Design Share 2007 – Global Learning
Awards programs, regardless of the industry, provide an opportunity to reflect on the year’s innovative trends and key projects deemed the best-of-the-best. The 8th Annual DesignShare Awards Program pushes the concept one step further by combining two disciplines, education and design, to focus on designing innovative environments for the future of learning.
The 2007 winning projects include four honor awards, seven merit awards, five citations and 13 recognized value awards. The collective projects submitted to the program represent a dynamic spectrum of typologies — from urban to rural, new facilities to reconstructions, conservative to progressive, modest to elaborate — and cover facilities from preschool to higher education.
The projects represent nine countries — including Singapore, India, Japan, Australia and Holland — providing a snapshot into educational and design practices across the United States and around the globe.
The DesignShare awards recognize projects that support the learning process, anticipate change and inspire unimagined possibilities. For the 22-member jury, the selection process was a rewarding experience.
As the team shared ideas and discussed projects, conversations among educators and architects revealed that some projects were important to educators, while others caught the attention of the planners and architects. The projects that received awards captivated both sets of professions. Each project highlighted the importance of collaborative conversations among architects and educators during the planning and design process.
The jury was challenged during the evaluation to look further than a school’s image to recognize projects that focus on learning, students and a built environment designed to enhance the educational experience. Likewise, teams of educators and architects submitting projects were asked to describe ideas that enhance learning, and innovations in planning, programming and design to facilitate educational ideas.
HONOR AWARD
A NET OF IMAGINATION: Yuyu-no-mori Nursery School and Day Nursery |  |
As the first combined school/day nursery in Yokohama City , this project is receiving national attention in Japan as one of the 36 model combined schools for infants in the country. In contrast to previous schools for infants, this child-centered facility accommodates families regardless of socioeconomic status.
Play is central to this project. Children develop as humans and students through play, which has a profound impact on intelligence, emotions and sociability. With these ideas in mind, the planning team programmed an environment to develop creativity, imagination, a feeling of wonder and the ability to communicate confidently. The design team shaped the learning environments around three guiding concepts: enable a child-centered nursery, celebrate teachers’ warm engagement with children and promote child development through a circular play system.
A large net connecting the second level with a catwalk above celebrates and encourages active play. Children can go up and down, swing and even lie down as if the net were a hammock. The net has become the defining feature of the school and is the center of play.
In addition to the public spaces, classroom environments warm with natural woods and daylight feature alcoves and lofts to further encourage child-scaled activities.
HONOR AWARD
| EDUCATIONAL VILLAGE: Vidyalankar Institute of Technology Location: Mumbai, India Designer: Planet 3 Studios Architecture Program: College/University — Engineering Focus Capacity: 1,200 Completion: 2006 |  |
The new engineering school allowed a re-evaluation of current operations, and as the project kicked-off, designers suggested involving students in the process. The result of the exercise refined the understanding of how the institute actually functioned at a social level. The program brief then expanded to include the subtleties of relational dynamics between faculties, resources, student groups and the community.
Architecturally, the project needed to engage a complex design program in an urban context within a developing country. The team chose to explore a horizontal form, which allowed an educational village to be built within the building envelope.
The village has several groupings with similar requirements in clearly defined structures along a main learning street, which serves as the central organizing element of the village and encourages student interactions. This structure of open public spaces, enclosed semi-public spaces and private areas provides the spatial connectivity of open plan interiors, encouraging equal and communal learning experiences.
The project provides numerous activities to promote interaction, including a human sized chessboard, a table tennis court, half-court basketball, a street side café, a book kiosk, a graffiti wall, student work displays and a suspended amphitheater.
HONOR AWARD
| SPIRIT OF PARTNERSHIP: OZW, VU University Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands |  |
An experimental collaboration among multiple educational institutions, a full-spectrum curriculum and degree opportunities are offered here for students interested in health- and wellness-related professions. Unique in Holland, this project marks the first time that different school organizations focused on a common area of study collocated in one building.
