prioritize their concerns. We presented several schemes for them to
review, which allowed the community to see various ideas, making them
more real and leading to a more informed decision.

‘This process does require the architect to be flexible and to
acknowledge that people will change their minds, but designing is a cre-
ative and iterative process in which intention can only be evaluated
through the product. By sharing knowledge, we build trust and consensus
with our clients. At the school, our early visualization (or first draft)
demonstrated that moving the front office upstairs would allow us to
maximize the playground area. But the parents and faculty had to become
comfortable with a nonconventional solution (a buzzer/keypad to control
the entry gate) in exchange for retaining the relaxed personality of the
original building.

This design process mirrors the progressive educational methods
used at PS#1, which are intended to help children learn how to learn and
to take an active role in the learning process. The environment itself
should hold information about the world for them to discover or for edu-
cators to use to illustrate ideas. The design of PS#1 also responds to these
ideals. Its roof—a hyperbolic paraboloid structure—is explicitly shown,
and kids can trace how a column holds up a beam, and a beam, a roof.
‘Texture is celebrated. The movement of light is valued, and all rooms are
day-lit and cross-ventilated. Each classroom has its own outdoor space.
Subscribing to ecological values is much more meaningful for children if
they see the environment valued in their daily life. Nothing is designed as
a “throwaway.” With mild weather, covered outside space provides circu-
lation and is an opportunity for social interaction. It is made up of
stopping places with attention to the sequence of views and the color and
texture of floor and wall surfaces. Not surprisingly, the bridge that safely
links the site across the alley is one of the children’s favorite places
because it provides a space from which they can view their surroundings.

Traditionally, what people think of as a playground appropriate for
children is a large paved space to run around, a sports field, and a play
structure. Kids need more than that. They need a variety of spaces for

improvised play where they can use their minds creatively and work out

57 - G8


ommend renovation? He noted that the school is an important building
within its community, and he felt that it would be impossible to rebuild
on another site for political reasons. Because the current structure is
fraught with architectural problems, Mayor Malloy must reimagine the
school, so that people will have a reason to send their children there.
Panelists recommended that the mayor consider using the school’s archi-
tecture to communicate the programmatic changes to the school. In the
end, the panel did not offer a definitive decision on whether or not the
school should be rebuilt or renovated. But in either instance, the panel
agreed that a clear educational vision and the ability to imagine the
school in a completely different way would be critical to the success of
the project.

“Schools need to function as the centers of our community, and
the return when they do is to the whole city,” said Chicago architect
Carol Ross Barney at the Mayors’ Institute public forum. If the question
remains one of “vision,” the discussions at the sessions began to address
how architecture, landscape design, urban design, and innovative
programming can combine to reengage communities with their schools.
Design discourse is a critical component in the success of schools, as it
provides an opportunity for students, teachers, city officials, and their
architects to come together around the policies, procedures, and politics
that bring schools into being. Design allows people to “see” solutions, to
become comfortable with innovation, and to address and enhance the

unique qualities of their communities.

29

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EDJCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION
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This document has been reproduced as
received from the person or organization
originating it.

1 Minor changes have been made to
improve reproduction quality.

© Points of view or opinions stated in this
document do not necessarily represent
official OERI position or policy.

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Goncept Diagrams
Reuse of Empty Buildings
Downtown Paterson

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Education
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Converted office buildings,

downtown Paterson

Paterson neighborhoods
for learning connections



7

83


allies throughout Chicago devoted to design and education.

Stephen Sennott was instrumental to the early phases of editing
this book, as were Rose Grayson, a Master of Architecture student at
UIC, M. Christopher Jones at The VIA Group, Ann Bremner, and
Jennifer Thompson at Princeton Architectural Press in the later stages.
Finally, the many contributors to this book, Mark Robbins at the NEA,
the authors of the essays, and the firms and individuals who contributed
to the case studies should be recognized for their devotion to the cause

of cities, schools, and the education of urban youth.

David Dodt and Greg
Lauterbach, Master of
Architecture final project
for the Chicago Public
Schools Competition North
Side site. Faculty: Xavier
Vendrell and Dan Wheeler,
School of Architecture,
UIC, 2002,

BEST COPY AVAILABLE

: 19


“While Mies established a major central greensward space, it flowed like
water around stones into the open and compressed spaces created by
buildings sliding past one another.”? This design was equally novel for
the way in which the campus was brought into relationship with the

urban fabric.

Background

A successful urban landscape is a biological and social conduit of urban
life, constantly flowing like an artery or a river. A cohesive urban land-
scape is structured by public infrastructure, creating good accessibility
and adjacent architectural programs activating the outside space, lending
purpose and functionality to the routines of daily life. Chicago has a tra-
dition of boulevards that, when first designed, served this civic purpose in
the large urban structure. Not only are they a part of Chicago’s historical
legacy, the landscaped boulevards have stimulated neighborhood develop-
ment and revitalization. In European cultures, Haussmann’s
transformation of 19th-century Paris inspired a new concept of
boulevards for structuring the urban setting. His work improved natural
light.and ventilation, bringing a piece of strongly landscaped infrastruc-
ture into an existing city. In America, architects and planners of the City
Beautiful movement incorporated parks and boulevards to spark real
estate development and to structure both transportation and recreation in
new and existing cities. Frederick Law Olmsted first designed the boule-
vard system in Chicago in the 1870s. This network of recreational parks
was later augmented and extended by important Chicago landscape archi-
tects such as Jens Jensen. The boulevards eventually became incorporated
in Daniel Burnham’s and Edward H. Bennett’s monumental 1909 Plan of
Chicago. As urban historian Daniel Bluestone notes: “Spinning their way
through the city, the boulevards joined the parks and the city as the warp

and woof of real estate development and creative urbanism.”?

78


Biases in State Funding Formulas

State funding formulas are another major policy problem, for they often
discriminate unreasonably against the renovation of existing schools, even
when that option makes good sense for economic and educational rea-
sons. An example of such a bias is Ohio’s “two-thirds rule,” which says if
the cost of renovating an older school exceeds 66 percent of the cost of a
new school, the state will not help pay for the project. The numbers vary
from state to state: Virginia has a 50 percent rule; Minnesota has a 60
percent rule. Although waivers are sometimes granted, the burden of jus-
tifying them falls on the community.

The problem with using these arbitrary percentage rules is that
they trivialize the relationship between older schools and their neighbor-
hoods and prevent full cost analyses. They ignore many costs tied to new
construction—such as the cost of extending water and sewer lines, build-
ing new roads, buying land, or demolishing a school taken out of service.
If these costs were considered, renovation projects might meet the per-
centage rule more easily. Why mot renovate schools when doing so

produces state-of-the-art results and saves money?

Farmland outside
Granville, Ohio. Nearby, a
new school under con-
struction on 179 acres
(inset). Some local resi-
dents had argued in favor
of building the school on a
smaller site closer to
existing neighborhoods.



Endnotes (continued)

5 The South Side site is located in
the Roseland community between
103rd and 104th Streets between
Wentworth and Princeton Avenues.
The North Side site is located in
the Irving Park neighborhood at
Sacramento and Elston.
Competition funders included The
Richard H. Driehaus Foundation,
the National Endowment for the
Arts, Reva and David Logan
Foundation, Graham Foundation
for Advanced Studies in the Fine
Arts, Oppenheimer Family

Foundation, Chicago Association of

Realtors Educational Foundation,
Nuveen Investments, Polk Bros.
Foundation, and United Airlines.
Pamela Clarke, Leadership for
Quality Education; Roberta
Feldman, City Design Center,
University of Illinois at Chicago;
Sunny Fischer, the Richard H.
Driehaus Foundation; Ralph
Hernandez, Hispanic American
Construction Industry Association;
Michael Mayo, CPS Board
Member; Jeanne Nowaczewski,
BPI; Beatriz Rendon, Chicago
Public Schools; Donna Robertson,
Dean, College of Architecture,
Illinois Institute of Technology;
and Richard Solomon, Graham
Foundation for Advanced Studies
in the Fine Arts.
® The jurors were Dr. William Ayers,
University of Illinois at Chicago;
Lance Jay Brown, City College
of the City University of New
York; Marissa Hopkins, Catalyst
Marketing Group; Ralph Johnson,
Perkins & Will; M. David Lee,
Stull & Lee, Inc.; Dr. Giacomo +
Mancuso, Chicago Public
Schools; Linda Owens, Davis
Developmental Center; Brigitte
Shim, Shim-Sutcliffe Architects;
Dr. Richard Smith, Frederick
Stock School; Dennis Vail,
Langston Hughes School.

° The four finalists from the open
competition were Borum,
Daubmann, Hyde & Roddier (for-
merly known as GROUND Design
Studio) (Ann Arbor, Michigan),
Marble - Fairbanks Architects (New
York, New York), Jack L. Gordon
Architects (New York, New York),
and Lubrano Ciavarra Design
(New York, New York).

TM Specialists brought into the com-
munity meetings included Leslie
Kanes Weisman, an expert on
universal design and sustainability;
Dr. William Ayers, a professor of
education at the University of
Ilinois at Chicago; Tom Forman
of Chicago Associates Planners
and Architects; and architect
Michael Iverson.

" Marble - Fairbanks Architects
received the P/A Award sponsored
by Architecture Magazine, the 2001
American Institute of Architects
Project Award in Oculus, New York
AIA Journal, and was featured in
the January 2002 edition of
Architecture. The winning design
submitted by KoningEizenberg
Architecture was featured in the
January/February 2002 edition of
Metropolitan Home magazine, the
May 2001 edition of Architectural
Record, and the summer 2001
edition of Competitions.

" Architecture for Education: New
School Designs from the Chicago
Competition will be published by
BPI in the fall of 2002. For more
information or to obtain a copy,
please contact BPI at (312) 641-
5570 or bttp://www.bpichicago.org.

BEST COPY AVAILABLE

107

The City of Learning: Schools as Agents
for Urban Revitalization, Roy
Strickland

The registered trademark City

of Learning is owned by Roy
Strickland.

As part of NASDP’s field research,
more than 100 primary and sec-
ondary schools (public, private,
parochial, and charter) have been
observed in operation in localities
such as Berkeley, Oakland, and San
Francisco, California; Baltimore,
Maryland; Belmont, Boston,
Brookline, Cambridge, and
Worcester, Massachusetts;
Dearborn and Detroit, Michigan;
Chicago, Illinois; Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania; New York, New
York; Paterson, Union City, and
Trenton, New Jersey; and
Washington, D.C.

Dewey's School and Society provides
diagrams proposing a seamless
educational setting. Here schools
extend to the “natural environ-
ment” and “all its facts and forces,”
to business and “the needs and
forces of industry,” and to the
home, where a “free interplay of
influences, materials, and ideals
occurs.” Martin S. Dworkin, ed.,
Dewey on Education (New York:
Teachers College Press, 1950),
75-78. For Howard Gardner, the
ideal school turns to its surround-
ings for “contextual exploring and
learning,” with portions of the
students’ day spent in frequent
visits to theaters, symphonies, and
art museums and at workplaces
under the tutelage of “masters.”
Howard Gardner, Multiple
Intelligences: The Theory und Practice
(New York: Basic Books, 1993),
68-80.

NASDP executed the Union City
and Paterson projects. A consultant
team consisting of Roy Strickland
and ICON Architects executed the
project in Trenton.

102


Sides. CPS officials promised to build the winning design for each site.’ Each
new school would accommodate students from two existing schools for an
integrated population of 800 disabled and non-disabled students.

A primary objective of the competition was to engage the entire
school community in the design process. Recognizing that schools are at
the heart of a community, the competition’s sponsors sought to create an
approach that would capture input from those individuals and groups that
best understood the needs of schools: the people who work, learn, and
live in and around them. A steering committee comprising developers,
financiers, architects, academics, advocates, educators, and funders was
formed to guide the process.* The competition was designed as a two-
stage process; the first stage featured both “invited” and “open”
components. The “invited” component began with a Request for
Proposals issued in July 2000 to a national group of architects. Four of
these firms were chosen by a panel of architects, educators, and sponsor-
representatives to advance to the second round.’ The four “invited”
architects were KoningEizenberg Architecture (Santa Monica), Mack
Scogin Merrill Elam Architects (Atlanta), Smith-Miller + Hawkinson
Architects (New York), and Ross Barney + Jankowski (Chicago). An open
call, which was judged by a jury of national architects and community
representatives,’ was made in August 2000 inviting all architects and
architecture students from around the world to submit designs and to
compete for the four remaining “open” spaces in the competition.’

Once the eight finalists were identified, in January 2001, the second
round began: an interactive community learning process before the com-
pletion of final designs, engaging the school community and the
architectural firms in dialogues about architecture and education. Each of
the new schools was to offer comprehensive programs that serve develop-
mentally delayed, physically disabled, or otherwise health-impaired
children. Architects and educators would need to address questions about
the integration of these programs and the implications for both special
facilities and classroom activities. In addition, three of the competition’s
central tenets—small schools, sustainability, and universal design—were

new, unfamiliar concepts to the communities and, in some cases, the

37

43.


job-training initiatives, COL identifies schools as a potent new force in

urban revitalization as it expands pre-K-12 educational options.

Impetus

COL is the outgrowth of the New American School Design Project
(NASDP) that I founded in 1993 at the MIT School of Architecture and
Planning. I have carried this program to the University of Michigan,
where I now direct the Master of Urban Design Program at the Taubman
College of Architecture and Urban Planning. NASDP’s original objective
was the correlation of architectural design with the discussion of
American public school reform. From Berkeley, California, to
Washington, D.C., public school students, teachers, parents, and adminis-
trators emphasized that the school building was but one factor among
many in successful learning environments. Looking beyond the walls of
the school building, they recognized that the social, physical, and
economic character of surrounding neighborhoods played important roles
in a school’s performance and quality of life.' This insight is reinforced by
educational literature from John Dewey to Howard Gardner in which
schools are proposed as parts of larger systems of resources including
museums, parks, places of work, and—critically—the home.’ In response,
NASDP expanded its focus from the school building to the school setting,
or the blocks, neighborhoods, towns, and cities surrounding school sites
where resources such as those identified by Dewey and Gardner could be
integrated with school programming or be designed and built to support

school programs as they provided resources to the larger community.

Principles
COL is built on the premise that teachers and learners can contribute to

community life, and community resources can contribute to learning. It

reflects educational reform movements such as small schools, pilot

68 62


neighborhoods—like the one surrounding Spokane’s Wilson School—
offers many benefits to children. Enabling students to walk or bike to
school gives them greater independence and promotes healthy forms of
physical fitness.

Schools teach values as well as academic skills. Environmental
stewardship is one such value. The irony of teaching kids to recycle paper
and cans while abandoning older buildings is captured by a parent trying
to save his daughter’s school: “They have recycling bins in the cafeteria,
and yet they were planning to cart the whole school off to the landfill.”*

As Lakis Polycarpou, a young graduate of Columbine High
School, points out, we have choices:

Of course we will always need some new schools. But we have a
choice in how we build them. Will they carry a sense of perma-
nence, dignity, respect for education and the public life? Or will
they be interchangeable and disposable? Will they be built as
the center of a community—an anchor for civic life—or will
they be put on the outskirts of town as magnets for sprawl?*

The National Trust for Historic Preservation believes that public
policies should make it easier for communities to preserve and renovate
historic neighborhood schools when it is feasible to adapt them for con-
temporary educational programs. When it is not, the system should make
it easier to build well-designed new schools in the same neighborhood with-
out destroying nearby homes. The rules should not compel communities
to shoehorn “cornfield architecture” into urban settings or to replace
existing schools with sprawl schools on remote sites. As Mr. Polycarpou
adds: “The choice is not between the old and the new—it is between the
dignified and the undistinguished, the enduring and the disposable. It is a
choice between thoughtless replication of sprawl and the conscious deci-

sion to invest in civic life.”

33


COL team member
LaTonya Green and
Metro-Paterson Academy
for Communications &
Technology students

Paterson Parkland
Corridor

65

BEST COPY AVAILABLE

74


+ Michael Casey, “Change in Store * At the time of this writing, campus

for Paterson Mall,” The Bergen “entry” signage is planned for the
Record, July 22, 1999, L-1. North and South State Street

5 Application for Smart Growth entries into campus. This design
Community School Planning was done by others and not
Grant, submitted by City of endorsed in the 1999 Landscape
Paterson and Paterson Public Master Plan.

