| | The Australian federal government’s much-anticipated economic stimulus package includes $14.7 billion to erect or upgrade buildings at all of the country’s 9540 public and private schools. We cast our Architectural Navigator abroad, and find that Australia isn’t the only country investing in the future, with exciting new school projects popping up every where from Los Angeles and London to Tokyo, Syria and Norway. The Central LA Area High School #9
Location: Los Angeles, California, USA.
Architecture Practice: COOP HIMMELB(L)AU
The Australian government isn’t the only one putting two and two together to see the long-term economic sense in education infrastructure funding. In the US, state bonds are bankrolling a LA Unified School District plan to have 155 new schools built in the district by 2012: the latest project being the newly-completed COOP HIMMELB(L)AU-designed Central Los Angeles Area High School #9 for the Visual and Performing Arts. Located on a 9.8 acre site on Grand Avenue in downtown LA, the campus will serve a student body of 1800 spread over four academies, one for each discipline of the arts – Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Music and Dance – and each swathed in a different vibrant colour (red, purple, yellow and green) to encourage a welcoming, positive atmosphere. The master plan follows an orthogonal arrangement, spatially and energetically defined by the form of three sculptural buildings, placed around the site like chess pieces in play. This first: a 1000-capacity professional performing arts theatre, equipped with a full stage, orchestra pit, backstage facilities and fly-loft, topped with a tower figure and spiralling ramp in the shape of a number 9, to join the cathedral tower as a new landmark for the city. Secondly, the library, or Space of Knowledge, takes the form of a truncated cone in the centre of the school courtyard: a concentrated, introverted and yet spacious environment, vastly illuminated by a circular skylight at the peak of the cone. The four academy buildings each house classrooms, art studios, workrooms and satellite administrative functions. These functional boxes mark the perimeter of the interior courtyard, thus framing the third sculptural piece: an 80-foot wide grand open stair and representational lobby on Grand Avenue, inviting the community into the heart of the school, to revel in the structural art of the campus, and the process of art creation taking place within. Visual interaction between the students and passers by is further facilitated by large round widows irregularly interspersed in the dark grey powder-coated aluminium streetfront façade. Oslo International School
Location: Oslo, Norway.
Architecture Practice: Jarmund/Vigsnæs AS Arkitekter MNAL
For the 500 students at this private international school, a partial demolition and reconstruction of their campus didn’t even warrant an extended vacation: the project was planned in three phases, so that classes could continue throughout the construction period. This was great news for the client’s tight budget and timeframe, and no doubt the children – ranging from kindergarten to secondary age, and hailing from over 50 nations were thrilled as well. The architects started with a 1960s-era school with plenty of architectural highlights – good natural lighting, easy orientation and a close association with the outdoors – but an increasingly rundown visage and outdated functionality. The response was to upgrade existing areas, replace temporary structures, and create a range of new specific use areas. Phase 1 was the establishment of new pavilions within the existing atrium: science laboratories, a library, and a main square take the form of soft, organic forms, to contrast the existing rectilinear structures, and the entire space is abundantly daylit via circular skylights and narrow floor-to-ceiling slits. Phase 2 takes the smallest children into consideration: a pavilion housing offices and ten new flexible-size classrooms, clad in brightly coloured fibre cement boards, each in a different, vibrant colour. And when Phase 3 is completed, the students will have new areas for drama, music and physical education, to round off what will be, essentially, a brand new school. Montessori School Fuji Kindergarten
Location: Tachikawa, Tokyo, Japan
Architecture Practice: TEZUKA ARCHITECTS
Let us now move to where it all begins, in kindergarten. TEZUKA ARCHITECTS are already well-known for their Roof House (2001), which turned the roof of a family home into just another living room. The kindergarten’s directors wanted exactly the same for their school, with one minor adjustment: it had to accommodate a student body of 200 under-5s. In order to retain three established Zelkova trees, the new school building takes the shape of a slightly distorted oval (the result of scanning a hand-drawn sketch), which modifies the original circular plan, while preserving the same idea of a space without dead ends, where everything is open and nothing hidden. Because of this shape, the kindergarten is a school without walls, that is, there are no real internal walls delineating each classroom, just piles of soft paulownia wood blocks to mark out each classroom. The wood blocks are like stacks of furniture, over which the children can scramble to get from room to room, and the soft wood means that in the event of a head-on collision, the wood will suffer more than the child. There are no inaccessible places and no closed doors, which makes the school a bit like Bentham’s panopticon: there is no real misbehaviour, because there is nowhere to hide it. The children automatically adopt socially acceptable behaviour, which is good, because there is no acoustic absorption (not even on the ceiling). This was a conscious decision, however, guided by the perception that a silent learning environment is unnatural and unlikely to prepare children for work in the real world. Most children these days, especially in busy Tokyo, choose to study in somewhat noisy environs anyway: in the kitchen, at a café, or in front of the television, rather than in the confines of a bedroom, library or study retreat. This kindergarten has no play equipment apart from a solitary slide and the joy of. The children make their own fun, by running around on the skylight-pierced roof, and by using many of the utilities that are fun in themselves: water well wash basins with moulded flexible tube waterspout faucets; naked bulb lighting with pullstring switches so that the children all graduate with a hands-on knowledge of just how lights work; and a mountain of earth under the stairs. St Benedict’s School
Location: Ealing, West London, England.
