We are now about to challenge school design thinking with a current
sustainability project in the making – the Marketplace, which seeks to
combine social and learning space as one concept, breaking down any
concept of ‘separate’ classrooms. The Marketplace is an active glass
canopy positioned over old spaces in order to radically transform the
heart of the original school from industrial-era design to agile spaces
suited to community life, engaged learning and enhanced through mobile
technologies.
In creating a Marketplace the value of traditional structures often found in schools is being challenged. A Marketplace threatens isolation. Not only is a sense of community being fostered but the concept that learning has to be segregated into different departments dissipates as collaborators are brought together into a single space. Also the concept of Marketplace connects with the following from David Weinberger:
As knowledge becomes networked, the smartest person in the room isn’t
the person standing at the front lecturing us, and isn’t the collective
wisdom of those in the room. The smartest person in the room is the
room itself: the network that joins the people and ideas in the room,
and connects to those outside of it.
A Marketplace is leveraging the collective will and expertise of those who are coming together.
Finally, I connected with the notion of creating agile spaces. Again, this flies in the face of an industrial model where learning is situated in a single location. I would think we want learners to be mobile and active in how they go about solving problems and posing solutions. Existing in agile space implies that individuals will take action and assume ownership.
I think you raise an interesting idea of how we view our physical spaces and how it affects learning. At The Willow School, located in Peapack/Gladstone, which has won several LEED Awards, took this into account when designing the school buildings. At The Willow School, the buildings have been created to be a part of the educational experience and to be used as teaching tools. Large spaces have been provided for multi-purpose functions and most classrooms lead directly to the outdoors so learning can easily transfer outside the four walls of the classroom when necessary. The building’s design foster students, faculty and staff to collaborate with each other and their immediate surroundings. As a result, the educational experience is interactive and integrated encouraging critical and creative thinking.
ReplyDeleteThe notion that the physical building is compartmentalized and not interactive is an antiquated idea. The building itself, along with its surrounding area, represents a whole system and a whole system must work in a collaborative way to sustain itself and develop solutions for each part of the system.