Schools to the New Jersey
Department of Community Affairs,
Office of State Planning,
November 15, 2001.

Education and the Urban Landscape:
Illinois Institute of Technology, Peter
Lindsay Schaudt

' Thank you to Chandra Goldsmith
and Patricia Uribe for their assis-
tance inthe writing of this piece.
An earlier version of this piece,
“Rehabilitation in Context: Alfred
Caldwell’s Planting Design for the
Illinois Institute of Technology—
Rediscovered and Interpreted,” was
published in: Vineyard: An
Occasional Record of the National
Park Service Historic Landscape
Initiative Il (2000): 11-13.

Phyllis Lambert, Learning a
Language,” in Mies in America
(New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.,
2001), 275.

Daniel Bluestone, Constructing
Chicago (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1991), 52.
Construction was finished in the
summer of 2001 at a cost of
approximately $4.2 million. The
campus is now experiencing a
renaissance of renewal and restora-
tion. Two distinguished alumni
have created a matching fund
endowment of $120 million for
the historic Mies van der Rohe
building restoration and landscape
improvements.

Peter Carter, Mies van der Rohe at
Work, quoted in Phyllis Lambert,
“Mies and His Colleagues,” in Mies
in America (New York: Harry N.
Abrams, Inc., 2001), 583.

108

103


Jackson School and
Brighton Public Plaza,
Boston, Massachusetts

Classroom for the study of
public housing, Techwood
Housing, Atlanta, Georgia

Something from “Nothing”:
Information Infrastructure in
School Design

Sheila Kennedy
Kennedy & Violich Architecture

Introduction

Infrastructure in American culture is normally thought to be invisible.
Because infrastructure is useful, it is not understood as part of the realm
of design. Yet infrastructure is clearly operative—it affects the organiza-
tion of space and program activities. In school design, we cannot afford to
continue the distinction between operation and aesthetic experience. ‘The
scarcity of resources to build and repair schools is motivation on one
hand, and on the other is the need to prepare students to be continual
learners in a culture increasingly dominated by technology.

‘This essay describes an alternative approach to the design of ele-
mentary schools, one where infrastructure and architecture are integrated
to transform school buildings and produce new kinds of classrooms, cur-
ricular opportunities, and community resources. This approach calls for
architects, school boards, and teachers to look with fresh eyes at existing
and new forms of infrastructure to see how these operative elements can
support the intellectual and public life of the school community. The

imagination of a child at play is the inspiration that can transform objects

43 AQ


Lick-Wilmerding High School,

San Francisco

Pfau Architecture Ltd. San Francisco, California

Lick-Wilmerding High School is a nonprofit,
independent, coeducational, college preparatory
day school at the southern edge of San Francisco
along I-280. It integrates an academic curricu-
lum with a distinctive program in the technical
and fine arts. Pfau Architecture’s expansion of
the school’s facilities, the winning entry in an
invited design competition, includes a new
technology and design center and enlarged and
renovated space for the performing arts, the
student center, and a new cafeteria, while incor-
porating sustainable building technologies.

The architects describe the project: “The new
landscape design and building forms are insepa-
rable. Exterior spaces, which were once
ambiguous, become programmatically charged.
Roofs of shops are transformed into terraced
landscapes: A raised portion of undulating roofs-
cape in front of the cafeteria, The Hill, becomes
a place to enjoy the view while catching an out-
door lunch. A sculpture garden between the
theater and the original classroom building acts
as a place where new planting areas and a walk-
ing path provide a backdrop for a rotation of
student outdoor exhibits.”

New and old technologies are combined in the
new organization of the campus. The new pro-
grammatic elements preserve portions of the
existing school campus and its relationship to
the surrounding community while signaling the
commitment to ecological technologies through
photovoltaic panels, louvered sun control ele-
ments, and a proposed bank of windmills located
to be seen from the interstate.

85

View from field level looking out from the hill

Site plan

BESTCOPY AVAILABLE

Si


They were seeking ways to reincorporate schools into the civic life of
their cities.

Education theorists consistently speak to the issue of the environ-
ment, including the urban environment, in which education should take
place. Throughout the sessions of the MICD, architect Julie Eizenberg
and school superintendent Clifford Janey spoke of the importance of
teaching both “inside” and “outside,” by which they meant both in the
school and in its community. It is equally important that the school
enhance the urban community, not simply as an aesthetic object, but as a
site for programmatic development, neighborhood resource development,
and urban restructuring. Commitments to school design and planning are
as often decisions about urban form and structure as about architectural
style and context. The reuse of buildings can restructure the civic orienta-
tion of a city: the conversion of disused buildings into schools, the
creation of new “downtown” magnet schools, and the transformation of
existing schools into shared civic spaces. The mayors from Wichita,
Kansas, and Lynn, Massachusetts, both put forward proposals of this
nature. Projects such as Roy Strickland’s “City of Learning” and preserva-
tion concerns raised by Constance Beaumont, both discussed in this book,
illustrate concrete ways of bringing these proposals to fruition. They also
demonstrate the role of schools as institutions of urban transformation,
not only as monuments to pedagogical routines.

When the nation’s founders set aside the 16th section of townships
to produce funds to build schools, there was no curriculum, no image,
and no clearly defined student body for these schools. Our core educa-
tional values date back to the days of the early republic, a predominantly
agricultural environment. But much of the large-scale impetus for the
development of a national public school system came through urban,
industrial growth and then postindustrial decentralization. More than any
institution of civic life, educational facilities are highly subject to the ebb
and flow of demographics: “natural” population rises and falls; local shifts
occur between cities, suburbs, and exurbs; and migration and immigration
bring new life to cities. But educational values change as well, and with

them the expansion of curriculum and the numbers of students pursuing



Contents

I
Essays

Preface 1 Why Johnny Can’t Walk 26 An Architect's Primer for 52
Mark Robbins to School Community Interaction
Constance E. Beaumont Julie Eizenberg.
Schools for Cities: 3
Urban Strategies Lessons from the 34 The City of Learning: 60
Sharon Haar Chicago Public Schools Schools as Agents for
Design Competition Urban Revitalization
Acknowledgments 12 Cindy $. Moelis with Roy Strickland
Sharon Haar Beth Valukas
—_ Education and the 70
Reenvisioning Schools: 14 Something from “Nothing”: 42 Urban Landscape:
The Mayors’ Questions Information Infrastructure IUinois Institute of
Leah Ray in School Design Technology
Sheila Kennedy Peter Lindsay Schaudt
Case Studies Bibliography 96
Image Credits 97
_ a Contributors 98
Prototypes and Paratypes: 78 MICD Session Participants 100
Future Studies
Sharon Haar Endnotes 101
Lick-Wilmerding High 84

School, San Francisco
Pfau Architecture Ltd.

Architecture of Adjustment, 86
New York City
kOnyk Architecture

Booker T. Washington 88
School for the Performing

and Visual Arts, Dallas

Allied Works Architecture Inc.

Camino Nuevo Middle 90
School, Los Angeles
Daley, Genik Architects

Elementary School 92
Prototypes, Chicago Public
Schools

OWP?/P Architects

nas)


important applications for these new ideas to be integrated into their
methods of presentation and their general practice.

Community input prompted a range of changes to the original
designs, from the addition of a community garden to energy-saving
modifications. One winning team, Marble . Fairbanks Architects (New
York), recognized that it would be important for the long-term flexibility
and sustainability of the small schools to have direct connections with
each other. Throughout the competition, it became clear that the intense
level of community participation resulted in stronger, more responsive
designs. The competition and numerous stages of discussion and revision
encouraged an inclusive approach to the designs. Architects, school
administrators, teachers, students, and parents collaborated to develop
designs responsive to the needs of the school communities and the cul-
tures of each neighborhood. Each group that participated in the
competition had a unique perspective to contribute, and the public
process ensured community impact on the final submissions. The superb
winning designs, submitted by Marble - Fairbanks Architects and
KoningEizenberg Architecture, are convincing evidence that a collabora-
tive, community-focused process can produce stronger design results.
The two designs have received national recognition and numerous archi-

tectural awards."

4& 40

Principal Rochelle Riddick
meets with architects at
the Davis Developmental
Center.

Site visit to the Langston
Hughes School.


Illinois Institute of
Technology, Chicago,
Illinois

Aerial view of the State
Street corridor looking
north

Sections through State
Street

Before and after sketches
of the new boulevard

View of the completed,
nascent boulevard

Education and the Urban
Landscape: Illinois Institute of
Technology

Peter Lindsay Schaudt
Peter Lindsay Schaudt Landscape Architecture, Inc.

Introduction

With the changing complexity of urban life and educational institutions,
it seems imperative that rather than setting institutions apart we should
be bringing them together. We should find ways to link city with school
and join key institutions through the infrastructure of the city. The
Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) “urban landscape” project plays an
important role in connecting people to each other and connecting complex
programmatic uses o7 a campus in a city.'

What do education and the urban landscape have in common?
Higher education has changed since Thomas Jefferson’s classic architec-
tural model of the University of Virginia: an idealized arrangement of
buildings with the library in command of both academic life and nature.
This scheme exemplified a relationship between knowledge and the natu-
ral world. The concept of this American campus icon is used to this day
on small rural college campuses as an ideal for urban design in new set-
tings. What about the urban school in a city where nature is designed and
constructed? Mies van der Rohe’s ITT campus was a transformation of

Jefferson’s paradigm. As architect and curator Phyllis Lambert has noted:

n yey


Are all schools alike? Is there a “prototypical” ideal or are some of
the best schools in some form “paratypes,” responses to specific student
and community identities and conditions? Certainly, there are known
typological groupings of schools. For instance, urban schools of the early
20th century were developed into shape-specific typologies that could
address common morphological conditions. In dense fabric conditions,
school forms often varied according to their location within a block. Each
condition—an entire block, the corner, the center—led to a different,
although often repeated solution, in order to solve problems of light and
air, interior and exterior circulation, the approach to places of assembly
(auditoriums and gymnasiums), and the expression of monumentality that
would signal an institution of urban life. Where they still exist, these
schools are seen as either historical landmarks or as decaying, outdated
facilities. Sometimes they are both. By contrast, suburban schools of the
1950s and 1960s were more often organized and shaped by function than
by the specifics of a context. Characterized by access to greater quantities
of land, and in the beginning, more choice in where the school might be
placed, these schools were more likely to dematerialize into their land-
scapes, as individual functions acquired individual forms: classroom
wings, a gym opening out into vast playing fields, a courtyard space for
office functions. Where schools were the first institutions of public life,
they often acquired facilities that could replicate the institutions of the
city: libraries, community centers, performance spaces, and swimming
pools, becoming vast, independent campuses. These schools are seen as
community centers, or as precursors to suburban sprawl. It depends on
your perspective.

As education itself is a large, complex discipline, architecture for
education has become a large, complex specialty of the architecture pro-
fession. The design of educational institutions merits its own AIA
committee and is dominated by large firms with long legacies in school
buildings that assess “best practices.” With few exceptions, the tendency
to treat schools as their own category of public investment makes integra-
tive urban approaches rare. Every generation has its own compendium of

case studies and primers, largely designed to guide communities in the

&& 80


DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 480 548 EF 006 355
AUTHOR Haar, Sharon, Fd.

TITLE Schools for Cities: Urban Strategies. NEA Series on Design.
INSTITUTION National Endowment for the Arts (NFAH), Washington, DC.
ISBN ISBN-1-56898-378-6

PUB DATE 2003-00-00

NOTE » 109p.

AVAILABLE FROM Princeton Architectural Press, 37 East Seventh Street, New
York, NY 10003. Tel: 800-722-6657 (Toll Free); Web site:
http://www. papress.com,

PUB TYPE Books (010) -- Collected Works - General (020)
EDRS PRICE .EDRS Price MF01/PC0S Plus Postage.
DESCRIPTORS *Architecture; *Building Design; Educational Change;

Elementary Secondary Education; Public Schools; School
Buildings; Urban Areas; *Urban Improvement; *Urban Schools
IDENTIFIERS Chicago Public Schools IL; New York (New York)

ABSTRACT

This monograph presents papers from the 2000 Mayors!
Institute on City Design and the public forum that followed it. Essays

include: "Schools for Cities: Urban Strategies" (Sharon Haar); “Reenvisioning
Schools; The Mayors' Questions" (Leah Ray); "Why Johnny Can't Walk to

School" (Constance E. Beaumont); “Lessons from the Chicago Public Schools
Design Competition" (Cindy S. Moelis and Beth Valukas); "Something from
‘Nothing’: Information Infrastructure in School Design" (Sheila Kennedy); "An
Architect's Primer for Community Interaction" (Julie Eizenberg); "The City of

Learning: Schools as Agents for Urban Revitalization" (Roy Strickland); and
"Education and the Urban Landscape: Illinois Institute of Technology" (Peter
Lindsay Schaudt). Case Studies include: "Prototyses and Paratypes: Future

Studies" (Sharon Haar); "Lick-Wilmerding High School, San Francisco" (Pfau
Architecture Ltd.); "Architecture of Adjustment, New York City’ (kOnyk
Architecture); "Booker T. Washington School for the Performing and Visual
Arts, Dallas" (Allied Works Architecture Inc.); "Camino Nuevo Middle School,
Los Angeles" (Daley, Genik Architects); "Elementary School Prototypes
Chicago Public Schools" (OWP/P Architects). (Contains 31 bibliographic
references.) (SM)

Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made
from the original document.



Distributed by:
Princeton Architectural Press
37 East Seventh Street

New York, New York 10003

For a free catalog of books, call 1.800.722.6657.
Visit our web site at www.papress.com. :

© 2002 National Endowment for the Arts and
The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
05 04 03 02 4321 First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form by any electronic or
mechanical means [including photocopying,
recording, or information storage and retrieval)
without permission in writing from the publisher.

Design by M. Christopher Jones, The VIA Group LLC.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication

Data is available from the National Endowment

for the Arts.

ISBN 1-56898-378-6

NEA Series on Design

Other titles available in this series:

The Mayors’ Institute:
Excellence in City Design

Sprawl and Public Space:
Redressing the Mall

University-Community
Design Partnershi
Innovations in Practice

Your Town:
Mississippi Delta

Front cover:

The Kirk Middle Schoot

in East Cleveland, Ohio,
one of the city’s most
important landmarks,
was effectively condemned
by the state's two-thirds
rule. It has since been
demolished (see p. 32 for
details).


The Franklin High School
in Seattle was built in 1912
but renovated to meet
state-of-the-art standards
in 1990.

kind of school that many educators and parents across the country seek to

replicate today.

But if you tried to build or renovate a school like Wilson today,
you could not do so in many places. That’s because Wilson sits on just
two acres of land, a small site that would be considered “substandard” by
most school districts. A combination of national guidelines, state policies,
and advice handed out by private consultants often makes it difficult to
retain and renovate—or even build new—small, community-centered
schools like Wilson.

Having heard from parents, civic leaders, and others around the
country about barriers to preserving—or creating—schools akin to the
Wilson School, the National Trust for Historic Preservation decided to
examine public policies affecting school construction and renovation.
How do policies affect the size and location of schools and community
interaction? Do funding biases work against the proper maintenance and
modernization of older schools? These were among the questions asked
during a study that culminated with the release of a report, Why Johnny
Can’t Walk to School, in November 2000. This report provides educators,
community leaders, architects, and other interested parties with effective
strategies for preserving schools as neighborhood anchors and significant

community landmarks.'

Bree 34 28


Architecture of Adjustment,
New York City

kOnyk architecture Brooklyn, New York

kOnyk architecture’s NYC Public School
Overcrowding Design Study looked at three
existing, overutilized schools in New York City
with the intention of devising “immediate solu-
tions for temporarily overcrowded conditions.”
The proposals expand existing prototype build-
ings in “U,” “O,” and “X” configurations.

The proposal for PS 152 added a new kinder-
garten with a separate entrance to the upper
story of an early-20th-century building on a
congested site in Washington Heights. A new
addition at the rear of the building contains a
gymnasium, auditorium, and library spaces. Its
roof becomes a new landscape for a play yard.
The movement of these elements out of the
original building frees up space for new class-
room and teacher spaces.

