with the broader community in mind – both in terms of public space and sustainable design.”
The east and west-facing sides of the building feature glazed curtain walls and are screened by an intelligent shading system where horizontal fins angle open or closed to suit changes in light, temperature and the angle of the sun.
Rigging and audio-visual equipment are also incorporated into the facade’s metal framework, accommodating various outdoor performances and events.
“The entire building becomes a stage set for student films, screenings and industry events, with the Hollywood sign, the city of Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean in the distance providing added scenery,” said the design team.
Teaching areas and workspaces within the facility include video-editing suites, computer laboratories, a film screening room, sound mixing suites, and live performance spaces. There’s also a green wall at the north-west corner.
Based in Boston, Massachusetts, Emerson is renowned for its communication and arts curriculum. Located in the heart of Hollywood, Emerson College Los Angeles (ELA) defines the college’s identity in the centre of the entertainment industry and the second largest city in the United States. The new facility establishes a permanent home on Sunset Boulevard for Emerson College’s existing undergraduate internship program that will extend the ELA experience to students studying in any of the seven disciplines that are offered through the School of Communication and the School of the Arts. Additionally, ELA will offer post-graduate, certificate, and professional study programs. The new facility will also host workshops, lectures, and other events to engage with alumni and the LA community.
Bringing student housing, instructional facilities, and administrative offices to one location, ELA condenses the diversity of a college campus into an urban site. Evoking the concentrated energy of East-Coast metropolitan centres in an iconic Los Angeles setting, a rich dialogue emerges between students’ educational background and their professional futures.
Fundamental to the Emerson Los Angeles experience, student living circumstances give structure to the overall building. Housing up to 217 students, the domestic zones frame a dynamic core dedicated to creativity, learning, and social interaction. Composed of two slender residential towers connected by a helistop, the 10-storey square frame encloses a central open volume to create a flexible outdoor “room”.
A sculpted form housing classrooms and administrative offices weaves through the void, defining multi-level terraces and active interstitial spaces that foster informal social activity and creative cross-pollination. Looking out onto the multi-level terrace, exterior corridors to student suites and common rooms are shaded by an undulating, textured metal scrim spanning the full height of the towers’ interior face.
Looking to the local context, the centre finds a provocative precedent in the interiority of Hollywood film studios, where outwardly regular facades house flexible, fantastical spaces within. With rigging for screens, media connections, sound, and lighting incorporated into the facade’s metal framework, this dynamic visual backdrop also serves as a flexible armature for outdoor performances. The entire building becomes a stage set for student films, screenings, and industry events, with the Hollywood sign, the city of Los Angeles, and the Pacific Ocean in the distance providing added scenery.
Anticipated to achieve a LEED Gold rating, the new centre champions Emerson’s commitment to both sustainable design and community responsibility. Wrapping the building’s northwest corner, a green wall underscores the towers’ actively changing exterior skin. Connected to weather stations that track the local climate, temperature, and sun angle, the automated sunshade system opens and closes horizontal fins outside the high-performance glass curtain-wall to minimise heat gain while maximising daylight and views. Further green initiatives include the use of recycled and rapidly renewable building materials, installation of efficient fixtures to reduce water use by 40%, energy savings in heating and cooling through a passive valence system, and a building management and commissioning infrastructure to monitor and optimise efficiency of all systems.
A skin of chestnut shingles covers the facade of this multipurpose building at a school in the French town of Hostens by Dauphins (+ slideshow).
French architecture studio Dauphins designed the building containing playrooms and offices for a plot on the southern border of the school’s site, which is connected to playgrounds and other facilities by two bridges.
“The south orientation of the plot requires that the multidisciplinary leisure centre stretches and closes the composition of the existing school,” the architects explained.
“A dialogue is established with the playground so that the children’s universe is rounded off and can be fully shared,” they added.
The facility is constructed from a pine framework raised above the ground on concrete pillars.
Its undulating facade is clad in wooden shingles that reference local vernacular building methods.