Architecture Practice: Buschow Henley Ltd
One doesn’t associate the Benedictines with bucking the trend, but in light of education architecture’s current fixation on bold and colourful, the muted addition to St Benedict’s school is somewhat atypical, driven by Simon Henley’s distaste for the current fashion. “The government wants schools to look like shops with big graphics and bright colours. They are frightened by tradition, frightened of the idea that children should even be a little intimidated by school. I’m not afraid of ethics and tradition. I like institutions. Institutions are good!” The new “Heart of the School” building replaces an existing poor-quality, single-storey building with a square, double-height examination hall, superimposed above a 400m2 assembly hall, enclosed by 24 concrete columns and 24 pairs of doors. Inside the “mute box” of the chapel is akin to a mediaeval masonry monastery, with the liturgical east at the north, marked by the light from a cross-shaped skylight. Upstairs, the music school atmosphere is an altogether softer yet still mature environment, thanks to engineered timber panelling and spaces that open up to the city skyline. The new building – set alongside the original 19th century house (staff offices), 1965 Orchard Hall (dining room and theatre), 1937 Main Block (classrooms and library) and 1991 gymnasium – also houses a new languages department, music school, chapel and visitor entrance within a façade of ivory polished concrete panels, that harmonises all these isolated, disparate buildings, creating a cultural focal point for the school. Massar Children’s Discovery Centre
Location: Damascus, Syria
Architecture Practice: Henning Larsen Architects
With 40% of the national population under 15 years, Syria is at the geographic and generational crossroads of a sudden boom in global intellectual and economic trade. So with a mind to capitalising on this opportune situation, the national education system has adopted Massar, a voluntary, non-formal, exploration-based education system that runs in tandem with a compulsory schooling regime. Within the Massar programme, children aged 5–15 learn through exploring a broad spectrum of non-linear subject areas and activities, with a view towards building creativity, capability, international exchange of ideas, and citizenship within both a multicultural country and a multicultural world community. But with such an innovative programme came the need for a purpose-built learning centre, one that understands and encourages this dynamic learning process. Henning Larsen’s vision beat out four competing architects, including Zaha Hadid, with its ‘capacity building’ approach – founded on the idea of community engagement and local user collaboration – incorporating a plan for scientific exhibitions, special exhibition areas, a library, classrooms and research facilities, set on a 170,000m2 riverbed site within a stunning 16,000m2 rose-shaped discovery centre at its heart. The shape of the centre – that of the Syrian or Damask rose – was planned in 3D using parametric design, making it one of Henning Larsen’s most geometrically complex designs. Inside, the skylight of the central atrium resembles the intricate inner spirals of a nautilus shell: a space for interaction, which extends to the non-linear discovery spaces and then at its edges spirals out to the gardens beyond. The construction features materials that encapsulate Syria’s ancestry and are known to grow more beautiful over time, such as Tadmory, a Syrian limestone; rock mosaics created by local artists; and a locally crafted wooden box inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which serves as the front reception desk. + 1 The Central Los Angeles Area High School #9, Los Angeles, California USA. COOP HIMMELB(L)AU. 2 & 3 Montessori School Fuji Kindergarten, Tachikawa, Tokyo, Japan. TEZUKA ARCHITECTS. 4 to 6 Oslo International School, Oslo, Norway. Jarmund/Vigsnæs AS Architects MNAL. 7 St Benedict's School, Ealing, West London, England. Buschow Henley Architects Ltd. 8 & 9 Massar Discover Centre for Children, Damascus, Syria. Henning Larsen Architects.
IMAGES courtesy of ©Tom Bonner, ©Lane Barden, ©Katsuhisa Kida/FOTOTECA, Ivan Brodey, David Grandorge, Henning Larsen Architects |