Chelsea School, “X” proposal

The proposal for PS 33, the Chelsea School, in
Manhattan involves adding a significant new
structure to an existing midcentury building that
is a diagonal object on its square block. The
strategy involves the design of a “ring” of new
classrooms, teacher offices, and reading rooms
to surround the older building. The new config-
uration results in three interior courtyard spaces
and a “perforated” rooftop playground.

This project was funded by the New York State
Council on the Arts and sponsored by the
Architectural League of New York.

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into educational experience. Education becomes activity.

What architectural elements play the leading role in the develop-
ment of a school: the classroom module, structural bay, prefabricated wall
system? And how are these affected by changes that transform the stu-
dents’ relationships to teachers, peers, or community? How are new
communications infrastructures changing today’s classrooms and students’
relationships to them? Are schools, perhaps, ideal places to demonstrate
the future of green buildings and a greater ecological approach to the
environment?

These are all valid questions, and it is difficult to assign priority to
one over another in all instances. The building will, inevitably, have to sit
in its context and adjust to its site, its users, and specific community
needs. We must not forget, however, that these are primarily spaces for
children. Equally as important, even as our urban environments are
becoming increasingly similar (and isn’t that alone a reason why schools
should be different?), architectural technology is moving from prototyp-
ing to paratyping. Information technology is changing how buildings are
designed and how they are built; efficiencies can be obtained through
information transfer of individual instances. Schools of the future will
combine both prototypical and paratypical approaches and elements, the
best of what we know about design for education, and suggestions for the
future, integrating new digital and ecological technologies, new social
constructions, and new ways of constructing knowledge.

In the examples illustrated here the specificity of each condition
defies the possibility of building prototype solutions, but offers lessons
on models of partnership, where the development of the urban fabric is
more than just an aesthetic gesture. As a result, the following studies
are presented as paratypes: not as models for imitation, but as examples
that stand aside from the type. They are projects that are “in the works”
suggesting ways in which school design is transforming to affect urban
and neighborhood development. In their differences they become
exemplars, each for the way in which the architecture is used as the
interface between the space of the school and the space of the larger

community. They represent change at multiple scales of infrastructure:

88 82


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Design Reinterpreted and Translated

Two years ago, a five-block transformation of State Street took place
between 30th and 35th Streets. This section intersects Mies van der Rohe’s
historic Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) campus.* What is often

169

referred to as “Mies’s” campus had been part of the federal government's
plan for urban renewal in the Bronzeville neighborhood in the 1940s, as
IIT was expanded from the original Armour Institute into a campus of
buildings and infrastructure in an open, parklike setting. The buildings of
the ITT campus are now nearly 50 years old. Additionally, deferred land-
scape maintenance over the last 30 years has created a bland, tired-looking
landscape that does not reflect the original design intent.

Today, revitalization is seen as a layering of interdisciplinary
exchanges, programmatic integration, and a view of the landscape as some-
thing more than the decoration of pragmatic municipal services. This
relationship between the built and the natural gave meaning to the IIT
campus, an urban space defined as much by Mies’s buildings as by the land-
scape spaces that open among them. The landscape of the IIT campus
represents the legacy of Alfred Caldwell (1903-1998). Caldwell was a land-
scape architect, teacher, and protégé of Jens Jensen who collaborated with
Mies for years at IIT. Caldwell was IIT’s landscape architect when Mies’s
buildings were erected in the 1940s. Although Caldwell never fully devel-
oped a landscape master plan for the campus, his design concepts have
strongly influenced the collective thinking in the ITT community:
“According to [Mies’s colleague Peter] Carter, Caldwell had found a paral-
lel between ‘Jensen’s insistence on the integrity of nature and Mies van der
Rohe’s insistence on the honest expression of a building’s structure’, so that
the ‘interaction between this free-flowing landscaping, with its diaphanous
honey locusts and substantial hawthorn, and the pristine architecture, con-
tributes a kind of poetry to both exterior and interior milieu’.”> Caldwell
designed and planted many landscape “pieces” around campus. Yet, only
two planting plans were among Caldwell’s materials in the IIT archive. Not
surprisingly, they were for Mies’s most famous IIT buildings, Crown Hall
and the chapel.

73 79


34

4


improve the spatial organization of schools and the ways in which class-

rooms and classroom furniture are designed and used.

The Digital Diaspora: Integrating Traditional and
Digital Teaching Resources

The Canton Elementary School in Canton, Ohio, and the Shady Hill
Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts, projects designed by Kennedy &
Violich Architecture, share two important design principles. The first
design principle recognizes that digital infrastructure can be successfully
integrated into traditional forms of building infrastructure. By overlaying
or nesting information infrastructure into the circulation pathways of
existing school typologies, better common spaces with multiple uses are
created for traditionally underused spaces such as corridors, stairways,
social areas, and lobbies. Funding for new or upgraded information infra-
structure can help to trigger improvements for a school’s physical design.

The second design principle moves away from the conventional
appliance approach to computers. The appliance approach doesn’t
acknowledge the way digital learning is inscribed into the space of the
classroom, changing the manner in which children acquire information,
relate to their teachers and peers, and understand relationships between
the classes in their curriculum.

We would find it laughable today to retreat into an isolated “elec-
tricity room” to use artificial lights and power outlets. But this segregated
approach happens when school design calls for a “computer room.”
Architects and curriculum developers need to work together to reconsider
where computers are located and how and when they are used. A digital
“diaspora” serves to strengthen curriculum relationships as it disperses
learning resources into alternate sites such as a library, theater or
performance spaces, and specialty classrooms such as art, music, and
science.

An integrated approach is recommended whenever possible, espe-

cially in program development for new school construction. School

“52 us


physical and digital infrastructures of school buildings are key links
between architecture and curriculum.

The seemingly prosaic problems of how to “wire” schools are in
fact critical strategic design issues. A design process that engages the
strategic, spatial implications of infrastructure offers a remarkable oppor-
tunity to rethink the architectural organization of schools, and the
character of a school’s public spaces and classrooms. The time children
spend in school and after-school programs is increasing, as many families
have two working parents. Now more than ever, the issue is how to re-
define conventional assumptions about school design and create
alternative visions for what schools can be. An integrated, flexible, and
public design is “something” that can be created from the spatial,

substantial “nothing” of information infrastructure.

$1


Canton Elementary School,
Canton, Ohio

Satellite space

Classroom

Music classroom


The relationship between the classroom and the patios
is not achieved using windows. The large prefabricated
concrete pieces and laminated glass enclosure allow for
a great deal of transparency while at the same time cre-
ating a fair amount of privacy due to the dimensions of
the crosspieces. By not having windows, there is no ele-
ment of scale from which the children could compare

themselves,

—Xavier Vendrell

Riumar Elementary School,
Tarragona, Spain,
Ruisanchez-Vendrell
Architects, 1997,

exterior view and student
installation

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76


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Washington Heights School, “U” proposal



Conclusion

We felt, through the community process and the open nature of
the competition, that we really came to view the other finalists
as collaborators—not as competitors. And that is the future—
not to protect ideas, but to put them out there to grow
organically.
—Scott Marble
Marble - Fairbanks Architects

Beyond building two new schools for Chicago, the competition’s sponsors
sought to create a process that could serve as a model for other architects,
educators, and community activists interested in building schools. The
community process was an integral part of creating these innovative
designs. Chicago Public Schools have promised to begin building the
schools by the year 2004. Once built, the schools will truly be community
centers, reflective of the neighborhoods in which they exist. The build-
ings themselves will help inspire and engage the people living in the
community, while the teaching will enlighten those inside. Yet the true
impact of the competition goes well beyond these two buildings. The
work of the architects, who partnered with participating communities,
sets a new standard for the community-based planning process for build-
ing schools. The competition triggered interest and discourse in the
architecture community about the need to bring different voices into the
creative process and how to build schools that support educational needs
of the 21st century. The competition generated an enormous body of
learning on blending educational and design innovation, while creating
excitement nationally about the possibilities for public school architec-
ture. Business and Professional People for the Public Interest will capture
the lessons learned and highlight the innovative designs created for the
competition in a publication to be released in the fall of 2002." It is clear
that the competition and the designs produced can serve as models for
schools, communities, architects, policymakers, and others committed to
thoughtful school design in the United States.

4?

41


| SCHOOLS
FOR CITIES

URBAN
STRATEGIES —

National Endowment Washington, DC,;
for the Arts

The Mayors’ Institute :..,
on City Design

Sharon Ha: ata c
“Mark Robbins: ees

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e -
U.S. Department of Education E I C
Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OER!)
National Library of Education (NLE) even Ress wean Cees
Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC)

NOTICE

Reproduction Basis

This document is covered by a signed "Reproduction Release (Blanket)"
form (on file within the ERIC system), encompassing all or classes of
documents from its source organization and, therefore, does not require a
"Specific Document" Release form.

xX This document is Federally-funded, or carries its own permission to
reproduce, or is otherwise in the public domain and, therefore, may be
reproduced by ERIC without a signed Reproduction Release form (either
"Specific Document" or "Blanket").

EFF-089 (1/2003)


10.

Where possible, mix uses at school sites. Compatible uses such as
commercial, professional, and cultural activities can help support
educational programs with internships, mentoring, and work-study
opportunities, while education-related businesses can test products

and help staff development.

Coordinate agencies, programs, and funding sources that can contribute to
school projects. Educational dollars should be leveraged with federal,
state, and local dollars as part of strategic planning. Housing, com-
munity development, transportation funds, etc., can help integrate

school projects with local planning and development goals.

Consider the private sector in delivering learning facilities and services.
Leasing, lease-to-buy, turnkey, and condominium arrangements
with the private sector open opportunities for new forms of learning
facilities as they provide potential development and tax revenues

for localities.

Include learning space in buildings of all types. As schools share space
with other users, other building types such as office buildings, hotels,
hospitals, or museums should be designed to include flexible learning
space in order to offer alternative educational and employment

opportunities for students.

Use technology to support COL. ‘Technology can tie together dispersed
learning facilities, serve as a monitoring and management tool, and

reduce facility duplication by linking common resources and staff.

COL Applied: Union City, Paterson, and Trenton

In 1998, the New Jersey State Supreme Court handed down its Abbott v.

Burke ruling, upholding the state’s constitutional guarantee of equal

access to education after a New Jersey resident successfully argued hard-

ship as the result of inferior urban public school education. In response,

New Jersey plans to spend $12 billion on school capital projects over the

64

70


children of different ages and levels of learning. Discussion in small or
larger group settings will coexist with spaces for analyzing, editing, and
presenting information by working with text, images, and media. One of
the primary tasks for architecture is to create an environment for these
cognitive activities: a thinking space, or more accurately, a space where
people are able to discuss, analyze, and think creatively to produce know|-
edge about a problem at hand. Wireless access to information offers a
new freedom of ergonomics and the possibility to design furniture and
architectural elements with appropriate lighting, heating, and cooling

systems to support a renewed humanism in school design.

Something from “Nothing”

The diversity of urban experience produces a need for “commonness”
and community gathering space. In a time where there is not a consensus
about how our public institutions should look, when there is not a
singular demographic profile for the American “public,” the infrastruc-
ture of schools as civic institutions is one of our country’s most
significant common denominators. As a shared public resource, it makes
sense for information infrastructure in school design to function as a
multipurpose learning platform, usable by many members of the com-
munity. The community’s investment is more rapidly amortized if
schools can be designed so that selected areas can function on weekends
and evenings. Schools can serve many constituents by engaging digital
infrastructure to provide adult education, instruction in English as a
second language, research opportunities, and vocational instruction.
These schools require a new spatial freedom in their design. By design-
ing built-in versatility in their typology, schools may cross over to
provide some functions of a social center, public library, town hall,
or theater.

The need to provide information infrastructure is not merely
an opportunity to “upgrade” the status quo. Instead, it offers a significant

opportunity for architectural invention and curricular change. The

56 50


MICD Session Participants
Resource Team

Constance E. Beaumont
National Trust for Historic

Preservation

Julie Eizenberg
KoningEizenberg Architecture

Merrill Elam

Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects

Sharon Haar, Session Chair
School of Architecture,
University of Illinois at Chicago

Clifford B. Janey
Rochester Public Schools

Sheila Kennedy
Kennedy & Violich Architecture

Judith Russi Kirshner

College of Architecture and the Arts,

University of Illinois at Chicago

Katerina Riiedi Ray
School of Architecture,
University of Illinois at Chicago

Leah Ray
School of Architecture,
University of Illinois at Chicago

Mark Robbins
National Endowment for the Arts

Jane M. Saks

College of Architecture and the Arts,

University of Illinois at Chicago

Peter Lindsay Schaudt
Peter Lindsay Schaudt Landscape
Architecture, Inc.

Roy Strickland

‘Taubman College of Architecture
and Urban Planning, University
of Michigan

Participating Mayors

Kirk Humphreys
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Bob Knight
Wichita, Kansas

Dannel P. Malloy
Stamford, Connecticut

Patrick J. McManus
Lynn, Massachusetts

Daniel C. Snarr
Murray City, Utah

Judith Valles
San Bernardino, California

Chicago Panelists

Avram Lothan, Moderator
DeStefano & Partners

William Ayers
College of Education,
University of Illinois at Chicago

Carol Ross Barney
Ross Barney + Jankowski

Roberta Feldman
City Design Center,
University of Illinois at Chicago

Timothy Martin
Chicago Public Schools

Adrian Smith, FAIA
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Jane Tompkins
College of Education,
University of Illinois at Chicago

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While Murray City was preparing to design a school, Mayor
Judith Valles of San Bernardino, California, was imagining what to do
with a prototypical school design that had already been approved for
construction. Mayor Valles presented the panel with what was perhaps
the most challenging question of the day: What can be done with proto-
typical school design? Panelists responded by focusing on the school’s site
and its landscape design.

Like Lynn, San Bernardino is a culturally diverse city hoping to
contribute to the revitalization of its downtown area with the addition of
a new school. San Bernardino wanted to create a destination point within
a predominantly vehicular downtown area. Mayor Valles asked how the
siting of the school could foster pedestrian activity on the street, poten-
tially linking, the new school to a public library and other cultural
institutions in its immediate vicinity.

To encourage pedestrian use, panelists agreed that people need a
place where they feel comfortable walking. Panelists recommended three
design elements: placing the building close to the street in order to create
a clearly defined walking space, including landscape design for these side-
walk areas, and developing a strategic lighting plan. Because a major
highway intersects San Bernardino, enhanced lighting at underpasses
would serve to unify the two sides of the downtown area, encouraging
pedestrian movement across the city. Finally, Mark Robbins of the NEA
suggested taking the opportunity afforded by the new school construction
to build community gardens into the city’s landscape plan to create the-
matic links to the diverse cultural groups of San Bernardino.

Although these landscape and siting strategies would certainly
improve San Bernardino’s new school, some panelists expressed reserva-
tions. Julie Eizenberg said, “The issue of the school design itself worries
me enormously... It’s a generic solution.” It is difficult to reconcile the
goal of emphasizing the city’s multiethnic culture and specific site condi-
tions with a school literally designed for “anywhere,” but it is possible to
enhance San Bernardino’s specific cultural conditions and its unique site
through thoughtful landscape design.

Mayor Valles of San Bernardino présented a school as a starting

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Solutions

The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s report suggests two
general approaches to finding solutions. First, review and reform well-
intentioned policies that are producing unintended results. Maryland,
Pennsylvania, Maine, and California are states that have changed their
rules regarding the renovation of older school buildings or required
school boards and planning agencies to share their plans for new or
expanded school facilities. Second, examine how school boards can suc-
cessfully maintain and bring older schools up to 21st-century educational
standards. Boise, Idaho; Manitowoc, Wisconsin; Spokane, Washington;
and Columbia, South Carolina, have all invested funds to renovate and
expand schools on sites that allow students to walk to school and partici-
pate in after-school jobs and activities.

Clearly, older schools can be, and have been, adapted to meet
today’s safety and educational program needs. And school officials can
reach agreements with city parks, nearby churches and public transit and
other agencies to share playing fields, parking spaces, and transportation

services.