“The skin made of chestnut tiles gives the building its character and allows an infinite variation of composition, making a contemporary citation of the traditional wooden skins,” said the architects.
South-facing windows are shielded from the sun by bulges in the facade, while the windows on the opposite side of the building push outwards to maximise space inside and create small alcoves.
An entrance porch at the end of one of the bridges connects to a corridor along which the building’s rooms are arranged.
Offices for staff are contained at the western end of the centre, close to a small kitchen and male and female bathrooms.
Multipurpose activity rooms for children aged from six to twelve are contained in the centre of the building, with rooms and toilet facilities for younger children at the eastern end.
Internal walls are made from a wooden framework filled with cob that contrasts with the exposed industrial ducting and wiring on the ceiling.
The height of the roof alters along the building’s length, adapting to the height of the children who use the different spaces.
Windows are positioned at a low level so children can see out when sitting or standing, while smaller windows higher up the walls introduce ventilation and provide views for the staff.
Photography is by the architects.
Here’s a project description from Dauphins:
Vaisseau d’essente – Multidisciplinary leisure center for childcare in Hostens
Presentation
The south orientation of the plot requires that the multidisciplinary leisure centre stretches and closes the composition of the existing school. A dialogue is established with the playground so that the children “univers” is being rounded off and can be fully shared. The program is divided into three sequences along the main circulation. Gateway entry enters the volume by creating a porch home, around which are organised local staff. In continuity then there are the room dedicated to “les grands”, associated with the multipurpose room, and finally separated by the connection to the school, the room dedicated to “les petits” punctuate the composition.
Around the circulation, are organised two trays which can be separated into two by a moving partition. Enjoying the greatest height, the volume is suitable for activities for children 6 to 12 years old. Framing the landscape, the windows are positioned at a particular height providing children a strong relationship with the landscape as they are sitting or standing. All along the main circulation the partitions are made with a wooden structure fill with cob. The project claims its local identity through the use of regional knowledge and the use of local material, the maritime pine. The structure is part of a dynamic recovery of the local industry, and the most rational means to optimise production costs and assembly.
The skin made of chestnut tiles, gives the building its character and allows an infinite variation of composition, making a contemporary citation of the traditional wooden skins.
The inflection of the roof has a direct effect on the inside, permitting variable heights (3.40m to 2.40m), adapted to users. The position of the large windows follow that logic and participates in the organisation of the facade. South openings create prominent integrating protections, while in the north, the window is moved to the outside to enjoy the small alcove from the inside. Above the large bow windows, small openings are provided for generating natural ventilation North/South, provide additional natural light and offer views to the management staff.
Next generations/Playful transmission
Childhood memories are a powerful base in the collective unconscious. We therefore consider valuable to be able to intervene in the development of young people. Our architect responsibility in this program lies in its ability to convey a positive vision and a healthy and supportive environment for generations to come. We started an educational and entertaining participatory approach to educate children about the building process. Some workshops/meetings were enough to interest them, and confirmed the belief that this approach really brings the project in the long term. Accompanying users is an integral part of our design work and conduct of the project.
Client: Communauté de Communes du Pays Paroupian Size: 400 m2 SHON Price: 700 000 €HT Team: dauphins architecture, BERTI, BET TCE Vecoor, OPC, B.Ing, BET bois Location: Hostens, Gironde, FR Completed: August 2013
One of our first assignments as industrial design students should have been to design and build our own carrying cases. But no, we students were too busy being taught crap like theory, so we all coughed up twenty bucks for a plastic ArtBin. Which is a shame. A simple modular toolbox would have been relatively straightforward to design and build, while providing us with the perfect, individualized product to field test and tweak the design of over the course of a semester.
From Germany comes what they’re calling the Toptainer, seen here. Once loaded up with tools, it’s meant to fit into an older plastic Systainer design.
Two dance studios at the top of this copper-clad music conservatory in Paris by local studio Basalt Architecture project outwards from the facade to capture plenty of natural daylight (+ slideshow).