Designed to prepare students for academic citizenship and an active role in society, the program encourages them to look beyond the boundaries of their own discipline, as well as beyond the boundaries of their culture, traditions and philosophy.
High-rise multi-floor atria flow diagonally through the building like a waterfall. The compact, yet light-filled, building opens at every level, freeing users of the confinement often experienced in traditional high-rise blocks. Sloping facades provide unexpected perspectives on all sides. The atria windows are large, reflecting the studyscapes that lie behind them.
Walking to the building, one is struck by the transparent lower layer, which forms a plinth. The focal point of the atrium is a large oval volume — the presentation room — suspended in space as the heart of the building. This space allows a community of students and lecturers/researchers to participate together in the learning process.
HONOR AWARD
INTEGRATING ART AND DESIGN: School of Art, Design & Media Location: Singapore |  |
The design team for the new School of Art, Media and Design let the landscape play a critical role in molding the building. Located in a wooded valley, the site was master-planned as a green lung for the 480-acre university campus. The university’s curvilinear courtyard is formed by a series of green roofs that shelter the glass-enclosed program.
A unique feature of the building is its transparency and connectivity — both within the interior spaces and in the external environment. The grassy slopes of the green roof, peeling from the landscape as ribbons, allow students to gather informally, bask in the evening sun and soak in the views offered by the green campus. Internal glass walls allow for visibility, enhance visual connectivity, promote interaction and facilitate creative exchange. A reflective pond provides a visual respite for classrooms, labs and offices that overlook the courtyard. The exterior space also serves as an impromptu performance platform for students.
Designers deliberately left interior and exterior surfaces of the building unfinished to serve as blank slates for creative student expression. Additionally, the changing character of the facade lends dynamism, life and interest to the building as day transforms into night.
MERIT AWARD
SCHOOL WITHOUT HALLWAYS: Marysville Getchell High School Location: Marysville, Wash. |  |
Moving beyond traditional departmental and even hybrid departmental/interdisciplinary planning models, this high school project takes a stand as a model for autonomous small schools within a school, giving it a chance to hold its own against the gravity of departmental organization.
Together with programming and planning specialists, staff and community members, the district developed a set of five guiding principles to express values and concepts central to student success, including relationships at the center, focused learning, identity and purpose, community and accountability.
The process of creating these principles and applying them to the project allowed the district to leave behind traditional concepts with a new educational program planned around interest-based small learning communities.
The design team eliminated traditional hallways to create a school with flexibility to accommodate curriculum changes. The school is planned for learning to take place in every space, indoors and outdoors. It is truly a part of its landscape and of its community, and focuses entirely on student potential and learning.
MERIT AWARD
SETTING THE STAGE: Polaris K-12 School Location: Anchorage, Alaska |  |
Thirteen years ago, this school program was born out of a need to provide an alternative to a traditional educational format, using an optional method of instruction. Housed in an old theater in a former wetlands area, site and size constraints were not viewed as insurmountable. Rather, the community focus was directed toward the educational program that was taking place within the old theater’s walls.
With a program based on self-directed and active learning, student ideas, projects and real life choices are evident throughout the facility. Interior and exterior panels are designed for student murals that allow students to continually paint their school and reveal the thoughts and attitudes of the student body. Designed to be easily replaced, the school can retain the interior panels year-to-year or allow students to keep them.
MERIT AWARD
SIMPLE CHOICES: Eureka School: AID India Location: Parameswaramangalam, India |  |
This school, along with a village library, science lab, computer center and livelihood center, forms a development campus for a village cluster affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Locally, the quality of education is a huge problem, with more than 50 percent of children unable to read grade-appropriate materials. Classroom structure, authoritarian teachers and a teaching-learning methodology that stresses rote memorization instead of constructive learning are the root causes of the problem. To demonstrate change is possible, the new school was established to provide quality education to children from rural and low-income backgrounds. To support this model, the program required space to allow freedom, exploration and confidence building among students.
Design parameters informed by local and global case studies established the crucial role of transition zones — alongside structured program spaces — to support spontaneous activity and interactive learning.