Missions and Values

Although the mission of educators is not historic preservation, they

share an interest with preservationists in strong neighborhoods, the kind
that provide a good support system for students during after-school
hours. They also share an interest in smaller, community-centered
schools, albeit for different reasons. Educators like these kinds of

schools because they give students the personal attention they need.
Preservationists like them because they fit gracefully into, and strengthen,
older neighborhoods. When educators choose to preserve and update
historic schools, they often simultaneously strengthen a neighborhood’s
identity and sense of community. Preserving and upgrading historic

schools or creating new, well-designed schools in close-knit, walkable

‘28 32


demonstrates the viability of infill development strategies based on small
school principles. It is a valuable model for school districts that are both
short on large, affordable parcels of land and interested in how small
schools can work. PS#1 is a nonprofit school serving 165 children. Its site
in Santa Monica, California, is made up of two small, odd-shaped lots
divided by an alley. The new buildings we designed on this site replaced
an even smaller facility that compelled the school to reach out to the
community for social and physical resources. So children, accompanied
by their teachers, walked four blocks to the park for sport and took the
bus to the city library. They loved it. The faculty was committed to con-
tinuing this relationship to the neighborhood, and the design of the new
school buildings focused outward to signal this engagement.

Our family knew Joel Pelcyger, the principal at PS#1, and both
our children were students at the school. Because we were a part of the
school community the design process was a little intimidating. It is clear,
however, that using a consensus-building process that involved the whole
school was instrumental in the success of the final design. A community-
input process is often thought of as risky and potentially confrontational.
If well thought out, however, it is probably the best way for users to take
ownership of a project and to feel a stronger connection to and responsi-
bility for it. Involving a community in the design process does not mean
that the architect relinquishes responsibility for design. Rather, it enables
the community to understand the parameters of the project and the rele-
vant issues of its design when the architect returns for design review.
The architect, in turn, better understands the community’s concerns and
priorities.

Before anything was designed, members of our firm walked the
school site with parents, teachers, neighbors, and children. We heard
comments about the noise from the street, security for the larger school,
drop off and pickup, and maintaining the relaxed atmosphere of the origi-
nal facility. The kids were most interested in how they would move
around in the new buildings. Next, we put together workshops where
groups of parents and teachers organized the building elements on site

plans. This helped them to understand the limitations of the site and to

G2 56


Although Mies’s design called for a continuous flow between
the landscaped open space, elevated rail tracks just east of State Street
divided the east and west sides of the IIT campus into two 60-acre halves,
academic on one side and residential on the other. The fragmented con-
dition of the campus led to a recent international competition for a new
student center that would “bind” the two halves. Rem Koolhaas’s winning
scheme creates an east-west connection for the campus. The building lit-
erally extends below the E] tracks and features a “tube” that envelops the
tracks from above, mitigating the deafening noise of the trains.

State Street is one of the major north-south streets connecting the
Loop to the South Side of Chicago. One of the main projects that initiat-
ed IIT’s recommitment of public space was the need to upgrade this
significant major urban artery. This urban landscape component of the
revitalization is a simple, yet radical, solution: eliminate the on-street
parking on both sides of a median boulevard and enlarge the parkway
width, subsequently allowing for a reinterpretation of the historical land-
scape by Caldwell. The lack of archival information for this space
required the design team to reinterpret and translate his designs for other
parts of the campus. The planting plan by Caldwell for Crown Hall in
1956 offered a solution, slightly undulating tree spacing. The fact that the
trees alongside Crown Hall are nearly 50 years old makes this effect visu-
ally understandable. In the redesign of State Street, the trees are spaced
approximately 16 to 18 feet apart and are offset between 1 and 2 feet in
the lateral direction for a distance of five blocks. This creates a north-
south landscaped boulevard and, as the trees mature, an east-west fusion
is created through the foliage arching over the street.

This design avoids the ubiquitous gateway solution to a school, as
the campus is open at all sides. The landscape is the urban introduction
to the educational community, a visual experience of being immersed into
a tree canopy corridor. Transparency at eye level is enhanced with only
large shade trees pruned and no midsize flower trees obscuring views
through the landscape.*

The cross section describes the project in two simple drawings.

The new design keeps the sidewalk at 8 feet and expands the parkway

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98 92


preschool and college preparatory programs, which put even greater pres-
sure on existing school facilities.

In the early 20th century, architects such as Dwight H. Perkins
began the movement to design public schools as urban neighborhood
centers tied to the dense urban fabric.* The idea of the school as a tool
of social reform is not new. The workings of such schools—the mass
production of a minimally educated population and the building of petit-
monuments to the acquisition of specifically American knowledge—are a
legacy of early 20th-century urban ideals. At the same time, however,
educational leaders such as John Dewey began to focus on the child as a
learning being, rather than an empty vessel for the reception of American
values or the trained tool of industrial productivity.’ The continuing
reconfiguration of the landscape, from dense cities into large urban
regions, compels us to rebuild and more fully utilize these vital institu-
tions of democratic life.

The accessibility of large quantities of undeveloped land allowed
suburban schools to take on more “campuslike” forms. Streetcar and rail-
road suburbs could not have been conceived without the development of
schools to absorb the youth of this family-centered culture. After World
War II, schools were an important component in the planning of the
Levittown communities. Developer William Levitt stated the case suc-
cinctly: “A school has to be ready when the house is ready. It’s as
important as a water main.”° The sociologist Herbert Gans discovered
that the politics of education created the greatest conflict among the
Levittowners.’ Indeed, in postwar America, schools, and particularly the
distance to them, were a critical component of the neighborhood unit.®
To the extent that urban diversity existed, schools were this diversity’s
common denominator. To the extent that segregation would be extended,
despite legislation to the contrary, unequal education would be built into
the lower quality of schools in dense, African American districts. The
urban school’s greatest fault, it was thought, was its location in an urban
environment.

Today, the need to provide school buildings no longer revolves

purely around school-age population growth and decline; to be viable

7 13 BEST COPY AVAILABLE


from 11 to 22 feet wide, thus eliminating the on-street parking. Both
north and southbound lanes are maintained at 22-foot widths, and the

median width remains 23 feet.

Conclusion

This project is novel and important within the context of Chicago
because it recognizes two historical periods and landscape idioms:
Olmsted, Jensen, and Burnham’s late-19th-century boulevard system on
the one hand, and Caldwell and Mies’s mid-20th-century landscape of
openness and extension on the other. Furthermore, the historical signifi-
cance of Miesian architecture and design principles within Chicago
compelled the designers to understand and find a way to preserve and
reintegrate modern landscape design into a larger urban framework.
Although this project is for a college campus, it establishes principles in
which landscape and open space may be used to integrate educational
spaces into the larger functional and symbolic structure of a neighbor-
hood or a city. Further, it suggests ways in which private educational
institutions can use their resources and history to enhance significant

pieces of public space.

75


design and planning of their new schools. In these “how to” guides

the building is often treated as an object in relationship to the pool of
students; exemplary projects rarely show the school building in its con-
text. Design occurs from the statistics out; architecture is treated as an
aesthetic, and “flexibility” in relationship to varying curricular
circumstances or community needs is treated as an abstraction. Schools
of today, however, need to be more than flexible; they need to be truly
interdisciplinary, not only in the curricula that they provide, but also in
the ways in which they incorporate the larger needs of the community,
expanding the definition of who is a student.

Many people ascribe the use of “prototypes” to school architecture
developed in the heyday of high modernism. In fact, to the extent that the
modern school is a derivative of the development of mass education,
American school architecture has always been based on some concept of
prototypical design. The prototype is a leftover of modernism; the belief
that with enough study and refinement of a program one can find an
enduring exemplar for future needs. Despite continual changes in curric-
ular and student needs, prototypical components—if not identical school
buildings—will remain with us. Many advances can be made through
prototyping, but architects must challenge themselves to engage these
sophisticated “kits of parts” into the community, create individual identi-
ties for each school, and respond to the specific needs of a given
neighborhood and its students.

By contrast, we need to remember that, in some respects, educa-
tors who believe that education can take place anywhere are correct.
Despite its many repetitive elements, the school container is malleable.
The finest classroom on a pleasant spring day may be under a large
tree canopy. But in the middle of winter in the Midwest, broken
windows and an aged heating system will make learning difficult. We
know that classrooms can be located in skyscrapers, abandoned malls
and warehouses, and former townhouses. But this is not because the
building doesn’t matter. In each of these instances the context is an
equal player in the educational event. Similarly, students, teachers, and

parents alike must take active roles in incorporating the environment

a

81

87


Schools for Cities: Urban Strategies

Sharon Haar
School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Chicago

There shall be reserved the lot No. 16 of every township, for the
maintenance of public schools within the said township.
—The Continental Congress,
Land Ordinance of 1785

The citizen of the United States does not acquire his practical sci-
ence and his positive notions from books; the instruction he has
acquired may have prepared him for receiving those ideas, but it
did not furnish them. The American learns to know the laws by
participating in the act of legislation; and he takes a lesson in the
forms of government from governing. The great work of society
is ever going on before his eyes and, as it were, under his hands.
—Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America, 1835

Throughout United States history, educators and community leaders have
linked democracy and a healthy civic life with the architecture of the
nation’s school buildings. As schools represent significant outlays of capi-
tal and are major components of the nation’s physical, economic, social,
and cultural infrastructure, there exists an ongoing conversation and
debate about the place of education in the development of cities and
urban life. In one sense, this effort is a measure of both national failure
and success. Failure in that the country continues to struggle to provide
adequate environments for learning. Success in that each generation chal-
lenges itself to create spaces and buildings appropriate to the educational

needs of its time.

3 ,


Crow Istand Elementary
School, Winnetka, Iilinois,
Perkins, Wheeler and Will
with Eliel & Eero Saarinen,
1940

Friedrich L. Jahn School,
Chicago, Illinois,

Dwight H. Perkins, Chicago
Public Schools, 1908

Prototypes and Paratypes:
Future Studies

Sharon Haar
School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Chicago

Flying into almost any airport in North America, one has an opportunity
to overview the physical characteristics of educational institutions: from
the landlocked urban school with its small play lot, often built in relation-
ship to a small community park, to the sprawling suburban school with its
vast quantity of playing fields and parking lots. These buildings come in a
variety of forms—known to architects as “typologies”—ranging from the
multistory urban school in a tight “E” or “H” configuration to the single-
story suburban school with dispersed classrooms and a multitude of
community facilities. Beyond the specific features of an individual school,
however, is its relationship to the surrounding community—its urban
morphology. Does the school stand apart through a distant, imposing
monumentality, or does it blend into its neighborhood, integrating land-
scapes and spaces for community life? These buildings are recognizable
because so many of them, at first glance, seem alike. Modules of
classrooms, consistent use of similar durable materials, relationships of
classrooms repeating down long hallways, playground equipment, ball
fields...not to mention the repetitive urban grid or the endless networks
of suburban streets...the careful eye identifies patterns associated with the
student’s own educational experiences. The reverse is true as well. The

word “school” conjures specific images and memories for each of us.

79

oe 89


Master plan

Abandoned mall

90


social relationships. Play is a form of learning. The traditional design of
schools undervalues the legitimacy of play and isolates inside classroom
space and work from outdoor space and play. From a kid’s point of view,
what message are we sending? That knowledge is serious and only found
in one setting, and that play, like the outdoor space typically provided for
it, is of little meaning. Ideally, school environments should value both
work and play, inside and outside, suggesting a more holistic framework
for learning and life.

The school was finished three years ago and is thriving. Like
most schools, it was built on a tight budget, but from what I hear as a
parent at the school other parents and teachers find it an inspiring, sup-
portive environment; it met their expectations and more as a result of the
collaborative design process. The students of PS#1have demonstrated
that they understand the principles behind the creation of their school.
About a year after construction was finished, at “moving up day,” my
younger son insisted that we not show up late for the events. The school
presented us with a package of 165 drawings and notes. Each child had
drawn and written something about the school that was interesting to
them. The students drew the roof trusses; they meticulously detailed the
assembly of the bridge. Some children favored the new equipment, like
the 10-year-old who drew the new computers. Other children drew the
stairs and the concrete wall that supports them, noting the pattern of the
concrete lug holes left by the formwork and the adjacent railing with its
alternating slat design. The students noticed patterns, structures, color,
and spaces. They wrote about the view of trees and what they liked to do
in different spaces. These drawings and notes confirmed that children
understand their environment. If they notice their buildings and the
nature in their play spaces, it is not a leap to suggest that they can under-
stand their city. Designing from principles that bring together student
experience with environmental engagement does make a difference, and if
it doesn’t cost more, surely it is well worth the risk. Maybe it isn’t even a

risk, but an obligation.

64 58


institutions, and city officials from questioning standards and pursuing
changes that would improve the built environment. Architects can do

more to engage their clients and the public in discussions around pro-
gressive design.

Schools need to be infused with simple, life-affirming experiential
qualities. Schools are where children are introduced to the world. There
should not be contradictions between quality of life principles and the
messages that school environments project. While teachers are attempt-
ing to inspire students with knowledge and the wonder of the world and
encouraging them to work together to solve problems, school environ-
ments are undermining these lessons. Schools are typically anaesthetizing
and anonymous, with “runway” style hallways that discourage social inter-
action. There is limited texture, natural light, variety of spaces, and sense
that the student is valued or in turn should value the environment. There
is another, more important issue. School environments are controlling;
they suggest a distrust of students, and unfortunately, reasonable bureau-
cratic precautions against vandalism and excessive maintenance further
exacerbate the situation. Maybe people think that children don’t notice
these cues. The design of a quality learning environment should start from
basic principles learned from daily living. Personal experience influences
the way our firm makes architecture for ourselves and for others. We
know that natural elements—like light—animate architecture.
Architecture can create strong connections from inside to outside to max-
imize the potential of nature. Architecture has the power to enrich
interpretation. Everyday things appeal to me, and the relationship
between things interests me even more. If, when we think about architec-
ture and space, we focus not only on the object and its ornament (or
style) but also on the relationship between objects, unexpected things can
be revealed. We can make richer places with the simplest of means. ‘This
is no less important when we design for children. Children’s experiences
of how the school feels to them, what they do in it, and what they see
should be the first principles of school design.

The design of Pluralistic School #1 (PS#1) provides a good case

study for challenging conventionalized school design and also

54

60


of school buildings. Yet, as the conversation between the resource team
and mayors unfolded, it became clear that the symposium’s goal would
not be to answer these questions, but rather to reformulate them.
Ultimately, the Mayors’ Institute introduced mayors to the potential
effects of architecture, challenged them to ask new questions with regard
to architectural design, and enabled them to reenvision the endless possi-
bilities of school design. As architect Julie Eizenberg eloquently put it: “It
is all a question of vision.”

The schools that the mayors presented at the symposium fell into
two categories: schools that would be newly constructed (Lynn,
Massachusetts; Murray City, Utah; San Bernardino, California), and those
that would be restored, renovated, or expanded (Wichita, Kansas;
Oklahoma Gity, Oklahoma; Stamford, Connecticut). Each city needed to
address a unique set of circumstances and distinct goals. Lynn sought to
reinvigorate a stalled downtown neighborhood and to aid this effort
through the construction of new schools. Murray City asked for direction
in planning a new high school on a busy commercial corridor. Faced with
time and budgetary constraints, San Bernardino was grappling with the
desire to employ a prototypical school plan while developing some design
distinctions to respond to the specific needs of its site. Wichita, a city in
which a productive community/government dialogue on school needs has
been established, faced the decision of which aging schools to restore,
renovate, or replace. Oklahoma City urgently needed to modernize aging
facilities, yet hoped to achieve budgetary efficiency through the construc-
tion of larger schools. Finally, Stamford sought to imbue a blighted,
oft-overlooked inner city neighborhood with a school in which residents
could take pride.

As a city in the throes of economic, cultural, and population
changes, Lynn has been struggling to define itself. Mayor Patrick J.
McManus hoped to create a school that would contribute to the revital-
ization of the downtown community. This school would serve children
living in the several hundred single-family homes that the city recently
constructed. Because neighborhood children would walk to school, siting

the school in this particular location could help to create a walkable, func-

22 6


to create public space for teaching and learning. The Interim Bridges
Project takes advantage of an archeological excavation at a central artery
site in Boston slated to become a new underground roadway. The design
of a covered structure, funded by a grant from the NEA, served as a pub-
lic teaching platform for the history of the city. At Techwood Housing in
Atlanta, an abandoned apartment was transformed into a classroom for
the Fowler Elementary School. Children saw historic film clips and read
articles from 50 years ago to better understand their heritage as inhabi-
tants of the nation’s first public housing project. In a design for the
Jackson School in Boston, Massachusetts, a series of small, unusable traf-
fic islands were collected and transformed into’a significant new public
outdoor plaza for the school. Similar principles can be applied to institu-
tions for higher education, such as our projects for a new building for the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the New Graduate Center for
the Rhode Island Schoo! of Design.