Basalt Architecture designed the Conservatoire Claude Debussy for a site on the edge of the 17th arrondissement, where it sits between classic Haussmann buildings to the south and more recent tower blocks to the north.
The boxes containing the dance studios cantilever from the northern facade and appear to reach towards the nearby residential towers.
“Creating a dialogue with the city, dance halls in the upper part seem detached with a particular volume that meets the residential buildings to the north,” the architects told Dezeen. “Largely glazed, they offer soft and uniform light, oriented to the north.”
The conservatory’s entire exterior is clad in a shimmering skin of copper panels, which reference the colour of the nearby sandstone church of Sainte-Odile and the recent residential buildings.
“Copper allowed us to create a facade whose playful folds and perforations play with light by filtering sunlight during the day and sifting light outward at night,” said the architects. “Copper is used as a natural material and its oxidation participates in the life of the building.”
Hinged shutters on the facade facing the busy Rue de Courcelles feature perforated patterns which are arranged in different configurations to produce a random effect and to help shade the studios.
A 300-seat auditorium at the centre of the building steps down from the ground floor to a stage at basement level, with surrounding circulation spaces leading to other facilities including practice rooms and the dance studios.
Wide corridors receive natural light from central skylights and windows surrounding a small courtyard, lending the interior a degree of transparency that contrasts with the monolithic facade.
Windows allow views into some of the dance studios and practice rooms from outside or from internal circulation areas.
Materials throughout have been chosen for their practical, ecological and acoustic properties.
The courtyard on the second floor features wooden decking, walls and a raised planted bed.
The architects sent us the following project description:
Music Conservatory in Paris’ 17th Arrondissement
Building a new conservatory in Paris’s 17th arrondissement is part and parcel of a new urban script that will mark the morphology and profile of this building located on the edge of Paris.
Located on a plot of land between two high-rise buildings, the conservatory stands at the interface of architectural scripts linked to the city’s building heritage. On the edge of the 17th arrondissement to the south Haussmann-style buildings look across at social housing of a more recent period. So the conservatory is located at a strategic point due to its theme, i.e. the 17th arrondissement’s history is closely linked with French music, and building this new edifice has to be worthy of this past.
It is strategic due to its urban location, located as it is on the rue de Courcelles, an important corridor for entering the city with its sight-line extending from the Boulevard Périphérique (ring-road) between two architectural eras and styles.
It is also the beginning of a new building fringe on the rue de Courcelles while waiting for the Consistory building. Aligned along the rue de Courcelles, the project is an oscillation from down to up through the play of external surfaces. It sends a strong signal through the city, a 20-metre-high benchmark in a green alley dominated by vegetation.
Visible from the Périphérique, its architectural treatment identifies it as a value-adding element by separating it from the publicity landscape that exists along the Parisian ring-road. Given its appearance and location, it is in constant dialogue with the city. On the one hand the dance studios in the upper floors with their expansive windows participate actively in the building’s visual signal by standing out from the city with a specific volume that responds to the apartment buildings to the north. On the other side to the south, the building’s pleated skin and its perforations that dialogue with the classic Haussmann-style buildings with their sturdy architecture.
Our project has been designed from inside to outside; we have conceived of the conservatory as a place for exchange, emulation, a crossroads of practices. This is the idea that has driven the project from the auditorium at its heart to the music rooms. Because that is how we have perceived the facilities. A place where people play, learn, dance and create. Sounds and movement emerge from this swirl of activities, this school of practice. Which is how the volumes came to life: a skin perforated by the beat of the melody that emerges and takes shape in the outer walls.
The script is there with the volume folding and undulating in the light and the beat of the perforations that enliven it by day and by night. A place of movement and emulation, the interior and exterior volumes shimmer and move, reinforced by the play of passageways and aerial walkways, the materials sometimes reflecting, sometimes absorbing the light like the paramount acoustics of the place.
Although the exterior volume, an urban signal and catalyst of the rue de Courcelles’ recomposition, is intended to be monolithic with shape and folds that enwrap it–like the works of Christo–we have sought to dematerialise the core interior space to render it impalpable and vital.
