Whole School Exemplars - Science (Lisa Mackenzie Consultancy)

LMC

Lisa Mackenzie Consultancy / Landscape Architecture Urban Design / Design/ Office c/o School of Landscape Architecture / Lauriston Place Edinburgh / Scotland / UK Mobile: +44 7977 580 232 / Telephone: +44 131 221 6090 / Fax: 44 131 221 6005

Innovative Whole School Exemplars Senses of Place 3 - 18 A+DS Schools Programme

l.mackenzie@eca.ac.uk www.lisamackenzie.co.uk Lisa Mackenzie Principal

Kevin Jones Landscape Architect

30 April 2009

Senses of Place: Building Excellence Design Brief: West Lothian: Science

Within the initial project entitled “Senses of Place, Building Excellence” Lisa Mackenzie was asked to develop a design exemplar that would enhance science education in the context of the Curriculum for Excellence.

“My brief conveyed a strong and concurrent message that science education in their experience (the pupils who participated in the project from West Lothian schools) lacked a connection, not only into the realm of their daily lives but also back into the external setting of the school and beyond into local and global environments” Lisa Mackenzie, Senses of Place: Building Excellence The Toolkit and Outcomes

In response to the brief Lisa’s aim was to fuse nature, science and a diverse range of learning styles to make a new spatial typology for the science classroom. In this conceptual environment the boundary between internal and external space was eroded and the design anticipated a reconnection with nature in order to inspire science learning. The image on the right illustrates an unconventional classroom ‘atmosphere’ where nature and technology are brought together in a laboratory setting.

Through experimenting with different ‘deskscapes’ and teaching configurations the project began to explore the possibility of the cross pollination of ideas between groups in the classroom and beyond to initiate a ‘learning community’. Ideas were generated against the ‘static’ of traditional architectural solutions to embrace new technology in the classroom and allow for flexible and adaptable configurations.

With Dave Murray-Rust of the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh Lisa worked on a multipoint touch surface desk around which her exhibition at the Lighthouse centred. Images bottom right, Fiona Hislop and West Lothian pupils experimenting with new technology.

Lisa MacKenzie Consultancy Architecture and Design Scotland Senses of Place

Innovative Whole School Exemplars Senses of Place 3 - 18

Lisa MacKenzie Consultancy Architecture and Design Scotland Senses of Place

In this project entitled ‘Innovative Whole School Exemplars - Senses of Place 3-18 we were asked by Sam Cassels, Schools Design Advisor to Architecture + Design Scotland to build upon work undertaken in our initial project Senses of Place: Building Excellence.

Our brief was to explore how a thematic ‘Sense of Place’ innovation might maximise its impact on a whole school and explore how this might look and feel different from a conventional school building.

We believe that these questions are critical to the themes addressed within “A Curriculum for Excellence”. In order to respond to the brief and re-engage with vital project issues we decided to focus our attention on the internal workings of the school and classroom.

The starting point for our approach to the project began with a simple concept model that returned, essentially to themes of ADAPTABILITY and CHANGE addressed in our work and exhibition for Senses of Place: Building Excellence.

We feel that a new school’s requirements are often contemplated in reaction to immediate teaching and subject trends. These shortterm considerations frequently come to dominate both the evolution of design thinking and the dialogue between stakeholders. In these circumstances, traditional accommodation schedules can limit a school’s ability to modify its curriculum over time.

Does the over specification of accommodation schedules lead to inflexibility in the range and dynamics of subjects taught? Are opportunities lost for collaborative and multi-subject learning? Is the flexibility of the curriculum limited over time?

Initially, we wanted to develop a classroom prototype that could be tried and tested by teachers and pupils. A flexible, inexpensive, highly adaptable space that would initiate design by research: an iterative process where occupancy evaluation could be undertaken by designers in dialogue with both teachers and pupils. Our aspiration is that design would evolve simultaneously with teaching and learning as teachers, pupils and designers experimented, explored and experienced the classroom in real time.

Images below illustrate a simple starting structure for the classroom, that explores the potential of the walls and roof to ‘unfold’, thus allowing the building itself to adapt to the moment - a rainstorm, a celebration, a need for absolute silence during the school day. We wanted to create a structure that would allow for distinctiveness and promote individual development, imagination and a richness of ideas. It exhibits an elegant ‘spareness’ deliberately encouraging pupils to take ownership of its identity and bring it to life.

