These guiding principles were developed for a design charrette at one of our San Diego firm visits. While they are intended for a particular school – aren’t they applicable to open source learning?? What are guiding principles not above that may be specific to OSL in general? What are guiding principles that are specific to your OSL Academy?
-Break apart the form to highlight particular areas and experiences.
-Encourage interaction with the outdoors.
-Create spaces from which people can voluntarily observe and discuss without interrupting.
-Create spaces students can own and personalize to fit their specific needs.
1. Forget Everything
Designing for a new school should be founded in new ideals, therefore being more adaptable for its diverse student interests.
2. Respond to Learning Styles, Dont Mandate Them
Rather than project a learning style onto a student, and judge them on how well they perform, create styles around how students learn.
3 Be adaptable
Accommodate students for whatever connections they need. Provide them with every space that they could need for a given activity.
4. When Crafting the future, think about whats next
Create a school that can adapt to new styles and aspects of society, do so though customizable boundaries that invite rather than exclude.
I think these are some great ideas, and I especially like the first goal to “Forget Everything”. My question now would be: How much of everything do we need to forget? While it’s true that we are designing a new sort of school, is it really benefitting us to forget everything?
Maybe we don’t have to reinvent the wheel with this project; maybe this project (and architecture as a whole?) is really about looking at what’s already out there and taking a closer look at what does and doesn’t work with our existing systems. Then we take the best parts of the systems that are working and try to figure out how to combine them in a way that works even better.
I’m not saying that we can’t try to come up with anything new or original, but perhaps we should start on a smaller scale. Maybe we start with a new way to connect the pieces rather than trying to make something entirely new from scratch. Over time, as we continue to swap out the pieces that don’t work for new parts that do work, we will eventually end up with an entirely new system that is more suited to meet the needs of the people using it.
I think this idea ties in nicely with your 3rd and 4th goals because swapping out old parts that don’t work for new pieces that work better allows systems to adapt to meet a variety of needs over an extended period of time.
I really like the question you posed, kjbishop13–how much do we need to forget? Like you said, maybe we just need to take a closer look at what works and what doesn’t. I think another approach really is to forget everything and then rediscover. I find that there’s a wonderful joy to rediscovering things. As to which one requires less time and effort, or which one would give more profound results… I guess we’ll just have to work it out and see.
My personal Design Principles:
– Create inviting learning spaces that encourage collaboration, curiosity, and foster students’ sense of exploration
– Provide varieties of spaces to suite multiple styles of behavior and learning habits, emphasizing the role of individual choice rather than industrial standardization of students
– Allow for both horizontal and vertical connections between spaces in combination with transparent elements to connect students with people and ideas outside of their interest zones
– Make circulation paths multipurpose (hang-out zones, break-out zones, collaboration, interaction) to avoid dead space and the “corridor” conundrum
-Connect students to the outdoors/nature and encourage real-life exploration and learning. Encourage people to not be afraid to leave the classroom to gain a new perspective or provide a different atmosphere
OSL Academy guiding design principles:
1.) Create an balance of spaces that account for all learning types.
2.) Connect spaces with similar function through adjacencies to shared equipment and collaboration spaces. Every space will visually, physically, and/or audibly connect to the rest of campus.
3.) Keep a sense of transparency between the school, the students, the faculty, and the public.
4.) Take advantage of the central coast climate by emphasizing views towards the ocean and creating outdoor courtyard spaces that relate to the interior.
Guiding Principles for 21st Century Learning
1) Stairs as a spatial and visual communicator
2) Indoor spaces have a relationship to the outdoors
3) Interior spaces be a balance of flexibility, variety, choice
4) Get as much natural daylight inside possible
5) Building has an identity
6) Transparency between variety of spaces
7) Design with experience and hope in mind
8) Places for people to meet
Cole’s Guiding Design Principles:
1. Teachers should be supporters of exploration, not guides for studying.
2. Each learner needs a space that he or she can truly make their own.
3. “But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself” (William Blake). Connection to the natural and wonderful should be part of every space; how much a part is the question. Times for feeding versus times for curating our dreams.
4. We need to recognize the necessities of both formal and informal learning.
5. This place must necessarily be of learning.
6. Encourage learners to take risks and forget their learned habits; these things are essential in collaboration.
– Create a sense of community and perhaps even camaraderie by providing group spaces that are inviting. Group spaces can be in many places: in circulation, in the classrooms, in the courtyard…
– Allow students, teachers, and visitors to feel at home. Let them change their environments or add onto it.
– Courtyards as the major social space. One can serve as a quad for school gatherings but also for an open gathering space for large groups. Other can serve as an intimate courtyard for one person or small groups. Accommodate for everyone.
– Circulation becomes an experience, not just a path from one point to another.