The cylindrical shape of this university building on the outskirts of Dutch town Wageningen is designed by BDG Architects to optimise the usable floor space inside and reduce energy loss through the facade (+ slideshow).
Stoas Vilentum is the only institution in The Netherlands dedicated to teaching agriculture and ecology, and the Zwolle office of Dutch firm BDG Architects wanted to reflect its sustainable focus through the building’s shape, materials and interior details.
“For the basis of the building [we] chose a cylindrical shape because of the favourable ratio of surface area relative to the area of the facade,” said the architects, adding: “This minimises energy loss through the building’s skin.”
Located on a site surrounded by grass and trees, the building is slightly raised to make the most of its position in the landscaped campus.
“The interaction between architecture and landscape is intensified by placing the building on a green mound,” the architects explained. “The campus will develop in the future more into a surrounding where education, working and living come together.”
Balconies wrap around sections of the facade and transition into long staircases that connect the building’s three storeys.
A staircase ascends through the circular atrium at the centre of the building, which is filled with natural light from large round skylights.
The architects planned the interior spaces to accommodate the university’s flexible learning practices, with labs, offices and classrooms located around the circumference of the building, and spaces for informal activities in the open areas at the centre.
Angled green columns punctuate the communal spaces around the edge of the stairwell on each floor, in some places surrounding glass-walled cylindrical meeting rooms.
Students and staff can also congregate on giant beanbags clustered throughout the atrium to conduct impromptu meetings or relax during free time.
Swivel desk chairs lining long curving work surfaces provide an alternative place to study with views across the surrounding campus.
Stoas Vilentum is a small academic institution where research and teaching focus on the green sector, and where educational specialists in the fields of agriculture and ecology are trained.
The educational philosophy of the institution is based on ‘ecological intelligence’. The design of BDG Architects is a translation of this philosophy and is conceived in close cooperation with the future users.
The building is designed as a pavilion in the green surroundings of the campus. The interaction between architecture and landscape is intensified by placing the building on a green mound. The campus will develop in the future more into a surrounding were education, working and living come together. The new building for the Stoas Vilentum is an important step in this development, which is emphasized by placing the building on this mound.
The three floors of the building are linked to each other by a central atrium in which lazy stairs connects the different floors. The balance between open learning areas, intimate study places and classrooms is designed to serve the educational philosophy of the university optimal. The spaces are divides into the so called ‘nesting areas’- rational spaces with established functions such as labs, offices and classrooms -, and ‘cave areas’- open spaces where different (spontaneous) activities can take place.
Beautiful prints on the walls make these areas recognisable. On different places in the building are ecological structures used, for example on these prints, which refer to the education that is given in which the relation between humans and nature and ecology is placed central.
For the basis of the building BDG Architects choose a cylindrical shape, because of the favourable ratio of surface area relative to the area of the façade. This minimises energy loss through the building’s skin. The cylindrical shape also represents the equivalence between tutors and students. The clear shape makes it into a firm and attractive building, well placed in its surroundings and with an pleasant interior for the students and tutors.
Architect: BDG Architects Zwolle Name project: Stoas Vilentum Wageningen Address: Mansholtlaan 18, 6708 PA Wageningen, the Netherlands
Opinion: watching the demolition of her own elementary school, Alexandra Lange reflects on the increasingly generic design of schools, museums and playgrounds that resign children to “places where all they can learn are the tasks we set them.”
They tore down my elementary school last week. The demolition of childhood memories is enough to make anyone nostalgic, but in this case, there was something more. My school, Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was designed by Josep Lluís Sert: Modernist master, former Harvard Graduate School of Design dean, and architect of the superb Peabody Terrace apartments just across the street. I didn’t know Sert designed my school until last year, but the building had its effects. When I started kindergarten in 1977, the building was just six years old. I may have lived in a Victorian house, but I learned and played in a thoroughly contemporary environment, with red Tectum walls, folding retractable partitions and clerestory light.