A school’s program and its building form are shaped by the organi-
zation of information infrastructure. The miniaturization and
interconnectivity of contemporary technology create a different set of
conditions for school design. The physical world has not been “replaced”
by the digital world, as was once initially predicted. Instead, we are dis-
covering that the digital world is increasingly absorbed into and merged
with the physical world. Cellphones, pagers, and digital toys and games
are a few examples of the many very sophisticated kinds of interfaces that
already exist in the daily world of children and their families. The materi-
als of the physical world and these everyday realities of information-based
infrastructure are increasingly interwoven.

The traditional relationship between physical scale and presence in
architecture changes when information infrastructure is overlaid onto
building infrastructure. Access to power, location of data ports, types of
networks and display systems, seating, lighting, and scales of school space
directly affect learning and teaching practices. The expression “wiring”
the classroom is misleading. Information infrastructure is more than just
“wires”; it is programmatic and spatial. As an integral part of school
design, the implementation of digital infrastructure can act as a catalyst to

ok

45 Mra


design is often treated as if building types were “given” forms. Architects,
school boards, and building committees must ask how schools can take
best advantage of information infrastructure within the larger context of
other emerging building technologies. Electrical power requirements can
be supplemented by solar- and wind-generated energy sources. Energy-
efficient lighting, heating, cooling, and ventilation systems are currently
available and can be designed with significant short- and long-term cost
savings. In-cycling programs can be implemented within existing schools,
and school construction materials need to be reconsidered at the state and
federal levels.

The first generation of contemporary materials, such as hard
plastics and laminate veneers, once specified for hygienic reasons, do
not wear well in practice. An expanding palette of sustainable materials,
often the byproducts of other material manufacturing processes, can be
harvested and introduced in school design. These recycled materials
meet necessary criteria for maintenance and durability. A rich learning
environment can be created from these affordable materials. As digital
information becomes ubiquitous, materials can provide an enhanced
tactile stimulus in the classroom. School design can respect the sophisti-
cation of children and their familiarity with the digital world. The GUI
or graphic user interface—looking at a screen—is a limited mode of
interaction, only a bit less passive than watching television. The next
generation of information infrastructure will be characterized by more
portable computation devices children will use in conjunction with
systems of display and interaction embedded into the material surfaces
of the classroom.

Information is not the same as knowledge. Information infrastruc-
ture places new importance on the design of the school’s physical
environment as a means of producing knowledge from information. The
architecture of schools (as well as homes and workplaces) must support
children as they learn how to make critical assessments, test assumptions,
correlate and synthesize information, and check sources. Architects must
learn how to invent flexibly scaled teaching and learning spaces to

respond to needs for collaborative, team, and individual study areas for

49

ys)




building in both the figurative the and literal sense.

This book does not endeavor to offer a model curriculum, model
building, or a specific prescription for urban or educational form or
reform. In an important sense, all education remains local. Instead, Schools
for Cities: Urban Strategies offers essays and case studies that illustrate
diverse ways in which educational and urban development can be
conjoined. This is of critical importance in the context of a heated and
increasingly divisive national debate on education reform, increased capi-
tal spending on school construction and renovation, and active discourse
on the quality of life and design in our cities and communities. New pri-
vate and public partnerships, community coalitions, and curricular
innovation involving community participation provide organizational
models for the physical reintegration of schools into urban revitalization.
The essays that follow, first “The Mayors’ Questions” and then the essays
offered by members of the resource team, begin to demonstrate the ways
in which school design can become part of an overall urban strategy.
Finally, in the spirit of the proposition that “one size does not fit all,” the
book concludes with a series of case studies illustrating recent school

projects that take up the challenge of city design.

Lt?

11


Pluralistic School #1
(PS#1}, Santa Monica,
California

Here no space is a
“throwaway.

Drawings of PS#1 by
‘Sam (left) and Grayson
(right)

An Architect’s Primer for
Community Interaction

Julie Eizenberg
KoningEizenberg Architecture

Living in the city involves a collection of familiar, often repeated activities
that cumulatively create a positive quality of life for urban residents. In
turn, the design of schools, stores, workplaces, housing (affordable and
market rate), community centers, libraries etc.—where these everyday
activities take place—should be highly valued. Everyday buildings do not
need to be generic to be fiscally responsible. For publicly funded build-
ings, in particular, it is easy to lose sight of basic experiential concepts
while pursuing function, economy, and construction practicality. Clients
do not realize they can have and expect more than the bottom line. That
is because they do not realize that there are ways to collaborate with
architects to achieve high-quality environments with modest budgets.
Expectations need to change. Experiential qualities—opportunities for
social interaction, the use of texture, light, and color, and the choreogra-
phy of indoor and outdoor spaces—can bring everyday buildings to life
without compromising the bottom line. The public expects these qualities
in important, occasionally visited cultural buildings like museums, but
they should also expect them in buildings used in their daily routine.

In our architecture firm we look for opportunities to work on
a breadth of projects. We have begun to suspect that thinly disguised
habit and the apparent safety of past experience may inhibit developers,

ss «53


| am glad to be here—glad to be part of this dialogue—
because | truly know schools can more effectively
become not just occasions to help community
development out also opportunities to revitalize
neighborhoods and communities within our cities and
towns. One of the things we have to be mindful about in
education is our predisposition to assume that a
solution in one circumstance can flow to another
situation. There are no silver bullets. An example is the
current discussion around school units and small
schools. If you do not hold quality constant, it does not
matter how much you reduce class size or how small
the school unit may be. There are some constants that
we have to observe before we actually engage in what
will, | think, matter.
—Clifford B. Janey

Superintendent

Rochester Public Schools

MICD Participant

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students contributors to the town’s cultural life. A third, opened in an old
office building in cooperation with a local school of education, focuses

on careers in teaching and will, in turn, help the school system replenish
itself with teachers from the community. Combined with a nearby com-
munity college, nearly 6,000 people involved in teaching and learning
will eventually inhabit the downtown area, providing a positive environ-
ment for compatible private development such as retail and entertainment
facilities.

In Trenton, New Jersey’s capital, the state’s planning office has
awarded a smart-growth grant to the municipal government and school
system to explore opportunities for linking the design of new schools
with community development and housing. Four school sites are current-
ly under study, each in widely differing urban conditions: a low-income
residential community; a historic industrial complex; a downtown lot
adjacent to a community college and the main branch of the public
library; and an abandoned block. As these schools are shaped to address
the needs and opportunities of their neighborhoods, they will be
programmed and planned as an arc of facilities related to each other
and to Trenton’s centers of government, communications, tourism,

and culture.

Conclusion

As COL work proceeds, its New Jersey projects are beginning to display
results. In Union City, the school system is currently renovating an aban-
doned building as part of its planned cluster of school facilities and has
added another component, a high school careers program in the first two
floors of a new affordable housing project. In Paterson, the school system
has already opened several academies according to COL principles. In the
downtown area, merchants anticipate a 10 percent increase in sales vol-
ume with the influx of school students and teachers, which has increased
property values and rents.* Now, the school system, City Hall, and local

businesses are exploring opportunities for coordinated planning, includ-

wed

74

68


The City of Learning:
Schools as Agents for Urban
Revitalization

Roy Strickland
Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning,
University of Michigan

Introduction

Over the next decade, the United States will spend between $200 billion
and $400 billion on new and renovated schools. For many communities,
shares in this investment represent the largest capital expenditure in
recent history—an extraordinary opportunity to enhance not just the
delivery of education but the quality of community life. With it,
architects, planners, educators, and developers may combine efforts to
revitalize towns and cities as they expand educational opportunity, one of
21st-century America’s greatest challenges. The approach described in
this essay recommends collaboration among these groups as they define
school construction strategies in their local communities.

City of LearningTM (COL) is a strategy for combining school and
urban design and development. COL embraces educators’ arguments that
healthy neighborhoods support successful learning and make school
design and programming holistic by looking beyond the school building
to the school setting at the neighborhood, town, and city scales. By coor-

dinating school projects with housing, economic development, and

61 62


“What type of landscape elements would improve the aesthetics of the
campus? How could the new high school act as a community center?
How could the influence of technology, such as fiber optics, affect the
overall design?” Participants replied with another question: What larger
role could the school play within the city?

The school’s setting on a major retail and transportation corridor
offers unique possibilities. For instance, the unusually large property
upon which the school will be built could allow the new design to become
a multibuilding complex. This village within the city could provide the
school with outdoor spaces. The appropriate configuration, location, and
landscape for these new buildings could link the school to the larger
urban context. The existing school is located at the rear of the site with
green space immediately adjacent to the street. Inverting this relationship
would allow the new school to have a more visible public presence.
Privacy for classrooms could be maintained by locating portions of the
school, such as hallways and stairs, near the street to create an acoustic
separation for classrooms beyond. This idea led to the notion of the
building’s facade being transparent in a literal sense, so that people driv-
ing by would be able to see motion and activity within the school.
Landscape architect Peter Schaudt explained this effect by saying, “When
you drive by, it’s not dead. You see that it’s an alive kind of organism that’s
happening.” A glass fagade would allow the school to advertise its public
and community aspects to passersby by demonstrating through its form
what it does for the community.

Further, transparency could become a programmatic element, in
the sense that it could indicate strategic placement of the spaces shared by
the community and the school, such as performance spaces, athletic facili-
ties, and extended education facilities. The notion of transparency could
be transformed on the more private side of the school, away from the
street, incorporating green spaces into the building’s design. This central
theme of transparency also taps into the culture of car dealerships and
strip shopping centers that populate Murray City. Panelists concurred
that the school should acknowledge its location and the interactive nature
of the community.

24 18

Ale


p. 36:
Architect Julie Eizenberg
presents the winning
design for the North
Side site.

Judging the competition
entries.

Above:
Larry Gorski speaking at
the Chicago Public
Schools Design
Competition press confer-
ence, August 2000. As the
director of the Mayor's
Office for People with
Disabilities, the late Larry
Gorski helped form
Chicago's mission to
become the most accessi-
ble city in the nation

Lessons from the Chicago Public
Schools Design Competition

Cindy S. Moelis with Beth Valukas
Business and Professional People for the Public Interest

Most city schools are too big, and anonymity among students is
a pervasive problem....Overcoming anonymity—creating a set-
ting in which every student is known personally by an adult—is
one of the most compelling obligations urban schools confront.
—Carnegie Foundation for the

Advancement of Teaching, 1988

Those concerned with public education know that it is not just how we
teach but also the buildings that we teach in that nourish the great poten-
tial of students. Can we combine the best design ideas that architects have
to offer, while answering the creative dreams of students and teachers?
One challenge for government, education, and community leaders is to
define the form, scale, and aesthetics of the 21st-century public school.
‘To meet this challenge, it is imperative to bring educators, architects, and
community members to the table to discuss the solution. Collaboration
“creates real dialogue between architects and educators about how a
building can help achieve a pedagogical goal.”' The Chicago Public
Schools Design Competition is a model for such collaboration. By culti-
vating a high level of engaged, active community input in the design of
schools, the final architectural solutions demonstrated that urban school

architecture can be at once intimate, innovative, practical, and affordable,

35 4}


View of play yard

TWELFTH STREET

EUCLID STREET

BROADWAY

Ground floor plan
showing the use of
the two lots

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55

GROUND FLOOR PLAN


point for conversation; in contrast, Bob Knight, the mayor of Wichita,
presented a process his city had completed based on a dialogue between
the citizens and their government. Mayor Knight said, “We engage citi-
zens to find out what they want.” One such desire was to establish
continuing education classes such as home repair, basic nutrition, Internet
training, and parenting skills. The citizens requested access to recreation-
al facilities and programs, as well as school libraries. Mayor Knight
explained, “We are maximizing one of our community’s greatest assets by
opening up the schools to the neighborhood residents before and after
the school day ends.”

In addition to this conversation with the community, mayor
Knight commissioned a facility study on Wichita’s schools and
determined that the city’s aging facilities needed to be updated with
regard to energy efficiency, climate control, and programming for tech-
nology and community activities. In the end, the Mayor expressed his
hope that improvements to urban schools would help make the city’s _
neighborhoods more attractive to residents who might otherwise be
tempted to move to the suburbs. With this in mind, the government of
the city has determined that renovation and upgrades that allow for
flexible programming will be the key to integrating schools into the
community fabric.

Panelists encouraged Mayor Knight to take a proactive design
approach by suggesting specific architectural possibilities. Architect Sheila
Kennedy explained, “When people can’t imagine something different,
they go back to what they do know because they’re afraid that (rather
than getting something improved, what they know] would be taken away
from them. Civic leaders should work collaboratively with both
constituents and architects in order to envision schools.” She closed by
saying that “one of the best things that design can do is to make us realize
that within any given program...there is a wide range of choices that we
sometimes don’t see. So, that’s the kind of x-ray vision that design can
offer us.”

Like Wichita’s, Oklahoma City’s schools are aging and in desper-

ate need of repair. Over half of them are 50 years old and all but two are

‘

a . 27



Site diagram of the arts district

88


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physical/visual/urban and digital/invisible/internal.

Finally, we must remember that schools do not lose their signifi-
cance as institutions because the significance of institutions is
disappearing in our postindustrial, networked environment. In fact, if
museums or libraries can be used as examples, the cultural and social role
of institutions has only expanded in this more diverse and diffuse environ-
ment. These case studies demonstrate that it is the role of architecture
and educators to steer clear of the impulse to design the ideal container
for the ideal curriculum. The history of the design of educational com-
munities illustrates that schools offer an opportunity to think idealistically
while accomplishing pragmatic goals. This suggests that we should not
reduce the design of schools to the economic and engineering protocols
of our underground infrastructures but rather create an architecture to
celebrate the possibility of the new knowledge and interaction at the root

of contemporary, progressive educational initiatives.

89

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View from |-280 showing the windmills on the interstate facade



Major Study Findings

Acreage Standards

Acreage standards top the list of policy barriers to preserving and reno-

vating historic schools—and to building well-designed new schools—in

older neighborhoods. Many jurisdictions follow national model guidelines

that recommend one acre of land for every 100 students, plus an

additional 10 acres for an elementary school, 20 acres for a middle school,

and 30 acres for a high school.
The problem with these standards is that they often leave school

districts with one of two bad choices:

¢ Destroy perfectly good homes near the school to meet the acreage
standards. In Mansfield, Ohio, the school district recently demol-
ished almost 60 homes to clear a 50-acre site for a new high
school. People wanted a school in the neighborhood, but in order
to provide one, the neighborhood was destroyed.
¢ Find a large open space—often a working farm—and build a

“sprawl school” in the middle of nowhere. In Two Rivers,
Wisconsin, the school district recently purchased almost 80 acres
of farmland for a new school. Most of this land is for parking and
a massive sports complex; the school itself will occupy only a small
portion of the site. Meanwhile, Two Rivers is closing an in-town

school that had served an older neighborhood for decades.

These siting decisions can create transportation problems. When schools
are located on isolated sites and too far away for students to walk to, they
are almost always engulfed by acres of parking. Even when older schools
must be torn down, current standards make it hard to replace them with
new schools on the same site in built-up, close-knit neighborhoods with
no room to expand. Although many large cities have managed to obtain
waivers from the acreage requirements, mid-size and smaller cities gener-
ally have not, even though the preservation of neighborhood anchors

such as schools is as important to smaller communities as to big ones.

: a 88


locate their services on the school site, a more comprehensive approach
can be taken to meet the economic, physical, educational, and social
needs of individuals and of the community. Additionally, the school, as a
locus of positive activity, can serve as a catalyst for strengthening and
revitalizing the entire community.”* Citizens in a wide range of roles are
demonstrating a commitment to a diverse array of new educational insti-
tutions in urban and suburban settings. Several of the participating
mayors, as well as Clifford B. Janey, the superintendent of the Rochester
Public Schools, who served as a member of the resource team, discussed
examples of the way in which their own school districts are incorporating
the facilities described by Moore.

