Designing to a Child's View
The Early Childhood and Elementary Schools we visited were full of "child-sized" spaces. This was particularly the case at the Oregon Episcopal Lower School (OES) by Hacker Architects; the Gladstone Center for Children & Families by DOWA; and the Trillium Creek Primary School by DOWA-IBI Group Architects. It was great to see furniture that was personalized and tailored to the students in each learning environment. In contrast to the stark and often sterile environments that exist throughout many schools across the US, there was a very organic nature to the furniture in these schools, which seemed to express well the culture and learning that took place within the space.
Connection to Nature; Natural Materials
This theme was established early in our trip, woven throughout projects by three world renown Architects, including the Portland Japanese Garden by Kengo Kuma and Associates; the Mount Angel Abbey Library by Alvar Aalto; and the Gordon House by Frank Lloyd Wright. Each of these embraced the wooded Northwest, blending into their natural surroundings and bringing the outside in and inside out. This was further reinforced in the exterior wood cladding on OES, the exposed concrete walls in Lane Community College Downtown Campus by SRG Partnership, and at the University of Oregon’s HEDCO Education Building by Hacker - where the courtyard is oriented to maximize the southern exposure to offset an often rainy and gray climate.
Learning Neighborhoods vs Learning Stairs
Many of the schools we visited placed significant emphasis on learning neighborhoods and/or learning stairs as a means to orient the learner and to serve as spatial identifiers within the space. Learning stairs were part of the architecture at the Japanese Garden; Roosevelt Middle School by Mahlum Architects; Open School East by Holst, and Trillium. While each aimed to create visually exciting spaces, some were more successful than others, depending on their scale and relationship to the rest of the program. Side-by-side, the learning neighborhoods (most prominent at Trillium and OES) seemed to work better than the stairs, as they served to complement the classrooms, offering flexible overflow space throughout the school. This is in contrast to the learning stair at Open School, which (though not fully realized due to budget constraints) seemed a bit too static, offering little flexibility aside from its use as a forum for the school at the start of each day.
Though on a different scale than all the other projects we visited, the Collaborative Life Sciences Building by SERA & CO Architects was best at demonstrating how to create a neighborhood for higher ed communities in urban settings, as it offered an expansive, yet fully activated ground level in its 5-story atrium that spilled out onto Portland’s Willamette River bank.
Building as a Learning Tool; Engaging the Maker Movement
We had the sincere privilege of hearing from leaders of the maker movement (Alex Gilliam of Public Workshop; Sarah Smith of Sawhorse Revolution; Katie Hughes of Girls Build and Mark Lakemann Communitecture) during a panel, and working alongside them during a maker experience (building benches at Global Homestead) on the last day of the conference. From this engagement, it was clear that there is a real momentum toward finding ways to integrate the excitement that comes with MakerSpaces within the learning environment.
Of the buildings we toured, the four MakerSpaces that stood out the most were: (1) the Allan Price Science Commons & Research Library by Opsis Architects - which provided digital fabrication at the heart of the University of Oregon’s campus; (2) the maker lab classrooms at Roosevelt Middle School - which opened to the corridor on one side and to the courtyard on the other, offering plenty of room to spread out; (3) the arts and craft neighborhoods at OES - which offered hands on learning in an early childhood environment; and (4) the Lane Community College Downtown Campus - which, though not specifically a MakerSpace, had an ADA accessible mechanical room and physical plant that took the idea of using the building as a hands on learning tool to the fullest level.
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Special thanks to the AIA National staff, and to the Architects, educators, and schools that made this conference possible!
Continue to raise the bar within your schools and communities, and continue to celebrate and embrace learning at all levels and ages!