Although I had not been back inside since my family moved in 1982, I could still draw a rough plan from memory. The kindergarten classrooms, each with its own outdoor space, lined up along Putnam Avenue. The light-filled central hall, an indoor thoroughfare entered from the street or from the playground behind, that linked auditorium, gym, cafeteria, classes. The recessed, mouth-like entrance, echoing with noise before the doors opened in the morning. The sense of progression as you aged up, from front to back, downstairs to upstairs. The architectural meaning was clear: protective of the little ones, offering more territory as you grew older. This was a building for children with a cast-in-place pedagogy.
Like the similarly demolished Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago, the exterior suggested something of the fortress, but the interior was warm and light, shaped by its program. But a change in technology and teaching methods – the new project brief includes breakout spaces, computer labs and ENO Boards – need not have doomed a building based on a grid of concrete columns and floors. The photographs I took of the King School in its half-demolished state suggested a possible future as well: the rhythmic frame as a set ready to be recycled, a new school on an old base that utilised its embodied energy rather than eliminating it.
Looking at the rendering posted on the construction fence, then back up at the exposed reinforcing bars, I see a loss greater than my experience, or for Modernism. I see another space for children made more generic, our mania for safety and uniformity consigning children to a world of tan boxes tricked out with primary-coloured objects. How can you learn about the world in spaces without character?
Across Boston, a number of other Sert buildings have been (or are in the process of being) renovated, including Peabody Terrace, the Boston University School of Law and an office building at 130 Bishop Allen Drive. Harvard has plans to renovate his Holyoke Center, and has hired Hopkins Architects to do the job: in the future, it will be a central meeting point for the university’s diverse schools, students and programs.
Why was the fate of the King School different? According to advocates, reuse was a hard sell. Like so many of its Brutalist brethren, the school was not popular in its immediate neighbourhood, despite that neighbourhood being a striking collection of postwar low- and high-rise buildings. In focusing on the building’s past and pedigree, preservationists may have neglected to offer a vision of how the building might be born again and added to. Perkins Eastman’s feasibility report gives short shrift to this option, accentuating the negative.
If the new design filled me with interest, joy or curiosity I might be less sad, but as a collection of tan boxes arranged along a circulation spine and presented to the community with an arsenal of contextual photos, it makes me feel nothing. Like so many other spaces for children – schools, museums, playgrounds – it looks like the box that the toys come in. Fine when the creative child can turn that box into a toy. Less interesting when the adults decide which way is up and which colours connote the most fun. In such spaces, the engagement and learning happens at the level of graphics, touchscreens, what the educators like to call “manipulatives.” The buildings themselves don’t speak, don’t teach, they merely house while complying with all requirements. There’s little to be absorbed from experience and I doubt anyone will be drawing the plan, or mentally resting her cheek against the Tectum, 36 years on.
When Rafael Viñoly updated the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, he added curvaceous shapes and primary colours to the outside, the better to signify child-like wonder. But inside the new rooms were boxy and plain, the better to accommodate a rotating series of exhibits and birthday parties. The architectural excitement is all decoration; the inside is a barn. By contrast, Cambridge Seven Associates’s New England Aquarium, an exact contemporary of the King School, turns the reason why you go to an aquarium (to see the fish) into the organising principle for the building’s architecture. It’s also a box, but one textured at key points to indicate the ocean wonders inside; a box that leads you, tank by tank, on a scenographic journey from sea lions to penguins to more fish than you’ve ever seen in one place. All you have to do to experience the aquarium is walk, at your own pace, up the ramp that wraps a multi-story tank. No need for IMAX, no need to read (if you’re under 6) the underwater experience is right there in the dark, intriguing space.