Concept model

Lisa MacKenzie Consultancy Architecture and Design Scotland Senses of Place

Our concept model allowed us to test, thematically, issues of designing a human scaled school. The simplicity of the building frame allows for a multiplicity of internal arrangements depending on circumstance and the will of the teacher and pupils using the space. Although highly conceptual, the model on the right explores a series of flexible walls which would allow the internal configuration of the classroom to be changed during the course of the day or week in order to promote different learning patterns and encourage collaboration.

Science classrooms are ordinarily viewed as designated spaces but we propose an alternative analysis where the constants and variables necessary for effective learning are explored and researched through experimentation rather than an acceptance that traditional procedures cannot be altered.

By giving pupils ownership over the scale and construction of their own space, can a sense of trust be achieved that enables creative and independent thinking?

The walls in this model show a CT Scan (Computerised Tomography) to the rear and a projected and interactive Periodic Table to the fore and illustrate how a subject area such as science may take ownership over the aesthetic of the classroom space. The structure is deliberately light and transparent in order to maintain a relationship to the external environment of the school. When this becomes a distraction to the pupils the teacher can pull down screens or slide doors in order to return the classroom to a solid state.

Concept model

Lisa MacKenzie Consultancy Architecture and Design Scotland Senses of Place

Our aspiration is that the new classroom, could promote a better understanding of human habitability and environmental sustainability by exposing pupils, through the inherent structure of the building, to primary source materials and their application.

Photographs of conceptual models below show the evolution of our own design thinking and experimentation with different cladding materials to enrich the structure and make it a curious and vibrant addition to the school. The ‘style’ is deliberately anonymous in order that the classroom could be inserted into any school environment irrespective of its age and existing aesthetic.

The classroom could be ‘plugged’ into existing school buildings through the use of permeable joining membranes or simple adaptations to form. In order to allow many schools to test and experiment with the classroom prototype, it is desirable that the structure can be manufactured off site and transported into place.

Structure; inherent adaptability

Lisa MacKenzie Consultancy Architecture and Design Scotland Senses of Place

The light structure frames external views without interupting the relationship between inside and outside spaces.

Structure pivots outwards to create an open internal space or sheltered external space.

Internal panels are light and translucent showing the structure and external spaces. They are also highly adaptable, allowing the classroom to be changed year to year, subject to subject.

Vegetation on the exterior of the structure allows spaces to blend into their surroundings. Living walls have the potential to function as productive vertical gardens where external space is limited.

Structure pivots outwards to create an open internal space or sheltered external space.

Flexible learning within adaptable structures Full scale prototyping

Lisa MacKenzie Consultancy Architecture and Design Scotland Senses of Place

The autonomous nature of the new classroom allows it to sit comfortably within any school environment. We believe that through interaction and dialogue with school personnel a balance can be achieved between spatial quality and functional utility.

We hope the new structures will adhere to richness in the edges of existing school spaces – igniting curiosity and interaction.

It is vital that designers can recognise the nature of a school culture and its dynamics.

On a fine day the walls fold up to provide shelter from a short summer rain burst and the singing lesson continues......................

Our aim was to avoid fixing a learning space into a required infrastructure.

The potential proximity of other classrooms in the school grounds allows for unforeseen collaborations between subject areas and could involve a diverse range of pupils at different educational levels.

The school welcomes the community in for a range of new functions. Programmes for use outside the school day are developed, thus opening the school to the social and cultural life of its surrounding community.

External classroom arrangements such as those illustrated below would help pupils make the transition from primary to secondary school. The classrooms are transparent and intended to initiate a welcome and breathe a new playfulness into old and often oppressive school buildings.

Carnsalloch House, Dumfries

A network of classrooms are fluid in terms of their organisation and configuration and conducive to children understanding and participating in the events and beliefs of other cultures.

Adaptable space an internal/external dialogue

The prototype classrooms would have the potential to stand against the homogenisation of school environments in Scotland. It is our aim that these thematic interventions would help strengthen and evolve a ‘Sense of Place’ by intertwining the needs of learners, teachers and community. An understanding of inhabitation and shared ownership between stakeholders would evolve over time.

Aspirations for the classroom prototypes and their use are as follows: t

Programme of real scale prototypes of detachable components initiate an inquiry with the building and its use throughout the day and at different times of the year.

t

Give pupils a sense of ownership of ideas as they apply to theory and practice.

t

Provide an active and involved learning experience.

t

Provide support for independent learning.

t

Accommodate different learning styles.

t

Make students thinking visible.

t

Enable tailored instruction to meet specific pupil needs.