Additionally, the design of the school borrows sustainable ideas from local village school types where the veranda is both a spontaneous activity zone and thermal buffer, given the hot and humid climate.
MERIT AWARD
HUB OF CUSTOMIZATION: Desjardins Information Hub Location: Shawinigan, Canada |  |
The Information Hub is a dynamic learning environment for both students and staff at this college campus. The re-envisioned program for the campuswide library knits together various services to create a relationship among library services, guidance and careers, the help center, teacher activities and development.
Successful integration of information technology was a key driver of the project. Work areas, organized to create a variety of surroundings, allow users the opportunity to align workspaces with specific tasks. Technical and informational resources are collocated with documenting services to provide convenient access to resources by students and faculty. A media studio and a wireless network allow the development of skills and access to information. Here, information technology plays a decisive role in supporting teaching and learning.
MERIT AWARD
UPWARD THINKING DESIGN: The Calhoun School Location: New York |  |
Developed after a comprehensive master plan and feasibility study, the architect’s design for this prestigious school on Manhattan’s upper west side adds four stories and a mezzanine level to the existing building and fills in the building footprint. The design, which adds 30,500 square feet of space, resolves the formal and programmatic challenges in expanding vertically and horizontally to the 1973 concrete and travertine building.
The school is the first educational institution in New York to design an eco-friendly green roof, which transformed a sterile roofing surface into a safe, multipurpose oasis of fresh air and greenery for students, faculty and the community. While adding some cost to the expansion — compared with a utilitarian membrane roof — the roof is actually the least expensive educational space built during the project.
Since its opening, the roof has been used by teachers for environmental and plant biology studies and for units in math. Next year, there will be an astronomy elective for students, who will use the roof as an observation deck.
MERIT AWARD
A NOTION OF HOLISTIC LEARNING: Galilee Catholic Learning Community Location: Aldinga SA, Australia |  |
Developing an educational brief for a new learning community was an exciting challenge for the school’s Education and Building Group. The overall project vision was to create an integrated community of faith, learning, family and friendships.
Defining the student gave the group a foundation for its initial deliberations. The group moved forward with two overarching understandings: Students are competent, critical, active and social beings who constantly produce change through dynamic movement among each other and within the environment; and student competency and motivation can be enhanced or inhibited by the setting.
Members were influenced by the Reggio Emilia approach, in which the environment is seen as a teacher. Physical space is a language of its own and a strong conditioning factor in communicating culture and values. Flexibility in the design of the physical space helps teachers and students fully explore holistic education and encourages the evolution of ideas.
MERIT AWARD
A CHILD’S SPIRIT: Harris Family Children’s Center Location: Exeter, N.H. |  |
The design of the Children’s Center was a collaborative project. Educators and architects worked closely together to create an environment that supports the school’s mission.
The team explored ideas about the learning environment to teach appreciation of the arts and sciences, allow opportunities for exploration and experimentation, and create a close connection to the environment.
Serving students from 6 weeks to 5 years old, the design of the building was intended to be highly functional and adaptable. The school offers after-school care for elementary school-age children. During the summer months, the building expands to accommodate an additional 40 summer campers.
The team wanted to create an environment that was aesthetically pleasing to both children and adults. With this in mind, the center provides comfortable alternative areas where parents can spend time with their children when visiting during the course of the day. In addition to the spacious classrooms, common areas are incorporated for children to explore, collaborate and engage in multi-sensorial experiences.
Natural light fills the spaces and the design creates a direct correlation between the interior and the exterior of the building. Windows are positioned low enough for young children to observe the outdoors and the change of seasons. A wall of windows near the building’s entrance looks out over the great lawn and the river beyond.
CITATION AWARD PROJECTS John Hay High School, Cleveland, Ohio; OWP/P RECOGNIZED VALUE AWARD PROJECTS Kanu o ka ‘Aina Learning ‘Ohana, Kamuela, Hawaii; Olani Lilly |