Playgrounds offer another journey from the specific to the generic. Susan G. Solomon’s book American Playgrounds describes the high points of playground experimentation in the postwar period, from Richard Dattner’s Adventure Playgrounds in Central Park (some recently restored and updated) to Isamu Noguchi’s experiments with sculptural dreamscapes. Architects today are interested in making playgrounds again and many interesting experiments can be found in the book Playground Design by Michelle Galindo (2012). But Solomon describes a decade-by-decade constriction of spatial ambition as the result of fears over safety and budget. The model playground became a black, rubberised surface fitted with fixed, mass-produced equipment. You can see the same equipment, often made by Kompan, in Brooklyn and in Copenhagen. Where’s the adventure in that? What’s missing is loose parts, idiosyncratic parts, architecture that has ideas about learning and wants to help kids figure things out. Brooklyn Boulders, a growing chain of indoor climbing spaces for adults and children, seems to have hit on a contemporary formula at their sites in Brooklyn, Somerville and San Francisco.
What is at stake here not a question of Modernity (and indeed, not even all the Modern architecture historians in Cambridge got excited about saving the King School). Rather, it is respect for children as sensitive consumers of space. I read in the built work of Cambridge Seven Associates, Sert and Noguchi that children deserve the best design can give them, even if it might be scary for a moment (that dark aquarium) or strange until you climb it (those artificial mountains). The sanding down, the rounding off, the demolition of the obdurate, makes our children’s worlds more boring places, places where all they can learn are the tasks we set them. Amy F. Ogata’s recent book Designing the Creative Child describes the myriad ways middle-class ambitions are translated into the toys we buy and the spaces we make for kids inside our homes. But such ambitions also need to be translated into the public sphere.
Look again at the King School, structure laid bare. What better exercise than to say, “Here’s a set of concrete floors and concrete columns, kids. What do you want to put in your new school?”
An orange staircase zigzags back and forth across the atrium of this science faculty building that Canadian firm Saucier + Perrotte Architectes has completed for a Quebec college (+ slideshow).
The angular staircase connects all six storeys of the Anne-Marie Edward Science Building, which was designed by Saucier + Perrotte Architectes at the heart of the John Abbott College campus near Montreal.
The building has a folded form that angles around an existing ginkgo tree. The main entrance is positioned inside the fold, while a diamond-shaped space at the rear accommodates the atrium and staircase.
The architects compare the staircase with the gingko, describing it as an “architectonic tree” that connects the departments of each floor, comprising physics, biology, chemistry, nursing, prehospital emergency care and biopharmaceuticals.
“The landscape flows into the foyer, becoming an interior topography, which transforms at the fulcrum of the building into a light-filled, vertical circulation space connecting the sciences,” they said.
The vibrant orange provides the only colour in an otherwise monochrome interior. Ground-floor seating areas are finished in the same colour, while a weathered steel facade at the northern end of the building echoes similar tones.
“The grand staircase and seating elements comprising the interior ‘tree’ weave these orange hues throughout the building, just as the weathered steel of the north facade and the ruddy masonry courtyard surfaces relate back to the historic campus tiles and brick,” said the architects.
Other facades are glazed with varying transparency, revealing the staircase to the rest of the campus whilst maintaining the privacy of the laboratories.
Here’s a more comprehensive description of the building from Saucier + Perrotte Architectes:
Anne-Marie Edward Science Building at John Abbott College
Located on a campus designed along Lac St-Louis in the first decade of the twentieth century, John Abbott College is home to more than 5000 post-secondary students, faculty and staff members. Its new Science Building, designed by Saucier + Perrotte Architectes, is a state-of-the-art facility intended to foster the interdisciplinary nature of science, collaborative study and experiments, and the need for formal and informal learning. Designed as a showcase for sustainability, the singular, iconic form promotes a variety of pedagogical approaches through flexible classrooms, laboratories, learning centres, and informal spaces where ideas can be exchanged and creative interaction can unfold.
The new building houses the College’s sciences – Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Nursing, Prehospital Emergency Care, (Paramedic), and Biopharmaceutical departments – positioning the sciences and health technologies at the heart of the John Abbott campus. Sited carefully to preserve the logic of the radial organisation that drove the initial campus planning, the new architecture becomes a node of activity on the campus.
