At the Center for Architecture
Urban SOS: Frontiers
Through 02.11.13
Via Verde
Through 02.27.13
Arch Schools 2012
Through 03.23.13
The Edgeless School: Design for Learning
Extended to 05.25.13
Building Connections 2012
Through 06.15.13 Continue reading “On View: At the Center for Architecture & About Town”
At the Center for Architecture
Via Verde
Opens 01.31
Arch Schools 2012
Through 03.23.13
Hong Kong at 15: Redefining the Public Realm
Through 01.23.13
Urban SOS: Frontiers
Through 02.11.13
Building Connections 2012
Through 06.15.13
The Edgeless School: Design for Learning
Extended to 05.25.13
About Town
FXFOWLE Gallery presents Archi | Texture: New Work, an exhibition of the work of artists Anne Finkelstein and Cora Jane Glasser
Through 04.12.13
“The Edgeless School: Design for Learning”
Extended to 05.25.13
“Arch Schools 2012”
On view through 01.19.13
“Building Connections 2012: K-12 Student Design Work”
On view through 01.19.12
“Hong Kong at 15: Redefining the Public Realm”
On view through 01.23.12
The Edgeless School: Design for Learning
On view through 01.19.13, in conjunction with “The Best School in the World: Seven Finnish Examples from the 21st Century,” on view through 01.13. Continue reading “”
The Edgeless School: Design for Learning
On view through 01.19.13, in conjunction with “The Best School in the World: Seven Finnish Examples from the 21st Century,” on view through 01.13.
On view through 01.19.13
Building Connections 2012: K-12 Student Design Work
On view through 01.19.12
Hong Kong at 15: Redefining the Public Realm
Opens 12.10.12
The Edgeless School: Design for Learning
On view through 01.19.13, in conjunction with “The Best School in the World: Seven Finnish Examples from the 21st Century,” on view through 01.13.
On view through 01.19.13
Building Connections 2012: K-12 Student Design Work
Opens 11.30.12
Center for Architecture
Center for Architecture
Center for Architecture
Center for Architecture
Thomas Mellins, curator, “The Edgeless School” and Juulia Kauste, director, Museum of Finnish Architecture, and project leader, “The Best School in the World,” in front of a panel from “The Best School.”
Sam Lahoz
Organizers, “The Edgeless School: Design for Learning”: AIANY in collaboration with the Committee on Architecture for Education and the Center for Architecture Foundation
Senior Research Consultant: Edith Ackermann, Ph.D., Visiting Scientist, MIT School of Architecture
Exhibition Design: Sage and Coombe Architects
Graphic Design: Hyperakt
Organizers, “The Best School in the World: Seven Finnish Examples from the 21st Century”: Museum of Finnish Architecture, as part of New Finnish Design CITY campaign, produced by the Consulate General of Finland and the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York
Eerily suspended rows of traditional school desks, aligned identically and equipped with sheets of ruled paper and uniformly positioned apples, are currently drawing the eyes of curious passers-by into the Center for Architecture’s Hines Gallery. The effect is both familiar and uncanny. Perhaps everyone’s recollections of grammar school, fond or otherwise, share certain qualities with dreams.
The new “The Edgeless School” exhibition, once one’s gaze moves past the disembodied desks and orderly geometries of yesteryear, offers variations on themes of fluidity, blurred borders, shifting roles for teachers and students, and altered relations between schooling and extracurricular life: forms and practices that the schools of the not-too-distant past were unprepared for.
Displays representing 19 architecturally distinguished K-12 schools nationwide (including urban, suburban, and rural settings; a mix of public, private, and special-needs institutions; and scales from the tight Manhattan sites of the East Harlem, Stephen Gaynor, and Rodeph Sholom schools to spacious campuses like Blue Valley Southwest High in Overland Park, KS) show how built forms express evolving teaching philosophies. These American examples share some features with the seven schools in a companion exhibition from Finland, where progressive design and policy have converged to yield impressive gains in student performance.
Schools’ built environments – like contemporary pedagogy itself – commented curator Thomas Mellins at the press preview, are abandoning the artificiality reflected in the Cartesian grid of airborne desks. “Everyone seems to agree that we’re at a watershed moment in terms of formal education in this country,” he said, noting that educating “digital natives,” students who have spent their whole lives in an information-rich environment, creates new expectations. If information and knowledge are now universally accessible, are traditional schools dinosaurs? Does introducing young people to the life of the mind require dedicated rooms or buildings at all? (One recalls President James Garfield’s legendary definition of the ideal college as [Williams president] “Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other.”)