Despite strong community commitments to education, we often
approach urban issues with a “crisis mindset” that does not afford the
opportunity for critical reflection, or what might be considered careful
planning, about the role that design can play in rethinking the
consequences of both successful and failing urban environments. When
problems become codified as “crises,” we should not be surprised if
design is redefined as crisis management. Writing against a proposal to
bring in the Army Corps of Engineers to design and construct new
schools for Los Angeles, the architectural theorist Anthony Vidler hit on

the centrality of architecture to education:

Architecture is not simply concerned with the technical details of
planning and construction but, most important, with the relations
between the envisioned curriculum and the space in which it is
put into practice. The architect plays a crucial role in the consid-
eration of the complex relations between a large institution and its
neighborhood, of the careful responses in scale and spatial layout
to the needs of teachers and children, of the very materials out of
which a good learning environment is built....the architect can
serve as catalyst and collaborator, conscience and coordinator.’

These crises occur when the design of the city is reduced to an infrastruc-
ture problem rather than an institutional opportunity. In the best of
circumstances, institutional and infrastructural concerns intersect. The
mayors who chose to participate in the MICD session on schools recog-

nized that their task went beyond the repair of warehouses for education.

5 ‘ii


by seeing beyond things as they are. A cardboard box can be anything;
what is needed is the vision to create something from what may appear to

be “nothing.”

A Fresh Approach to School Design

School design in the United States has become highly conventional, due
in part to well-intentioned building codes and standardized specification
guidelines for materials and building systems. These legal and perform-
ance standards were created for the public good, however in practice they
tend to produce an unchallenged and unnecessary adherence to school
building typologies—an institutionalized organization of architecture.
This promotes the reason of habit—“it’s always been done this way”—
regardless of whether these conventions are actually better for the experi-
ence of students, teachers or parents. As a building typology, the
American school is an institution ripe for change.
The creative stance of “something from nothing” is supported by
three interlocking arguments:
© — The ethical argument calls for making the best creative use of
resources in an era of reduced funding for public schools.
© — The entrepreneurial argument calls for maximizing the pragmatic
value of design by creating value in new construction and renova-
tion.
© The curricular argument calls for design as a vehicle for educational
reform and community-oriented change for those who are willing

to challenge conventions.

Information Infrastructure: More than “Wires”

The physical form of a city is shaped by its urban infrastructure. Our
office has developed a design strategy that engages the physical design

opportunities provided by freeways, housing projects, parks, and roadways

5a 4h


The essays that form the core of this volume derive from a confer-
ence held in the spring of 2000. Schools as Catalysts for Community
Development was a national session of the Mayors’ Institute on City
Design (MICD) cosponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts,
the American Architectural Foundation, The U.S. Conference of Mayors,
and the University of Illinois at Chicago. With an aim to integrate politi-
cal leadership, social development, and purposeful school design, the
conference brought to one event regional and national partners
concerned with the design of educational facilities and the critical roles
these institutions play in the formation of our nation’s diversifying com-
munities and expanding cities. Mayors have greatest control over
planning and public policy in their cities, and the potential to shape edu-
cational mission can only be made more effective with the inclusion of
careful and intentional school design. The events of the MICD afforded
an opportunity to bring together mayors, school superintendents, and
design professionals to discuss how schools function as both civic institu-
tions and urban infrastructure within the realm of urban planning and
development policy.

A 1999 Chicago Tribune article noted that in that year alone $16.3
billion would be spent to complete new, expanded, or rehabilitated
schools across the United States. The new funds available make this a
crucial moment, yet politicians face great challenges: whether to put
funds into educational reform, technology, or buildings; whether to reno-
vate older buildings or commit to new buildings; whether to plan for
growth or decline in population; and how to resolve the legacies of
racism, exacerbated by the physical state of the urban environment.
Debbie Moore, a spokeswoman for the Council of Educational Facility
Planners, was quoted as saying: “More and more we are seeing health
clinics, YMCAs, daycare centers, and public libraries opening up inside
our schools. Schools, once again, are becoming the center of our commu-
nities.”! A focus of the MICD’s discussion, and a key element in several
essays in this volume, is the question of how schools can be specifically
designed to serve as centers of their communities. As Jeanne Silver Frankl

of the Public Education Association has noted: “If community agencies


architects involved in the competition. The interactive participation of
school and neighborhood communities was critical in the development

of designs that were sensitive to the individual character of each neighbor-
hood setting.

From the beginning, the sponsors solicited community input
through school visits, task forces, community forums, and informal meet-
ings, many of which directly involved the competition finalists. Hundreds
of community members and architects turned out for these events.
Undoubtedly, this approach was instrumental in the creation of strong
and innovative designs that actively responded to the unique needs of the
local communities. These events also served as catalysts for a greater
awareness of sustainable and universal design principles within the larger
Chicago architectural community.

The first forum introduced the school communities to the compe-
tition’s main tenets.'? The goal of a universal design school is to maximize
functionality for all users while maintaining high architectural standards.
This community forum also provided an opportunity to introduce small
school philosophies and benefits to program participants. The architects
were asked to produce designs that could easily facilitate the schools’
organization into several small schools-within-schools. Given economies
of scale and public building budgets, large urban schools broken into
smaller units with shared central facilities are often the most realistic way
to achieve intimate learning environments. Later forums enabled more
direct interaction between the architects and the schools’ constituents. At
one forum, advisory panels from the four schools, local historians, and
experts in the fields of green design, universal design, and small schools
publicly discussed the merits of each design.

The architects who participated in this process felt that communi-
ty feedback both changed their design ideas for the competition and
impacted how they would conceive future work. Laurie Hawkinson of
Smith-Miller + Hawkinson commented: “There are things we learned at
the community forums—particularly about universal design—that
changed us as architects, that changed the way we think about accessibili-

ty and that we will bring to our future projects.” Architects learned .

44


tional community. The “Go Block” and “Central Square Rehabilitation
Projects,” two recently constructed developments, were intended to
enhance the vibrancy of the downtown core, yet the area continues to
struggle. Could this school be the project to accomplish the city’s goal of
reinvigorating central Lynn? If so, exactly where should this school be
sited in order to achieve maximum effect?

In addition to needing a new school, the city also needs to attract
new businesses. Ideally, facilities for these distinct institutions could serve
both educational and commercial constituencies. One such possibility
would be to integrate after-hours activities such as adult education or
language classes into the programming of the new school. If the school
could become a center of activity not from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., but rather
from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., the city would see an impact on the vibrancy of
the community.

The participants also suggested that the school be designed as a
magnet school to provide a reason for parents to want their children to
attend a school downtown. The school’s curriculum could draw on digital
commerce and the performing arts to create a center for performance as
well as high-tech education. This would accomplish several goals: give
people a reason to come downtown, offer them retail activities, and pro-
vide students with an advanced technological education. In the end, the
question for Lynn was not simply where to put their school, but rather
what kind of school to create.

Programming was also a central topic in the case study presented
by Daniel C. Snarr, mayor of Murray City, yet Murray City’s physical
setting and economic base proved to be extremely different from those of
Lynn. Murray City lies within the Salt Lake County area in Utah and is
singular for its dramatic population variance. A mere 36,000 people reside
in Murray City, but during the day, an active retail market and large
employment base cause the city to swell to 140,000. Murray has one
public high school that will be rebuilt on its current site on State Street, a
major thoroughfare heavily populated with car dealerships. Murray also
hoped to attract new high-tech businesses to the area around the school.

Mayor Snarr opened the discussion on Murray City by asking,

7 23


Acknowledgments

Schools for Cities: Urban Strategies began as a national session of the
Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD)—Schools as Catalysts for
Community Development—held at the University of Illinois at Chicago
(UIC) in March 2000. A program originated and funded by the National
Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the MICD is now carried out in
partnership with The U.S. Conference of Mayors and administered by
the American Architectural Foundation. Continuing support of this
critical interface between city governments and design professionals
creates a unique and vital public forum. I would like to thank Mark
Robbins, Director of Design at the NEA, for recognizing Chicago as a
location from which to launch a discussion of urban schools, design,
and development, as well as Christine Saum and her staff at the MICD.
I would also like to thank and congratulate the mayors, as well as their
staffs, and school superintendents for their willingness to engage their
cities in a dialogue about design and members of the resource team for
their expertise and good will.

The conference would not have taken place without the
financial and additional support of foundations, agencies, and individuals
around Chicago: The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Fannie Mae
Foundation, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine
Arts, The City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, and The
Chicago Public Library. The conference was generously supported
through the Office of the Provost, the College of Architecture and the
Arts, and the School of Architecture at UIC. Dean of the College
Judith Russi Kirshner and then Director of the School of Architecture
Katerina Riiedi Ray were active participants in the organization and
activities of the conference. Other important participants included
Leah Ray, the Program Director, Stephen R. Bruns, a graduate research
assistant, and many students, who always have the generosity and
curiosity to pitch in. Special thanks are due to Jane M. Saks, Director
of Advancement in the College of Architecture and the Arts, for her

role in helping to conceptualize the initiative and bringing together

ark 12

18


Preface

Mark Robbins
Director of Design, National Endowment for the Arts

The Mayors’ Institute on City Design was established by the National
Endowment for the Arts in 1986 to help mayors improve the design and
livability of their cities through intensive sessions with design profession-
als. In recent years, it has also provided a structure for addressing specific
issues that have an impact on urban development. Some of these special-
ized sessions have been accomplished through partnerships with other
federal agencies such as the EPA, GSA, and HUD to establish conversa-
tions between elected officials and these agencies, which are prime forces
in the public environment. Such collaborations allow Arts Endowment
programs to be a conduit for better design.

As part of a series of four new Leadership Initiatives, the NEA
funded one of these special sessions to identify ways in which schools can
operate as catalysts for community redevelopment. The three-day event
was hosted by the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in March 2000
and included discussions of case studies involving historical schools in
downtown centers, school reuse in suburban settings, and the design of
new school buildings. This book is an outgrowth of that session and a
public forum that followed it. The publication features many examples of
the schools, approaches to teaching, and progressive policies that were
presented there. Many of these projects succeed in bringing architects
together with educators to create the best places for learning.

The efforts to find new methods and forms for school buildings

' ?


next 10 years to help urban school districts achieve parity with those in
more affluent suburban areas. The focus of much of this expenditure will
be 28 “Abbott” school districts serving the state’s older cities. Three of
these districts—Union City, Paterson, and Trenton—are currently
engaged in COL plans for projects totaling approximately $1.3 billion.’
Many postindustrial cities such as these suffer deficits in housing, schools,
and employment in the wake of middle-class flight to the suburbs. For
these and similar New Jersey towns, the school-building initiative repre-
sents an opportunity for social and economic stabilization and growth.

In Union City, a town of 70,000 people, the school system is dis-
tributing the program for a 1,200-seat pre-K-8 school across three sites
within a five-minute walking radius. Rather than build a single large
school in the town’s only major park (the school system’s original plan),
planners adapted COL principles to recapture two empty historic build-
ings nearby, erect a smaller building on the original site, and maintain as
much open space as possible for the use of the entire town and school
system. The three buildings will be linked by street and landscape
improvements that will enhance and give visual coherence to a residential
neighborhood and will share resources such as a library and
technology/media-arts center with other nearby schools.

In Paterson, a city of 170,000 people, the school system is using
COL principles to plan its program for “Innovative Academies” in resi-
dential neighborhoods and the city’s downtown. Like Union City,
Paterson has restricted open space. There are, however, many under-
utilized buildings in the city, including commercial space at the center
of town. Since the fall of 1999, Paterson has opened several academies,
including three in downtown. There the city plans to locate additional
academies as part of a “downtown campus” where students will share
classrooms and resources in converted commercial and institutional space.
One of these academies, located in the upper floor of a former retail mall
on the city’s main shopping street, focuses on architecture and urban
planning for the city, including new school projects, and makes students
active agents in the city’s renewal. Another, located in a former church,

focuses on the performing arts, opening its doors for concerts that make

67 7 73


over 30. Kirk Humphreys, mayor of Oklahoma City, explained that
because most of the city’s schools have not been properly maintained,
there is an immediate need for a plan to upgrade and repair existing
schools. Efficiency and economy were his primary concerns. While
smaller schools are simply more expensive to run, his statistics indicated
that they are also more successful at retaining students. This fact put the
mayor's own objectives of efficiency and retention at odds. Symposium
panelists pushed the issue of school size. They were concerned with the
quality of education, noting that smaller school sizes are cited as the sec-
ond most important factor in creating positive educational outcomes
after socioeconomic status. Yet small schools tend to be more costly,

so Mayor Humphreys needed compelling reasons to convince his con-
stituents to fund them. Mayor Dannel P. Malloy of Stamford,
Connecticut, recommended that Mayor Humphreys go directly to the
community to present the educational and social advantages of small
schools, including that students remain in a tightly knit educational
community for 12 continuous years.

Linking to the conversations begun during the Oklahoma City
presentation, Mayor Malloy opened his presentation on Stamford with a
discussion of the relationship between architects and politicians. In his
view, architects and politicians do not communicate effectively. To count-
er this tendency, he suggested that architects go beyond the Mayors’
Institute to educate the public and politicians about the kinds of architec-
tural issues raised during the symposium. Still, the urban ramifications of
school development remained central to the panel’s discussion. One par-
ticipant reminded Mayor Malloy that “When the neighborhood is the
weakest, quite often the school is one of the most important institutions
and provides the most continuity and anchored quality of any of the other
components of the neighborhood including the residential stock, the
retail and business opportunities.”

The case study Mayor Malloy presented, the Rogers School, is
Stamford’s only unsuccessful magnet school; the school lags behind in the
quality of its facilities. The question Mayor Malloy posed to symposium
participants was: Should he tear down Rogers School, or should he rec-

5

28 :


community facilities, schools must be designed and built to tie directly
into the needs and desires of the communities that they serve, both pro-
grammatically and physically, in their scale and their symbolic potential to
give identity and purpose to the surrounding community. Schools for Cities:
Urban Strategies addresses these multiple issues as they relate to commu-
nity development, diversification, and revitalization.

Schools are once again becoming vital community anchors.
Educational institutions provide facilities that are critical to urban design
such as auditoriums, libraries, and recreational facilities. As landscape
architect Peter Lindsay Schaudt emphasizes, as urban institutions, schools
should be part of the larger landscape plan for the city. Architect Sheila
Kennedy discusses the role of schools as providers of 21st century
technological and physical infrastructure. New school buildings offer
opportunities to think about urban diversification, the reconfiguration of
urban space, the quality and expansion of landscape, and the provision of
new spaces for contemporary urban programming. Increasingly, educators
and designers recognize that education takes place throughout the com-
munity in spaces other than traditional school buildings. Both Julie
Eizenberg, discussing a private school, and Roy Strickland, discussing
public schools, share examples of techniques to create such community
interactions through design. Where they exist, historic buildings provide
opportunities to renovate existing urban fabric, and educational program-
ming can also revitalize abandoned urban buildings. Constance Beaumont
provides techniques to encourage the preservation of existing school
stock in lieu of the building of new “sprawl schools” outside of the
existing urban fabric. Beaumont’s discussion focuses on the ways in which
the preservation of existing buildings, whether schools or otherwise, can
serve to preserve the urban fabric, a sense of community, and entire
neighborhoods.

Amid the 1990s scrutiny of education nationwide, including the
call for new national standards and education reform, a number of educa-
tional theorists and practitioners, in the tradition of Dewey, began to look
seriously once again at the environment in which education takes place,

particularly in large, anonymous, and highly bureaucratic urban school

iq


A “sprawl school” on a
remote site in South
Carolina

Why Johnny Can’t Walk to School

Constance E. Beaumont
Director for State and Local Policy, National Trust for
Historic Preservation

In the middle of an older neighborhood in Spokane, Washington, stands
the Wilson Elementary School, a historic landmark built in 1926.
Renovated in 1999 to meet modern building codes and contemporary
program needs, the Wilson School enters the 21st century with a
decades-old reputation for providing an excellent education well intact.
People love this school. It’s small, so students receive lots of personal
attention. Test scores are high compared with those in other schools
around the state. Students can walk safely to school along sidewalks lined
with pleasant trees and well-kept homes. Because of the school’s proximi-
ty to the community, it’s easy to get to and easy for the school to recruit
volunteers. Neighborhood residents use the school for civic and other
activities in the evenings.