The architecture stems from the landscape, taking cues from its context. On the site is a majestic gingko tree that was envisioned as a centrepiece for a beautiful, collegial, outdoor gathering space. The building’s form first extends from the campus centre, then folds to frame a public courtyard around this tree. The landscape flows into the foyer, becoming an interior topography, which transforms at the fulcrum of the building into a light-filled, vertical circulation space connecting the sciences. An architectonic tree, analogous to that of the adjacent gingko, this atrium space contains the grand staircase and branches that extend through the building as built-in way-finding elements and benches. The vertical link thus becomes a public interior garden, emphasising the connection between the natural environment and the type of learning that takes place within the building.
The permeable ground floor of the building permits the landscape and users to flow into and through it with ease. The project thereby functions as a hub and a passage to various parts of campus. The volume above frames views to the lake, landscape, and the town of Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue. Together with the labs and student spaces along the east and west facades, the learning centres situated along the south facade – directed toward the centre of campus – give students a feeling of inhabiting a virtual balcony overlooking the verdure and lake below.
The building is composed of a glass material palette – vividly reflecting the sky, landscape, and adjacent historic buildings – its angled surfaces giving new, unexpected perspectives toward various parts of the campus. Each of the long facades is predominantly composed of a single glass tone of opalescent white, light grey, or dark grey. The result is a subtle, perceptual play between the hues of the juxtaposed facades, especially as the sunlight changes throughout the day or depending where one is standing in relation to the building. The slight shifts in glass tones add to a heightened perception of the architecture; under varying lighting and shadow conditions, for instance, the facade contrasts may be accentuated or, conversely, take on a uniform tonal appearance that would be impossible if the surfaces had been the same hue.
In certain circulation zones, the building skin gradually changes from translucent to transparent, allowing the building to be perceived as continuously changing – even dematerialising – within the campus. Programmatic functions (offices, learning centres and laboratories) are given clear expression as they come into contact with the building skin so that those outside can readily identify the functions showcasing the sciences. The north and south facades of the pristine glazed form appear suddenly sliced or truncated, given over to the elements, and weathered so as to evoke the colours and textures found throughout the college. The grand staircase and seating elements comprising the interior “tree” also weave these orange hues throughout the building, just as the weathered steel of the north facade and the ruddy masonry courtyard surfaces relate back to the historic campus tiles and brick. Through its dialectic with the existing architecture, the new project is both contemporary in form and harmonious with the historic campus.
Main floor levels contain individual departments to preserve continuity between professors, classrooms and laboratories for each science, favouring work, study and quiet contemplation. The central atrium space allows easy access to other levels, fostering connection, communication, and sense of community between disciplines. Movement converges at this central node of the building, which becomes an active zone throughout the day, allowing for spontaneous exchange of ideas. Exhibitions and activities take place in the foyer, permitting students and visitors to derive benefits and inspiration from cross-disciplinary ideas.
The building has been conceived with the welfare of its occupants in mind (it is currently targeting LEED Gold certification). The first priority was to provide an environment that supports active and engaged learners and nourishes enthusiasm for life-long learning. To contribute to the healthiest environment possible, important factors such as indoor air quality and levels of noise are controlled. Natural light and natural ventilation play a vital role in the life of the building, being present throughout. Furthermore, as the building privileges views outward, occupants will remain in contact with the exterior campus landscape. The central atrium space allows natural air circulation as well as the exhausting of air at the roof level. Operable and user controlled office windows also promote a healthful environment. The building takes advantage of geothermal energy – one of its signature features – to provide heating and cooling for the building, thereby reducing energy consumption, and therefore cost, over the long term.
Irish architects O’Donnell + Tuomey mapped sight lines along the narrow streets of the London School of Economics campus to generate the faceted red brick structure of the university‘s new student centre (+ slideshow).
The Saw Swee Hock Student Centre consolidates all of the university’s student facilities under one roof at the LSE‘s historic Aldwych campus. Designed by architects Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey, the seven-storey-high building has an irregular faceted shape informed by the angular geometries of its site and surroundings.