These questions aren’t easily answerable. Hence ”The Edgeless School” model, offering gray areas rather than sharp conceptual and physical demarcations between teachers’ roles as wise elders dispensing information or facilitators of students’ discoveries; separate and merged interior areas; purpose-built and ad hoc spaces; built environments and nature; town and gown; and the most basic borderline: formal schooling vs. informal, extramural, experiential processes of education. Parental expectations, adds Mellins, have evolved, and school design needs to consider them: “In the early 20th century, parents were very often expecting the schools to Americanize their children” and looked to school authorities for that role, while today’s parents, connected through constant electronic communication, not just annual parent-teacher conferences, are more directly involved and hold teachers “accountable to them,” altering the metaphoric meaning of transparency.
Despite all too many schools’ depressing atmosphere of carceral chain-link fencing, the best ones are organized for flexibility and surprise, not warehousing and discipline. Mellins described a “discovery that corporate America made quite some time ago: very often the best ideas don’t come out of the conference room or the board room, but… out of the chance encounters that happen at the water cooler.” The educational equivalent is to design for social interaction and collaboration, emphasizing open areas, multipurpose spaces (e.g., “a science lab that’s also an art room”), and scales appropriate to students’ needs. Children with autistic-spectrum conditions, for example, benefit from alcoves small enough for two or three kids and a teacher, plus extensive glazing to help them observe and mirror other kids’ interactions.
Mellins and colleagues look to a series of pathbreakers in progressive education for theoretical grounding, including John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget, Ivan Illich, Howard Gardner, John Seely Brown, and others whose ideas are presented in interior displays, among more up-to-date furniture: a Smart Board and an array of Steelcase rolling desk/chair/storage modules, which Mellins described as ideal for classrooms where teachers circulate freely, rearrange the students’ positions, and strive to keep floors uncluttered by ubiquitous backpacks. Such spaces support engagement with students’ diverse forms of intelligence and fit teachers’ evolving role: once the “Sage on the Stage,” now more often the “Guide on the Side.”
If media reports too often associate American schools with funding shortages, program cutbacks, declining scores, “teach to the test” narrowness, and metal detectors, what helps some schools perform better? Handsome facilities alone don’t create an atmosphere of professional dedication and imagination, but they can aid educators in developing one. Finland’s school system has earned global admiration among teachers and designers, as Finnish students recurrently earn high scores in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys, across the range of academic subjects and family socioeconomic backgrounds.
The Museum of Finnish Architecture’s Juulia Kauste answers recurrent questions about the key to this success in terms of Finland’s egalitarianism, providing free state-funded education to all as a national principle, as well as its lively tradition of architecture competitions (five of the seven schools shown here resulted from open competitions) and its dedication to upgrading learning environments, diversifying open communal spaces to help schools’ various age groups socialize safely or work privately without constant supervision. Local authorities, she reports, run 97% of the nation’s schools, which observe a national curriculum allowing for local variations. National guidelines consider building features as well as curricula.
“There’s a strong emphasis on this idea that everyone deserves to have the equal right to equal quality of education,” Kauste said, adding that schools provide healthcare and other services, with attention to nutrition and recreation as well as classroom work (the typical Finnish school day includes hourly recesses, she noted, aiding students’ alertness). The double-boomerang volumes by the young firm Verstas Architects for the Kirkkojärvi School in Espoo – perhaps the most striking of the seven sample schools – are both graceful and purposeful: each separate yard, as demarcated by the building’s wings, accommodates a different age group. Since communities also use the facilities after hours, Kauste added, “the school is the center of the community in other ways as well, not only for the students but for other activities,” defining “sustainability not only in terms of green and energy, but [as] cultural sustainability.” These schools treat their indoor and outdoor spaces not as neutral containers, but as environments designed to foster the development of the whole student and the whole community.
“The Edgeless School: Design for Learning” and “The Best School in the World: Seven Finnish Examples from the 21st Century” are on view through January 2013.
At first glance, a school in the Bronx and a school in a Helsinki suburb appear to have little in common. The former is clad in brick and zinc panels and spans a long urban block, while the latter is comprised of two freestanding timber-paneled structures surrounded by a blanket of snow. Though these two schools are separated by thousands of miles, both serve large student populations – from primary through intermediate levels – that are diverse and low-income. By design, the New Settlement Community Campus and the Kirkkojärvi School foster a sense of belonging among students, and their multi-purpose spaces transform into community centers after hours.
Continue reading “Two Schools Engage Students and Communities”
The Edgeless School: Design for Learning
On view through 01.19.12, in conjunction with “The Best School in the World: Seven Finnish Examples from the 21st Century,” on view through 10.31.12.
On view through 10.31.12
Subway Show 2012: Design by New York
On view through 11.04.12
The Harlem Edge | Cultivating Connections
On view through 10.31.2012
Sam Lahoz
A view of the hanging desks in the Center’s double-height space.
Sam Lahoz
Guests listen to the “talking heads” of contemporary education and learning theoreticians.