The school is a handsome building that fits in well with the neigh-
borhood. It’s not surrounded by parking, but comes up close to the street.
Visually and historically, the school is an anchor. Its presence on
Spokane’s South Hill is one of the main reasons people move into—and
stay in—this neighborhood. The school enhances property values and
stabilizes an older part of the city. Having served four generations of stu-
dents, the Wilson School represents an important part of Spokane’s
history. In short, Wilson is a small, community-centered school that edu-

cates kids while bringing a whole neighborhood together. It’s exactly the

27

33


Web Sites

Architectural Record Building
‘Types Study on Schools:
www.architecturalrecord.com,
Building Types Study 794

Chicago Public Schools Design
Competition:

www schooldesigncomp.org/
indexold.btm

Coalition for Community Schools:
www.communityschools.org/new.btml,
www.communitiyschools.org/
pubs.partners.html

National Trust for Historic
Preservation:
www.nationaltrust.org/issues

Universal Design:
www. design.ncsu.edu; www.cae.org.uk

U.S. Department of Education:
www.ed.gov/about/pubs.jsp;
www.ed.gov/inits/construction/
ctty-centers.btml

97

Image Credits
Cover: Courtesy of Walter Leedy.

3: Photo by Roberta Dupuis-
Devlin, Photographic Services,
UIC.

10 (top): From Walter Dwight
Moody, What of the City? Chicago:
A.C. McClurg & Co., 1919.

10 (bottom): From The High
School Students of New York City,
Our City—New York: A Book on City
Government, New York: Allyn and
Bacon, 1924.

13: Courtesy of David Dodt and
Greg Lauterback.

14 (top two rows): Photos by
Roberta Dupuis-Devlin,
Photographic Services, UIC.

14 (bottom row)-23: Courtesy of
Schools as Catalysts for Community
Development Participants.

26: Courtesy of South Carolina
Coastal Conservation League.

28: Courtesy of Bassetti Architects,
photo by David Melody.

30: Courtesy of Constance E.
Beaumont.

31 top: Courtesy of Walter Leedy.

31 inset: Courtesy of Lee Batdorff,
Common Ground Communities.

34-38, 40: Courtesy of Business and
Professional People for the Public
Interest, photos by Jon Randolph.

39 top: Courtesy of Marble -
Fairbanks Architects.

39 bottom: Courtesy of
KoningEizenberg Architecture.

“102

42-51: Courtesy of Kennedy &
Violich Architecture; p. 47: photo
by William Traub; p. 48: photo by
Bruce T. Martin.

52-59: Courtesy of
KoningEizenberg Architecture,
photos by Benny Chan.

60-69: Courtesy of Roy Strickland;
p. 60: drawing by Kiran Mathema;
p. 65 (bottom): drawing by John
Dimitriov; p. 66 (top): drawing by
Li Lian Tan; p. 66 (bottom):
drawing by Timothy Jones.

70: Courtesy of Peter Lindsay
Schaudt Landscape Architecture;
upper left photo by Peter Schaudt;
lower left sketches by Bruce Bondy;
lower right photo by Chandra
Goldsmith.

78: Photos by Sharon Haar.

84-85: Courtesy of Pfau
Architecture Ltd.

86-87: Courtesy of kOnyk
architecture.

88-89: Courtesy of Allied Works
Architecture.

90-91: Courtesy of Daly, Genik
Architects, photos by Tom Bonner.

92-93: Courtesy of OWP/P
Architects and Chicago Public
Schools.

BEST COPY AVAILABLE


Booker T. Washington School for the
Performing and Visual Arts, Dallas

Allied Works Architecture Inc. Portland, Oregon

Allied Works’ winning design for the expansion
of the Booker T. Washington School in Dallas
utilizes the landscape and spaces for perform-
ance, creation, and exhibition of student work to
form an integral connection with its surround-
ings and the public. The school is intended to
anchor existing and planned institutions in a
growing arts district. An outdoor amphitheater,
accessible from a forecourt shared with
surrounding institutions, serves as a central
space for the school. The project preserves the
public presence and identity of the historic
school building while incorporating it into the
formal and programmatic organization of the
enlarged facility. As the architects of the project
state: “The new building is held in tension
between the spatial forces focusing in
(centripetal) and extending out (centrifugal),
between the work of the students and the pres-
entation to the public.”

Courtyard

Booker T. Washington was the first African
American high school in Dallas and has served
as a magnet school for the arts since 1976. Its
program includes academic, visual arts, music,
theater, and dance components. The competi-
tion for the expansion of the school was funded
in part by the New Public Works program of
the National Endowment for the Arts. The
school will be a vital component of active life
in the arts district, an infrastructure of existing
and new buildings by internationally renowned
architects including Renzo Piano, Rem
Koolhaas, and Norman Foster.

Public entry



districts such as New York, Boston, and Chicago. While many “small
school” experiments first took place in existing school buildings, the small
school movement has begun to have a significant impact on school size
and form.” But, even as many of these new schools have been brought
down to scale and incorporate new technologies and specialized curricula,
the time of the “mega-school” is not over. This is not to deride the idea
of the “campus” school as a concept but to question its particular appro-
priateness within existing urban settings. In Strickland’s “curriculum,” for
example, the city is the map or text for learning; its buildings, the school.
Developments such as these rely, in large measure, on the ability to devel-
op educational parmerships between school districts, community and
governmental organizations, and private enterprises. The essay on
Chicago’s School Design competition demonstrates just such an alliance
to create two new schools in Chicago.'? Several of the mayors who partici-
pated in the MICD schools session saw ways in which new schools could
provide the impetus for private development of new technology
infrastructures in their cities.

Educational institutions provide opportunities to educate today’s
students about neighborhood and community development. Schools such
as New York’s “School for the Physical City” are contemporary versions
of design and planning education once provided through textbooks.
Examples include Chicago’s Wacker Manual, intended to educate
Chicago’s students to support the implementation of the 1909 plan for
Chicago, or my immigrant grandmother's 1923 edition of Our City: New
York, a book written by students of New York City’s public schools. As
architectural critic Mildred Friedman wrote in the 1970s: “One way to
make the process of learning ‘action rich’ is to move our isolated children
out of the school buildings into the community. This cannot be accom-
plished with an occasional field trip to a museum or to the zoo. To be
effective, this process means actually locating elements or aspects of
school in the community.”'' The needs of today’s diverse constituencies
and communities are different from those of earlier generations; this
diversity should be reflected in and supported by our educational institu-

tions. Schools remain the locus for education that supports community

‘

“15


Bibliography

Alan, Richard. “Work in Progress:
An Architect's Vision for
‘Transforming Abandoned or
Neglected Downtown Buildings
into Thriving Public Schools Is
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NJ.” Education Week June 21,
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Beaumont, Constance E. Syart
States, Better Communities: How State
Governments Can Help Citizens
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Betsky, Aaron and Julie Eizenberg.
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Boyer, Ernest. Ready to Learn: A
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91-97,

Branch, Mark Alden. “Tomorrow's
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Brubaker, C. William. Planning and
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Will, New York: McGraw-Hill Inc.,
1998.

Ceppi, Giulio and Michele Zini.
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Young Children. Italy: Reggio
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Corner, James. School Power. New
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Dewey, John. Democracy and
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“Focus on: Refresher Courses For
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Graves, Ben E. School Ways: The
Planning and Design of America’s
Schools. New York: McGraw-Hill,
Inc., 1993.

Grunenberg, Christoph and Sheila
Kennedy. Material Misuse. London:
Architectural Association, 2001.

Kozol, Jonathan. Alternative Schools:
A Guide for Educators and Parents.
New York: Continuum, 1982
1972].

Lightfoot, Sarah Lawrence. The
Good High School: Portraits of
Character and Culture. New York:
Basic Books, 1983.

Meier, Deborah. The Power of Their
Ideas: Lessons for America from a
Small School in Harlem. Boston:
Beacon Press, 1995.

Murphy, Jim. “P/A Inquiry:
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Pearson, Clifford. “Essay: K-12
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—. “Overhauling Education.”
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Tomorrow: An International
Compendium of Exemplary
Educational Facilities. Washington,
D.C.: OECD Publications and
Information Centre, 1996.

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Sanoff, Henry. School Design. New
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Scogin, Mack and Merrill Elam.
The Work of Scogin, Elam & Bray,
Architects. Ann Arbor, Michigan:
University of Michigan College of
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1999,

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Redesigning the American High
School. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1992.

Strickland, Roy. “Architectural
Alternatives to the Post-World War
II Public School: Designs by the
New American School Design
Project.” Architectural Research
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——. ed. Designing a City of
Learning: Paterson, NJ. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: New American
School Design Project, 2001.

——. “Designing the New
American School: Schools for an
Urban Neighborhood.” Columbia
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—. “Neighborhoods for
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58-65.

“Two Urban Schools,” Architectural
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39-47.

Urban Planning Bureau of the City
of Vienna. The New Schoolbouse:
Schoolcbild’s Universe and Urban
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1996.

96


Endnotes

Schools for Cities: Urban Strategies,
Sharon Haar

' Stephanie Banchero, “School
Buildings a Growth Industry,”
Chicago Tribune (September 21,
1999). See also Mark Alden
Branch, “Tomorrow's Schoolhouse:
Making the Pieces Fit,” Progressive
Architecture 75 June 1994): 77-83.
Branch notes that there are politi-
cal motivations, such as the ability
to find financial backing, for
enlarging the number of individuals
who will have access to a school.
Jeanne Silver Frankl, “Advocacy
and Architecture,” New Schools for
New York (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 1992), 17. New
Schools for New York was a design
ideas competition sponsored by the
Architectural League of New York
in the late 1980s. Several of the
projects that resulted from this
program formed the basis of real
projects in the 1990s.

Anthony Vidler, “Different Schools
of Thought,” Los Angeles Times
(February 20, 2000).

Dwight H. Perkins was the archi-
tect of the Chicago Board of
Education from 1905 to 1910. Like
his colleague Charles B. Snyder in
New York, he had a great influence
on the design of public school
buildings in the early 20th century.
Perkins was also closely tied to the
Arts and Crafts movement, pro-
gressive cultural and civic causes,
and John Dewey.

John Dewey, the founder of the
Laboratory School in Chicago,
advanced the cause of a progressive
education focusing on experiential
growth.

William Levitt quoted in Frank
Fogarty, “New Schools for ‘Free’,”
Architectural Forum 109 (October
1958): 121.

101

7 Herbert J. Gans, The Levittowners:
Ways of Life and Politics in a New
Suburban Commumity (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1967).

® The physical relationship of
schools to new housing was a fea-
ture of suburban developments
such as Radburn, New Jersey, in
1920s. The California architect
Richard J. Neutra began designing
“community schools” before the
end of World War II.

° The “small school movement”
refers to a pedagogical more than a
physical concept. Nonetheless, it is
beginning to have an influence on
the design of school buildings. For
a discussion of small schools, see
Deborah Meier, The Power of Their
Ideas: Lessons for America from a
Small School in Harlem (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1995).

'© Business and Professional People
for the Public Interest was not a
participant in the original MICD
sessions, as the Chicago competi-
tion was just getting underway in
the winter of 2000.

'| Mildred S. Friedman, “Context for
Learning,” Design Quarterly 90/91
(1974): 9-10.

Reenvisioning Schools: The Mayors?
Questions, Leah Ray

' Unless otherwise noted, quotes are
taken from the transcripts of the
MICD: Schools as Catalysts for
Community Development sympo-
sium, March 23-25, 2000.

Why Jobnny Can't Walk to School,
Constance E. Beaumont

1 To see Why Jobnny Can't Walk to
School, the National Trust for
Historic Preservation’s report on
public policies affecting school
facilities, visit bttp:/Avww.national-
trust.org/issues/bistoric_schools.btml.

? “Case 13: Lincoln, Nebraska,
Public School Systems: The
Advance Scouts for Urban Sprawl,”
in Richard K. Olson and Thomas
A. Lyon, Under the Blade: The
Conversion of Agricultural Landscapes
(Boulder, Colorado: Westview
Press, 1999), 370.

Telephone interview with Dan
Becker, September 2000.
Statement by Lakis Polycarpou

at November 16, 2000 press
conference held by the National
‘Trust for Historic Preservation

at Murch Elementary School in
Washington, D.C.

Ibid.

Lessons from the Chicago Public Schools
Design Competition, Cindy S. Moelis
with Beth Valukas

' Karen Fairbanks of Marble -
Fairbanks Architects quoted in
Mike Kennedy, “By Design,”
American School and University,
January 1, 2002.

? A special acknowledgment to
Jeanne Nowaczewski, Jaime
Hendrickson and Jennifer
Salvatore, former BPI staff, as well
as Pamela Clarke and John Ayers of
LQE for their exceptional leader-
ship throughout the Chicago
competition.

3 See, for example, Patricia A.

Wasley, Michelle Fine, Matt

Gladden, Nicole E. Holland,

Sherry P. King, Esther Mosak, and

Linda C. Powell, Stall Schools:

Great Strides, A Study of New Small

Schools in Chicago (New York: Bank

Street College of Education, 2000).

The small schools movement was

well underway in Chicago prior to

this point. However, 1995 was the
year that the Chicago School

Reform Board of Trustees adopted

a resolution committing to the

formation and strengthening of

small schools in Chicago.

BESTCOPY AVAILABLE


schools, and public/private partnerships; technology’s influence on learn-
ing, school administration, and spatial design; and the social capital and

economic power of school students, teachers, and staff. Its principles are:

1. Integrate COL stakeholders—teachers, students, administrators, parents,
and civic and business leaders—into the planning process. As COL seeks
synergies between schools and communities, school planning should

encourage the participation of all members of the community.

2. Break out of the “big box” school. Big schools require large sites and/or
neighborhood displacement, while their self-containment isolates
them from communities. Small schools sharing centrally located
resource facilities minimize displacement and make learning acces-

sible to members of the community.

3. Coordinate school projects as part of a strategic plan. School projects can
represent the largest capital investments in neighborhoods and
towns, yet they are often planned individually, thus separating

schools and their communities.

4. Inventory learning opportunities in neighborhoods and towns and construct
a “lesson plan” derived from local resources. From Dewey to Gardner,
educators advocate “learning by doing.” Resources such as cultural
institutions, libraries, hospitals, industry, commerce, etc., should be
tied into school planning as supplements to school facilities and their

programs through internships, mentoring, and work-study programs.

5. Inventory neighborhood and town sites and buildings as opportunities for
various kinds of learning and recreation facilities. Follow the lead of pri-
vate and charter schools in their inventive reuse of buildings such as
former houses, commercial buildings, clubs, and factorics. Consider
using public parks and libraries and institutions such as YMCAs and
YWCAs and Boys and Girls Clubs to reduce the size and cost of

school projects.

‘ _ 69


ing housing for families and teachers.’ In Trenton, the school system is
expanding the process of designing the four school sites to include
six more.

COL results in New Jersey demonstrate that school systems are
willing to rethink school design for the 21st century. Citizens do not want
learning facilities locked up in isolated, freestanding buildings; they want
students and teachers involved in community life. School programming
and design can be integrated with community planning and development.

COL affirms the role of teachers and students as active agents in
the creation of our communities. With neighborhood spaces designed for
them, their social, intellectual, and economic capital is made available for
community development and capacity building. This casts students and
teachers as agents of positive community change, an outcome that should
help reverse public alienation from and dissatisfaction with public schools.

As the nation spends billions on new and renovated schools, the
potential of this investment becomes clear. Unleashed from the box of the
school building, these billions can revive towns and cities by leveraging an
untapped resource: the power of teachers and learners. This power is visi-
ble in Union City, where students and teachers mix with residents of the
affordable housing project to help create a safe, sociable community, and
in Paterson, where they contribute to the bustle of downtown. It will
become visible in Trenton, when a new series of schools share services
and amenities with the public. And, if fully realized, it will help reverse

decades of decline in both our cities and our public schools.

7O

69


14


Contributors

Constance E. Beaumont is
Director for State and Local Policy
at the National Trust for Historic
Preservation. In this capacity, she
has written extensively about state
and local public policies affecting
historic preservation, land use,
urban planning, growth manage-
ment, and transportation. She has a
special interest in the development
of alternatives to urban sprawl and
is the author of How Superstore
Sprawl Can Harm Communities (And
What Citizens Can Do About It)
(1994), Smart States, Better
Communities (1996), Better Models
‘for Superstores: Alternatives to Big-
Box Sprawl (1997), and Challenging
Sprawl, Organizational Responses to a
National Problem (1999).

