One week has passed since returning from the CAE Berlin Conference. In Portland, Maine this week a group of well-organized parents from Protect our Neighborhood Schools organized proponents of the project packing a Joint School Board Facilities and Finance Committee Meeting. The aim was to put pressure our School Board and City Council to send a $70 million bond to Portland taxpayers to renovate four of the City's crumbling elementary schools. In the end, the committees voted to recommend the project to the full board. A small step towards finally renovating these buildings. It's been a long process for our community. The report which recommended renovating these buildings was published in 2013.
At the meeting, a school board member noted she had reports going back to 1990 noting the need to address operations and maintenance at the schools in question. While our community it talking about renovating it's elementary schools our middle schools and high schools also need attention. It's not that our community doesn't value education. Legally Maine law prohibits us from enacting a local option sales tax which would ease the burden on local property tax payers. For a working class community, which has spent decades tightening it's belt and deferring major projects the resulting situation today is both incredibly urgent and seemingly unobtainable. $70 million seems like a lot to those outside the industry, but I would wager we could easily spend $150 million in designing schools that our community is proud to send their students to and meet the pedagogical needs of educators, vs remediation of lead/asbestos, and fixing life safety, ADA and HVAC issues which will take up the majority of these project budgets.
But what does this have to do with the AIA CAE Conference in Berlin?
During the AIA CAE Berlin Conference we toured dozens of shiny, new buildings with glossy facades, enviable gymnasiums and incredible libraries. At the end of the day, once you moved past those elements the actual configuration of the learning spaces was largely based on a cells and bells model. The classrooms had chalk boards, rectangular tables with chairs, views to the exterior, and there seemed little connection generally with the elements we architects may have found aesthetically impressive. There were some small deviations; for example, one high school had shared classrooms and assigned teacher workstations and lockers. Teachers we spoke to appreciated the setup, saying it allowed a student-free haven to plan lessons, and confer with colleagues about ideas, etc.
In some of these cases the architects involved in the process said they had no opportunity to engage with staff or students, having been instead given a program/brief as part of a competition so the lack of integration with pedagogical objectives set by the schools isn't surprising. Safe, healthy classrooms without friable asbestos or other environmental dangers are incredibly important and having an aesthetically engaging school with moments dispensed throughout that create a sense of wonder and contemplation are all qualities parents and community members expect of school designers. But, it still seems like something is missing.
There was one clear exception to this traditional pattern we saw, the Erika-Mann-Grudschule by Baupiloten. The shell is am unassuming 100 year-old building. The layout of the building, which largely followed a cells and bells model remained intact. However, there was a sense of magic that it seemed we all felt when we entered the building. Having read about the project in advance of the trip I had a bit of background on the project and process, however seeing the school in use is no substitute for glossy magazine articles.
It was immediately evident that the school had an incredibly strong sense of self, and commitment to its students. The current head of school was a teacher during the original design process back in 2003. At the time, they asked Susanne Hofmann to develop a participatory process for the school's design which engaged students as valued participants in designing their learning spaces. The result led to a project narrative that exists to this day, "The Snuffle of the Silver Dragon." Elements of this story narrative, as developed by the students, are woven throughout the school. Lockers are abstract representations of eggs, or wings, and an undulating-surfaced reading room represents the dragon's snout. Colorful benches, and break-out spaces in the hallways provide amble spaces for students to work on projects, or read. Especially important because the school had large class sizes and very small rooms. All the elements seemed in constant use throughout the building, from the reading room, breakout spaces, etc. The insistence on behalf of the client in a participatory model clearly demonstrates the educator's respect for their students and the resulting product clearly reflected and integrated the schools pedagogical values without a fancy new structure or gut renovation.
In Maine, and throughout many communities we find ourselves burdened with crumbling existing infrastructure that is often not well-suited to the demands of today's school buildings, and with budgets that never seem large enough. The Erika-Mann-Grudschule project demonstrates the power of leadership within a school community to leverage a lack of fiscal resources in renovations to capture the elements that matter most to them. It certainly wasn't the most polished building, but it so clearly embodied a sense of wonder, excitement and pride that was not at least immediately evident in the other projects. Exploring new ways to authentically engage students and educators in designing spaces that work for them has tremendous potential for us as architects to design spaces like these back home.
Touring the school, and hearing from the architect, and head of school was clearly the highlight of my trip and likely will inspire my work for years to come.