Merit Awards

Merit Award
Australian Math & Science School
Bedford Park, Australia, Woods Bagot Adelaide

This design truly facilitates and supports collaborative, project-based learning and illustrates the value of learning commons, studios, using the building as a learning tool, and relationships among learners and teachers, reports Susan J. Wolff.

The school’s key feature is the replacement of classroom and laboratories with "learning commons" and "learning studios," according to the project’s architects. Home-base workstations exist within learning commons that provide personal desk and storage stations for 50 students. Students organize their areas to meet social or study group needs.

The primary learning spaces are the learning commons, which comprise three zones corresponding to year level, each subdivided into home groups.

The learning studios contain specialist services and facilities enabling students to undertake practical work and experiments that support activities in the learning commons. Operable walls and partial walls between learning commons allow flexibility.

Merit Award
Henry Park Primary School
Singapore, CPG Consultants Pte Ltd.

The review team felt this project provided a number of creative solutions to problems associated with an overwhelmingly large, 2,000-student school for young children.

Henry Sanoff remarked that there are many interesting child-centered features to make this large school appear small. And Susan J. Wolff commented that size might not be as much of an issue in a culture where ground space is at a premium and they have to build up and house more learners than what may be desirable. She applauded the attention paid to socialization, personalization, self-directed learning, and the green spaces.

Merit Award
Canchias School
Comayagua, Honduras, Schools for the Children of the World

The region within which Canchias School is located has suffered, and still suffers, from devastating destruction caused by a variety of natural disasters. Complicating problems, Honduras recently lost more than two-thirds of its schools during a recent hurricane.

This project demonstrates the value of using an inclusive community participation process to integrate facility planning and education to create a much-improved educational setting. For instance, during community interviews, the architect found that many older children did not go to school because they were required to watch their younger siblings while parents worked the fields. By including a pre-K/kindergarten classroom in the new school, the architect found that attendance increased by nearly 50 percent.

It is a great example of how a project should be the result of dedicating time and sharing experiences and cooperation. Educators from North America participated in a teacher workshop with the school’s teachers, exchanging ideas on how to make the classrooms more effective learning environments. In addition, North American high school students and architecture students from Honduran universities were included on the design team, adding valuable cultural and local design insights that have continued to improve sensitivity to local values.

Merit Award
The Center School
Seattle, Washington Educational Architecture/Bassetti Architects

Steve Dubinsky

This project, set in a historic building in the heart of a city neighborhood mixed with cultural buildings and cultural activities, presents an excellent solution to a difficult construction problem-how to reuse urban facilities. Spaces for learning and socialization are clearly expressed and the most attractive thing about this project, according to one reviewer, is that it does not even resemble what you expect to be school; it is really city life that’s found its expression here.

Merit Award
Oak Valley Aboriginal School
South Australia, Department of Administrative and Information Services

This project displays good interaction of learning and community spaces in a small building in a remote rural area. The building responds well to local culture and climatic situation; flexible spaces with different furniture layouts and a lot of verandahs integrate with the outdoors. Built with simple techniques and materials; the project displays modest, non-pretentious contemporary architecture.

There was detailed, indeed tortuous, consultation every step of the way and the desires of the children and the community were paramount, according to the architects. If the community doesn’t feel this school has met their requirements they just don’t use it. They go off into the bush a few kilometers and sit down on their tarpaulin and just abandon the school. The school is more than a place where children learn. It is a bridge between two cultures that are very different. It is a refuge, a place where people sleep and eat and shower and sit on the ground and talk.

Merit Award
Lev Hasharon Elementary School
Raanana, Israel, Simon and Gideon Powsner

Bill Ainsworth liked the village approach to this design-the fragmentation of elements and their affect upon building scale.

Susan J. Wolff also liked the village effect, specifically how the children’s village is located among the orchards, and how the design seems to belong to children, not the adults.

And, Randall Fielding commented on the cluster furniture plan that illustrates three octagonal classrooms and a separate lecture room for each cluster. Different furniture configurations for each classroom demonstrate a good understanding of various learning modalities. A teacher collaboration area is included in each cluster.

Merit Award
Learndirect
South Yorkshire, United Kingdom, Ufi Ltd.

This project is not a school but a system to support lifelong learning using technology, often in retail settings. Learndirect takes the idea of a Cyber café and incorporates the details needed to make it a meaningful educational experience.

The project makes it very appealing for any learner to enter and start studying at his/her own rhythm. The project includes nicely designed furniture, suited for different learning situations, and attractive bright colors. The facility shows how important it is to organize technology into a variety of learning settings through furnishing that supports different learning styles-something that has been missing in technology space planning.

Merit Award
Griffiths Primary School
Singapore, CPG Consultants Pte Ltd.

Here is a very creative reuse of an existing, outdated facility-of which we have several thousand in the USA that flounder because of a lack of creative thinking. The resulting spaces are vastly improved. Despite its tight urban site, this school has managed to create some quality green spaces and outdoor learning areas. The end result is a building that has been reclaimed and not only looks new but feels new. Henry Sanoff thought it an excellent attempt at humanizing and de-institutionalizing a very large elementary school.

Merit Award – Reviewer category
The Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center
Providence, Rhode Island, Concordia LLC, with Steven Bingler, review team member

A promising model of how to create campuses of small schools is how Jeff Lackney described the integrated design process for The Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center (MET). Prakash Nair noted that the MET is a case study "valuable as much for the process used to create the school as the school itself."

MET staff and students, community stakeholders, and design professionals envisioned a physical learning environment that will distribute six to eight small schools of 100-125 students over several downtown and South Providence sites.

Currently, four small schools exist as individual, standalone buildings on a campus that also includes community use facilities for fitness, theatre and production, a community health center, bookstore, dining areas, offices, and flexible "outreach labs" where students can create and operate their own businesses.

The philosophy guiding the MET is to educate one student at a time through real-world learning and community engagement, both in school through group work and in the greater community through meaningful internships and projects. The results are a sense of belonging for students. Inside the school, spaces are designed to support the students’ real-world work outside of school. There are quiet, comfortable places for independent research and reflection; bright, active rooms for project and group work; and warm, welcoming spaces for family and community involvement.

Merit Award – Reviewer category
Surkis Elementary School
Kfar Saba Israel, Gavriela Nussbaum Architects

Surkis Elementary illustrates a good use of the "house" concept-also referred to as a "pod,’ or "cluster" concept-to organize space. Three clusters each contain six classrooms with foldable acoustic partitions opening to a common area; this central area houses a variety of learning centers that allow for interaction between different age groups. Opening and closing these partitions can create spaces of varying sizes or one large space. Each house has its own color, also reflected in the furniture.

This project leverages multiple design principles in creating rich learning settings throughout the school, according to Jeff Lackney, who adds that communal space, shared by six classrooms and two age groups, is a good example of "thick space," space filled with overlapping activities from study centers, computers, and exhibitions.