Julie Eizenberg is founding
Principal with Hank Koning of
KoningEizenberg Architecture

in Santa Monica, California.

In practice for over 20 years,
KoningEizenberg has become

well known for small buildings for
everyday living including affordable
housing, community and recreation
centers, schools, custom homes,
hotels, stores, and workplaces.
KoningEizenberg Architecture has
received recognition for its work in
housing and community-based
projects, receiving awards such as
the Progressive Architecture First
Award and National AIA Honor
Awards for affordable housing. In
1999, the firm received the City of
Santa Monica’s Sustainable Design
Award, the Los Angeles AIA (Merit
Award) and the California AIA
(Honor Award) for PS#1
Elementary School, a progressive,
small elementary school in Santa
Monica. Fizenberg has also taught
at UCLAS Graduate School of
Architecture & Urban Planning,

as well as at Yale School of
Architecture, MIT, and the
Graduate School of Design at
Harvard.

Sharon Haar, Director of the
Mayors’ Institute on City Design:
Schools as Catalysts for Community
Development, is an architect and
Assistant Professor at the University
of Illinois at Chicago School of
Architecture where she teaches
studios and courses focused on
housing and urban design. Her
projects and articles have been
published in various journals
including Architectural Design, Sites,
Newsline, and the Harvard Design
Magazine. She is author of
“Coming Home: A Postscript on
Postmodernism,” in Not At Home,
“Location, Location, Location:
Gender and the Archaeology of
Urban Settlement,” in the Journal of
Architectural Education, and “At
Home in Public: The Hull House
Settlement and the Study of the
City,” in Embodied Utopias. She is
currently working on a book titled
The City as Campus: Sites of Urban
Education that explores the relation-
ship between urban design and
urban universities. She has also
taught at Parsons School of Design
in New York.

Sheila Kennedy is a Principal of
Kennedy & Violich Architecture, a
professional practice that explores
new possibilities for public architec-
ture and urbanism. The work of
Kennedy & Violich Architecture
has involved industrial manufactur-
ers, educators, community leaders,
and public agencies in projects that
explore how elements of infrastruc-
ture can be integrated with
architecture to express the visible
and invisible connections that link
people, activities, and spaces in
contemporary American culture.
Their projects include the Interim
Bridges Prototype, the Canton
Elementary School, the Madden
Dance Theatre and Gym, and a
public plaza at the Jackson School
at Union Square. Her research and
built work have received two AIA

108

awards, as well as awards from
Progressive Architecture, The
Architectural League of New York,
The LEF Foundation, and the
National Endowment for the Arts.
Kennedy is Associate Professor of
Architecture at the Harvard
Graduate School of Design, where
she has taught since 1992.

Cindy S. Moelis and Beth
Valukas: Cindy S. Moelis is the
Director of Education Initiatives at
Business and Professional People
for the Public Interest (BPI), one of
the sponsoring organizations of the
Chicago Public Schools Design
Competition. Beth Valukas is a BPI
Polikoff-Gautreaux Fellow. Cindy
and Beth are lawyers who advocate
for quality public education in
Chicago. BPI is a public interest
law and policy center dedicated to
equal justice and to enhancing the
quality and equity of life for all
people living in the Chicago region.
The organization has been actively
involved in working to improve the
public school system in Chicago for
over a decade. In recent years, this
work has focused on advocating for
the development of small and inti-
mate learning environments, based
on a strong and growing body of
research demonstrating the positive
impacts of such environments on
student achievement, teacher satis-
faction, and parent involvement.

98


Retail and transportation
corridor, Murray City, Utah

Star School, Oklahoma
City, Oklahoma

Proposed location of new
elementary school, San
Bernardino, California

igen

peri)

i



Shady Hill Library,
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Interactive knowledge

Sitting area

Nest section



Elementary School Prototypes,
Chicago Public Schools

OWP/P Architects Chicago, Illinois

To alleviate overcrowded schools expeditiously,
Chicago Public Schools asked OWP/P
Architects to create a new elementary school
prototype that provides learning environments
of consistent quality, size, and technology. The
benefits of this prototypical program are the
ability to maintain control over construction
quality, cost, safety, and maintenance within a
high quality of building and community design.
The “kit of parts” adapts to various site condi-
tions, limits the amount of land acquisition, and
reduces the displacement of students in existing
facilities during new construction. The design is
able to adapt to different sites, population needs,

and neighborhoods.

Both Anderson Academy and Edward “Duke”
Ellington Elementary School have been sited so
that the new schools are built around the exist-
ing facilities. This keeps the students from being
displaced during construction. Oscar DePriest
Elementary School is sited so that the academic
classrooms open up to adjacent Columbus Park.
Each incarnation of the design furnishes gather-
ing spaces of various sizes and configurations,
which provide flexibility, opportunity for com-
munity use, and an ability to extend the learning
environment beyond the classroom. A green
roof and solar panels have been designed for
implementation at each school. This will facili-
tate the exploration of sustainability as part of
the school curriculum. The design allows for
independent access to the libraries, whose form
is celebrated in all the buildings.

93

Anderson Community Academy

Edward “Duke” Ellington Elementary School


The Kirk Middle Schoot in
East Cleveland, Ohio, one
of the city’s most impor-
tant landmarks, was
effectively condemned by
the stale’s “two-thirds
rule.” Had the cost of
demolishing Kirk been
considered, the renovation
project would have passed
the rule.

Planning Conflicts

In many jurisdictions, local land-use and school-facility planning are com-
pletely disconnected, even though the construction of new schools in
certain areas can dramatically change a town’s future growth patterns.
Building a school on farmland can force a town to speed up the construc-
tion of new roads, water mains, and sewer lines in places that might
otherwise stay rural. At the same time, resources consumed for new-
school construction in outlying areas can drain the budgets needed to
maintain and renovate existing schools in town. As W. Cecil Steward,
dean emeritus of the University of Nebraska’s College of Architecture,
has written: “The public school system...is the most influential planning
entity, either public or private, promoting the...spraw] pattern of
American cities.” He describes some public school systems as “advance
scouts for urban sprawl.”? An example is East Bradford Township in
Pennsylvania, where the school district condemned 100 acres of farmland
slated for protection by the local land-use plan. At the same time, the
school district announced the closing of an in-town school, which stands
exactly where local residents said they wanted civic buildings. Fortunately,
this decision was reversed.

37

31 :


Public presentation:

Jane Tompkins, Avram
Lothan, William Ayers,
and Carol Ross Barney

Julie Eizenberg and
Merrill Elam speaking
with D’Arcy Dixon
Pignanelti of Murray
City, Utah

Clifford B. Janey and
Sharon Haar

Clifford B. Janey
speaking with school
superintendents from
participating cities

Rogers Schoot
Stamford, Connecticut

Downtown Lynn,
Massachusetts

Reenvisioning Schools:
The Mayors’ Questions

Leah Ray
School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Chicago

Mayors are rarely architects, yet mayors have a profound influence upon
the architecture of their cities. In the process of raising funds, negotiating
with constituents, and determining where schools will be built, architec-
ture is often an afterthought. The goal of the Mayors’ Institute on City
Design: Schools as Catalysts for Community Development was to ask
mayors to spend a weekend focusing on architecture, so that these urban
policymakers could become more aware of the potential effects of archi-
tecture on community development.

The thesis that structured the conversations that took place during
the Chicago Mayors’ Institute was the potential of school architecture not
only to enhance education but also to catalyze community development.
Educators and architects agree: the architecture of schools profoundly
affects the experiences of the students and teachers who inhabit them.!
Furthermore, physical design of a school can boost the development of a
struggling community. How can mayors, as leaders of their cities, bring
architecture into their educational vision?

Each of the mayors participating in the symposium came to the
table with a set of questions regarding specific schools in their own cities.
These questions often had to do with the ideal size or location of schools

or with basic aesthetic questions regarding landscape or the exterior shell

15 54 BESTCOPY AVAILABLE


The school in its site,
Avery's view

The school ints site, BEST COPY AVAILABLE

architect's view

« 85

59


also include a recent design competition for schools in Chicago,
sponsored by Business and Professional People for the Public Interest
(BPI) and also among the projects discussed here. It was heartening to
watch this competition process unfold and, in its aftermath, to hear the
comments from some of those in the positions of client and sponsor.
They speak in positive terms about architecture and encourage the under-
standing that design adds value to building. Sunny Fischer of The
Richard H. Driehaus Foundation aptly described the mission of the proj-
ect to “develop exciting and ethical designs and design solutions to the
issues that face us today, combining universal design, small schools, and
green design.” Mike Mayo, a member of the Chicago Public Schools
Board of Trustees, detailed pragmatic requirements, as well as the need
for the architects’ vision. He was, he said, impressed with “their passion
for education, their understanding of people, their genuine concern for
improving the lives of our children and our families.” Given the opportu-
nity to take a critical role in public work, architects have the potential to
make a remarkable difference. Aspirations for a democratic nation of
well-educated individuals rest on the sort of efforts that the designers,
educators, and public officials in this publication have ably demonstrated.
I'd like to thank all of the people who were responsible for hosting
this Mayors’ Institute on City Design dedicated to schools. Sharon Haar,
the coordinator of the project at UIC, brought intelligence and breadth
to the endeavor and put together an admirable program to complement
the work of the Mayors’ Institute sessions. Dean Judith Russi Kirshner,
Katerina Riiedi Ray, and Jane M. Saks at UIC insured that the event
was supported in the most generous way and integrated it in the curricu-
lum of the College of Architecture and the Arts and the city’s cultural
institutions. I offer a particular note of gratitude to The Richard H.
Driehaus Foundation and Executive Director Sunny Fischer, as well
as to the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts
and Executive Director Richard Solomon, for their continuing involve-
ment with NEA design initiatives. Finally, | recognize Sharon Haar’s
careful oversight of this publication and join her in thanking all those

who assisted in bringing it to print.

de 8 2


Camino Nuevo Middle School,

Los Angeles

Daley, Genik Architects Santa Monica, California

‘The Camino Nuevo Charter Academy, founded
by Pueblo Nuevo, a community support group
in Westlake, provides education for elementary
and middle school students. The master plan for
the campus anticipates four phases that, when
completed, will occupy almost an entire block
near MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. ‘To date,
the elementary school, a portion of the middle
school, and a play lot are complete. A perform-
ing arts school will follow.

The project is notable for the way in which the
clients and their architects utilize existing pieces
of the urban fabric to mobilize local redevelop-
ment. The elementary school is located in a
renovated L-shaped mini-mall, whose shape and
size suits the classroom and circulation needs of
the school. The former parking lot is now the
school courtyard used for outdoor assembly and
play. A portion of the middle school, as well as
auxiliary spaces, is located in a former bow-
string-truss warehouse; a second phase will take
over an adjacent abandoned office building. An
“interior street” in the warehouse allows light to
enter the deep building, while exposing compo-
nents of the original structure. A play lot is
created in a former empty lot next to the ele-
mentary school.

1

The new school creates new uses for abandoned
spaces in a dense and impoverished portion of
the city. The introduction of synthetic recyled
lumber lattices, colorful stucco, and new green
and hard-surface play spaces reinvigorate the site
and create inviting spaces for the community.

Middle school building

Interior “street” in the middl,: school buitd

37


and, as a result, inspire school systems to be more thoughtful and inten-
tional about new school design.

In the fall of 1999, representatives from Business and Professional
People for the Public Interest (BPI), Leadership for Quality Education
(LQE) (both Chicago organizations that advocate more intimate learning
environments), and Mayor Richard M. Daley’s Office for People with
Disabilities came together.’ Together, the group (“the sponsors”) was
looking for creative and feasible ways to design innovative new school
buildings that nurture student potential and reflect the communities in
which they reside. Research demonstrates that students thrive in smaller
learning environments that foster interaction and maximize interaction
with the greater community.’ Chicago Public Schools (CPS) have
embraced the development of smaller schools since 1995. At the time of
the Chicago Public Schools Design Competition, the rate of new school
construction in the United States had reached a peak, surpassing the
efforts of every previous generation in history. In 2000, over $21 billion
was spent on schools nationwide, with nearly half of those dollars spent
on over 700 new school buildings.

It was in the context of this unprecedented boom in new school
construction and renovation that the sponsors began to discuss a school
design competition to combine the best contemporary ideas in education
reform and design for state-of-the-art educational environments. At the
start of the competition there were approximately 100 small schools,
including 13 charter schools, in Chicago.’ Yet, CPS had not incorporated
small school educational philosophy into their design process for new
school prototype construction. Since its beginning in 1996, the Chicago
Public Schools Capital Improvement Program has committed more than
$2.6 billion towards improving CPS facilities.

The competition was based on a vision that schools should comple-
ment their neighborhood communities: that small schools can flourish, even
in buildings serving 800 to 900 students; that school buildings should be
accessible to all; that innovative, sustainable, and environmentally sensitive
designs are possible within the constraints of a public budget. The competi-

tion focused on two separate sites, one each on the city’s North and South

36

42


Leah Ray, Program Coordinator
for the Mayors’ Institute on City
Design: Schools as Catalysts for
Community Development, is an
Adjunct Associate Professor at the
University of Illinois at Chicago
School of Architecture where she
teaches within the theory curricu-
lum. She received a master of
design studies in the history and
theory of architecture degree from
the Harvard Graduate School of
Design, and her current research
focuses on the reciprocal relation-
ship between cinema and
contemporary architectural design.
Her writings include “The
Carnivalization of Architecture,”
“Cities, History, and Memory,” and
a forthcoming piece entitled
“Opposing Mies: the Triangular
Constructs of Harry Weese” in
Chicago Is History, a compilation
of essays focusing on Chicago's
untold architectural histories to be
published by the University of
Chicago Press.

Mark Robbins is the Director of
Design at the National Endowment
for the Arts, where he has undertak-
en an aggressive program to
strengthen the presence of design
in the public realm. In addition

to efforts to expand grant opportu-
nities he has instituted new
Leadership Initiatives including
New Public Works, which supports
national design competitions.
Collectively, these activities have
doubled the available funding

for design programs. Robbins is

an architect and an artist and main-
tains a practice that encompasses
installations, curatorial projects,
and teaching. He was formerly

an Associate Professor in the
Knowlton School of Architecture
at The Ohio State University and
Curator of Architecture at Ohio
State’s Wexner Center for the Arts.

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Peter Lindsay Schaudt founded
the firm of Peter Lindsay Schaudt
Landscape Architecture, Inc., in
1991. The firm is dedicated to
landscape design excellence and
quality service at all scales. Known
for collaborations with architects,
the firm’s work is marked by
restraint and elegance, delivering
beauty in design elements that are
sculpted and abstracted into a quiet
simplicity. Ongoing projects include
the Landscape Master Plan for the
historic Mies van der Rohe Illinois
Institute of Technology campus, the
new Tennessee Titans stadium in
Nashville, Tennessee, and Prairie
Crossing, a 667-acre “conservation
community” in Grayslake, Illinois.
Other projects include campus and
community master plans, public
parks, and several private
residences. The firm's resume also
includes two award-winning proj-
ects: a garden at Chicago’s Midway
Plaisance in Washington Park and
the Grayslake Central Park Site
Plan in Grayslake, Illinois.

Roy Strickland is Director of the
New American School Design
Project at the Taubman College of
Architecture and Urban Planning at
the University of Michigan. His
work is concerned with the devel-
opment of design studies,
workshops, conferences, and publi-
cations that correlate discussion of
K-12 educational reform with
architectural design. His school-
design workshop was contracted by
the Berkeley (California) Unified
School District to provide master
plan concepts and design guidelines
for the $160 million redevelopment
of the 7500 student public system
and by the Six Schools Complex in
Washington, D.C., to develop
architectural concepts for the
expansion and rehabilitation of its
facilities. Currently, the workshop is
making design and planning recom-
mendations for Paterson, New
Jersey’s $500-800 million school-

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building initiative. In his practice,
he has also designed and
programmed residential, museum,
public space, and urban design
projects that have been published in
the New York Times, Architectural
Record, and Progressive Architecture.
He has also taught at the
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and Columbia
University Graduate School of
Architecture, Planning, and
Preservation.

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Marble - Fairbanks
Architects’ winning design
for the South Side site.

KoningEizenberg
Architecture’s winning
design for the North
Side site.

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