1. Students like plants need a variety of conditions to flourish
2. reflect the additive nature of open source in architecture. Instances where students can “leave mark” on the building
3. encourage feeling of ownership
4. provide a place for students to gather information
5. provide space for synthesis of information…collab spaces both stable and unstable (students and teaches)
6. provide a space for activation of ideas as to give back into community
7. transparency between classes, shops, students, teachers, inside, outside
8. create egalitarian culture, foster a culture, open free flow of information
While all of these principles have a place in our educational space, there are a few that I feel really resonate with the concept I have for OSL.
#1 – Spatial and sensual phenomenology. – This seems invaluable to create different atmospheres for both the different focus zones and also the different common areas that should be scattered throughout.
#5 – Classrooms spill into other multipurpose spaces. – This would greatly reinforce the idea that learning doesnt only happen in the classroom, and while there should be some sort of structuring to halp an organized lesson plan, this shouldnt be isolate.
#6 – Vertical circulation serves as a sectional connector + social space. – With so many atmospheres and different activites going on, there needs to be a cohesion and an attempt to hold it all together, I think this can be done with the circulation and using it to connect levels and anchor the space.
#9 – Students feel at home/have a sense of ownership of the space. – This is key to OSL. They need to take charge of thir education, in their passions, in the way they use the spaces provided, and how they alter the space to fit their evolving needs.
Design guidelines//what I’m am I trying to do here?
Create varied spaces for a wide spectrum of activities + desires. Spaces that make sense based on observation, experience, and human nature.
Increase visual + acoustic transparency to enhance community + connectivity. Enhance a network of learning by allowing students to be inspired by what others are doing.
Maximize + optimize outdoor spaces that can (and SHOULD) be used as classrooms.
-Education should be led by curiosity and discovery, learning by doing. Program and form will encourage learning, collaboration, inter-focus projects and exploration.
-Teachers should support each other and form a team spirit for the well being of the learners.
-Learners should feel at home and have a sense of ownership over spaces, giving them some freedom to lead learning experience. Class spaces should mesh with multi-purpose areas for informal learning.
-Encourage sustainable behaviors by example and connect to nature and exterior spaces.
We also need a grand concept to hold the project together.
1. Space for the individual, space for the small group, space for the larger group.
2. Intentional exposure to other activities/happenings; spatial connections.
3. A celebration of the commons where work is generated and displayed.
4. Indoor & outdoor integral connection- circulation not limited to the interior.
5. Food as a gathering.
6. Teachers must integrate/mingle/cross pollinate/collaborate.
7. Students and teachers must have flexibility, variety, and choice, especially with room size, acoustics, and furniture.
8. Students must be allowed to own the place and make it their own.
9. There must be places to be loud and messy.
10. Teachers should be aware of what other students and teachers are involved in.
11. Cultivate cross-disciplinary project based learning.
12. Access to teachers/teachers should be approachable.
13. Outside involvement from the community.
Guiding Principals for Erik:
1. Focus on non-routine movement to allow people to get spontaneously from space to space. Variation can lend itself to chance encounters and informal learning/stimuli
2. Promote transparency in both horizontal and vertical planes to allow space to begin to share internal information
3. Bring the environment in.. San Luis Obispo is a very comfortable environment and outdoor/semi outdoor learning is not problematic most of the year unlike other environments
4. Spaces of informal learning must be adaptable
5. Teachers offices should cater to movement, with teachers as aids/guides in a project based learning system instead of lecturers they should be less stationary
6. Student common areas can serve as flex space for learning to promote the mixture of students social and academic lives
7. Using weather and climate to create spaces that have varying environments throughout the day and through out the year to promote variation
Guiding Principles:
– Emphasize the connection between ideas/interests – how one thought naturally leads to another.
– Students should learn through curiosity.
– Teachers encourage curiosity and help students create a variety of learning environments.
– Students have the power to adapt their learning environment so that it is most beneficial to the way they want to learn.
My Design Principles for OSL Academy:
1. Community should support one another and be welcomed – emphasis on teamwork and collaboration.
2. Explore stairs and hallways to be more than just circulation spaces but as social spaces.
3. Building can teach occupants and community about sustainability.
4. Students and community should sense a pride of ownership of the spaces.
5. Spaces should blend into each other – allowing students or community to see beyond their own interests.
6. Create different experiences throughout classrooms/spaces.
7. Encourage interaction and communication among community, staff, and students.
1. Students should be able to see each others resources
2. Unsecluded informal gathering zones for small groups should be provided
3. Interest zones & clusters should be bold together
4. Daylighting is absolutely necessary
5. views outside the school should come in pockets
6. Studios should not only remain on the perimeter
7. “The greater purpose is that we’re communing together and we want this moment to be really special for all of us” yo-yo-ma
8. Design form to be witnessed and not just seen
9. Design form to be the witness of learning moments
Guiding Principles:
1.) Encourage communal learning
2.) Inside areas bleed to outdoor courtyard
3.) One clear entrance
4.) Defined commons
5.) Intimacy
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