Walls angle inwards along the eastern facade to give the centre a recessed public entrance that lines up with approaching streets to the north, south and east.
“The public space at the threshold of the student union, on axis with St Clement’s Lane, creates a place of exchange; a spatial bowtie that intertwines circulation routes, splices visual connections between internal and external movement, and pulls pedestrian street life into and up the building,” said the architects.
“Like a Japanese puzzle, our design is carefully assembled to make one coherent volume from a complex set of interdependent component parts,” they added.
Red brick was used to construct the walls of the building using a typical flemish bond. In some places the material forms solid walls, while in others it creates perforated screens across windows.
“The perforated planes are constructed from a single leaf of brickwork with spaces in the flemish bond pattern to allow light to both infiltrate the interior spaces and filtrate out at night to create a pattern effect,” said the architects.
Spaces within the building accommodate a variety of functions, including an events venue, a bar, a cafe, a gym and dance studios. There are also prayer rooms, offices and multimedia facilities.
Designed to resemble a “lived-in warehouse”, the building has an exposed structure that combines steel columns and trusses with concrete floor slabs.
Floor plates differ in shape and size on different floors. Angular stairwells are positioned at three corners of the building, while a spiral staircase is positioned near the entrance.
“Space flows freely in horizontal plan and vertical section, with stairs gently twisting and slowly turning to create a variety of diagonal break-out spaces at landings and crossings throughout the building,” said the architects.
An assortment of windows and skylights ensure that each corridor receives daylight, and an events hall in the basement can be naturally lit though a row of clerestory windows.
The building will open next month, but its surrounding landscaping is not set to be finished until the summer.
Here’s a project description from O’Donnell+Tuomey Architects:
Saw Swee Hock Student Centre, London School of Economics
Client Brief
The brief was to bring student facilities together under one roof. The multi-functional building includes a venue, pub, learning café, media, prayer, offices, gym, careers, dance studio and social spaces. The brief asked for the “best student building in the UK” and had the aspiration for BREEAM Excellent rating. The design achieved BREEAM Outstanding.
Planning Constraints
The site lies within the Strand Conservation Area. The context was complex and the site was restricted by surrounding building lines. Specifications were closely monitored by Westminster planners, who supported the ambition for a contemporary design integrated with its setting. Throughout the building process, the planners maintained a commitment to the enduring quality of carefully crafted construction.
Street Life
The site is located at the knuckle-point convergence of narrow streets that characterise the LSE city centre campus. The faceted facade operates with respect to the Rights of Light Envelope and is tailored to lines of sight, to be viewed from street corner perspectives and to make visual connections between internal and external circulation. The brick skin is cut along fold lines to form large areas of glazing, framing views. Analysis of the context has influenced the first principles of a site specific architectural design.
Embodiment
The building is designed to embody the dynamic character of a contemporary Student Centre. The complex geometries of the site provided a starting point for a lively arrangement of irregular floor plates, each particular to its function. Space flows freely in plan and section, with stairs turning to create meeting places at every level.
Construction, Colour and Atmosphere
London is a city of bricks. The building is clad with bricks, with each brick offset from the next in an open work pattern, creating dappled daylight inside and glowing like a lattice lantern at night.
The building has the robust adaptability of a lived-in warehouse, with solid wooden floors underfoot. The structure is a combination of reinforced concrete and steelwork. Steel trusses or ribbed concrete slabs span the big spaces. Circular steel columns prop office floors between the large span volumes and punctuate the open floor plan of the café. Concrete ceilings contribute thermal mass with acoustic clouds suspended to soften the sound.
There are no closed-in corridors. Every hallway has daylight and views in at least one direction. Every office workspace has views to the outside world. The basement venue is daylit from clerestory windows.
Inclusive Design
The building is designed with accessibility and inclusive design as key considerations. Approaches are step free. Floor plates are flat without steps. Circulation routes are open and legible with clearly identifiable way-finding. Services are located at consistent locations. The central wide stair was carefully designed to comply with standards and details agreed with the approved inspector.
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