Sam Lahoz
Thomas Mellins, curator, “The Edgeless School” and Juulia Kauste, director, Museum of Finnish Architecture, and project leader, “The Best School in the World,” in front of a panel from “The Best School.”
Sam Lahoz
Event: Press preview and opening: “The Edgeless School: Design for Learning” and “The Best School in the World: Seven Finnish Examples from the 21st Century”
Location: Center for Architecture, 10.01.2012
Introduction: Rick Bell, FAIA, AIANY executive director
Speakers: Thomas Mellins, curator, “The Edgeless School”; Juulia Kauste, director, Museum of Finnish Architecture, and project leader, “The Best School in the World”; Joseph J. Aliotta, AIA, President, AIANY; Jukka Pietikäinen, Consul General and Ambassador, Consulate General of Finland
Sponsors: Duggal, Hyperakt, Shaw Contract Group, Waldners (underwriters); Avery Dennison, MechoSystems (patrons); Ennead Architects, F.J. Sciame Construction, Levien & Company (sponsors); Bonetti/Kozerski, Lutron Electronics, Turner Construction Company (supporters); and 2012 AIANY Chapter Inaugural Fund: Swanke Hayden Connell Architects (patron); Beyer Blinder Belle, Forest City Ratner Companies, Mancini Duffy|TSC, New York City School Construction Authority, Perkins Eastman, STV Group, and Thornton Tomasetti (sponsors); ASSA ABLOY, Cameron Engineering, Cosentini Associates, DeLaCour & Ferrara Architects, E-J Electric Installation Co., Ennead Architects, F.J. Sciame Construction Co., FXFOWLE, Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies, Ingram Yuzek Gainen Carroll & Bertolotti, Jack Resnick & Sons, JAM Consultants, JLS Industries, Knoll, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, Langan Engineering and Environmental Services, Lend Lease, Milrose Consultants, Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, Syska Hennessy Group, Vanguard Construction & Development Co., Viridian Energy & Environmental / Israel Berger and Associates, and World Trade Center Properties (supporters)
Organizers, “Edgeless School”: AIANY in collaboration with the Committee on Architecture for Education and the Center for Architecture Foundation
Senior Research Consultant: Edith Ackermann, Ph.D., Visiting Scientist, MIT School of Architecture
Exhibition Design: Sage and Coombe Architects
Graphic Design: Hyperakt
Organizers, “Best School”: Museum of Finnish Architecture, as part of New Finnish Design CITY campaign, produced by the Consulate General of Finland and the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York
My high school was a 1960s experimental “pod school” gone wrong. A maze of hallways connected clusters of hexagons, which were divided by flimsy partitions into windowless classrooms. Recently, the building was demolished to make way for a newer model, and I admit that I didn’t feel very sentimental when I saw photos of those pods split open by the wrecking ball.
While I can’t blame the awkwardness of my teenage years entirely on the shortcomings of my school’s design, many architects and educators believe that environment makes a difference in students’ test scores and social skills. To kick off Archtober, the Center for Architecture hosted an opening reception for two new exhibitions showcasing the latest developments in K-12 design in the U.S. and Finland, respectively titled “The Edgeless School: Design for Learning” and “The Best School in the World: Seven Finnish Examples from the 21st Century.”
“The Edgeless School” exhibition occupies both the Center’s main level and mezzanine, featuring drawings, photographs and models of 17 schools recently constructed in New York and across the U.S. The notion of “edgelessness,” explained curator Thomas Mellins, involves blurring traditional distinctions: spaces are multi-purpose instead dedicated, desk configurations are non-static instead of typical grids, glass walls blur indoor and outdoor spaces, and funding often comes from a combination of both public and private sources.
There are no pod schools here. The designs on display offer new takes on the traditional building blocks of schools. Typical locker-lined hallways meant only for circulation have been reinvented to encourage lingering; they are wide and well-lit with built-in seating. Classrooms reflect the shift from the teacher as authoritarian figure at the front of the room to a facilitator of ideas who moves easily throughout the space and guides students’ exploration.
These exemplary new American schools reflect concepts that the Finns have long applied in designing their educational spaces. “The Best School in the World” exhibition, located in the Center’s adjoining storefront at 532 LaGuardia, portrays seven contemporary Finnish schools through photographs, models, and drawings, supplemented by a video on the history of the country’s school system.
Finnish students have consistently excelled in standard testing, and it’s not a stretch to see how their environments have helped them succeed. “We have a very long tradition of believing in the idea that the environment is key to [fostering] learning,” shared Juulia Kauste, director of The Museum of Finnish Architecture.
Though the two exhibitions were organized independently and initially appear as juxtapositions, viewers will likely find many common threads and begin to understand the dialogue generated between American and Finnish school design. “The social conditions may be a little bit different, but we’re learning from each other,” affirmed Rick Bell, FAIA, AIANY Executive Director.