Lisa MacKenzie Consultancy Architecture and Design Scotland Senses of Place

‘L’ shaped classrooms

Lisa MacKenzie Consultancy Architecture and Design Scotland Senses of Place

Although we began with a simple rectangular form for the classroom we moved on to contemplate an L-shaped configuration in the latter stages of the project.

L shaped classroom

It is understood that current teaching practice will enable learning to become increasingly active and independent and that learning groups will be formed more flexibly. In response to this we wanted to initiate a classroom typology that would give teachers as much flexibility as possible. external courtyard

We considered an L-shaped plan and believe that it could allow for the greatest flexibility in terms of accommodating different groups (large or small) pursuing alternative learning exercises simultaneously. We imagine that the shape of this classroom could encourage higher levels of teacher movement and thus initiate more meaningful student-teacher contact.

The L-shaped configuration would also allow for group or independent use of a range of resources both virtual and real. Spaces for teachers to work together planning curriculum in cross disciplinary teams could be accommodated in the connecting spaces between the classroom ends.

small transparent hub space for teachers or pupils

Simple 3-dimensional modeling exercises illustrated on the left test potential configurations and layouts. Such layouts could be developed and implemented with teachers after establishing an understanding of the culture of learning in an individual school.

Using the classrooms as full-scale models – architectural prototypes and cluster typologies could be measured against a number of educational and behavioral objectives

External learning environments, used throughout the day and night

Lisa MacKenzie Consultancy Architecture and Design Scotland Senses of Place

Although the classrooms have not been conceived as permanent fixtures within a schools landscape the potential would exist for some experimental configurations (found to be particularly successful) to be formalised through further design intervention.

These illustrations show prototype classrooms retained within an imagined new school setting. The classrooms would provide direct access to the schools exterior environment and could be used to aid in the configuration and legibility of shared exterior spaces.

Where desirable, prototype classrooms could be dislocated from the main school area in order for them to be appropriated by a range of new users outside the school day.

The structures are simple frames that would help facilitate growth and change but also maintain a continuity of ‘place’ and community.

At night the classrooms could provide an intriguing and artistic threshold into the school grounds.

Experiment and Configure - Plugged in

Experiment and Configure - Spread out

Experiment and Configure - Connected

Adaptable space an internal/external dialogue

Lisa MacKenzie Consultancy Architecture and Design Scotland Senses of Place

Mobility - learning in the wider landscape We are interested in the potential of technology to erode walls and take the space of the classroom outside itself into the landscape of Scotland. Through technology the user can potentiakly becomes the link between an idea and physical reality. We hope that through the use of new virtual technology we can promote intellectual camaraderie through exciting experiences of the world beyond the school gates. In the illustrations below we imagine that the school could be taken out into the landscape but that perhaps the landscape could also be taken to the school!

Lisa MacKenzie Consultancy Architecture and Design Scotland Senses of Place

Conclusion

Our brief was to explore how a thematic ‘Sense of Place’ innovation might maximise its impact on a whole school and explore how this might look and feel different from a conventional school building.

We posed questions in relation to the over specification of accommodation schedules and a sense that this problem may lead to inflexibility in the range and dynamics of subjects taught. We speculated that opportunities may be lost for collaborative and multisubject learning due to a lack of flexible and adaptable teaching spaces within schools. We propose the idea that ‘added value’ could be achieved through design if the right kind of spaces were integrated into the school from the beginning. This, in reality, can only be realised if positive and active teacher and pupil participation is facilitated.

Our own design process within this project examined and experimented with a simple classroom typology that could be used to bring teachers, pupils and designers together to design by creative and interdisciplinary research into collaborative learning environments.

Our aspiration is that through the use of such a prototype a school may be able to rationalise and even condense its accommodation without loosing opportunities to teach new subject areas or innovate with multi-subject education.

Our solution was to design a flexible, inexpensive and highly adaptable structure that could be used as a participatory tool in the design and inception of human scaled schools. The prototype classroom is a resource, an experiment and a device for observation where observed successes could be formalised for the benefit of the school. By taking this approach, we have had to accept that the outcomes are unpredictable, however, we believe that it is possible that though such an intervention it may be possible that teachers and pupils are not only engaged in the debate but also meaningfully involved in design.

Lisa MacKenzie Consultancy Architecture and Design Scotland Senses of Place