and Design of Schools Within
the Context of Community
By Anne Taylor,
Ph.D., Hon. AIA
Professor and Director of The
Institute for Environmental Education, University of New Mexico
from a paper given at the Stein Institute
Lecture Series, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. An earlier
version of this paper was presented as part of the "Stein Lecture
Series: Policy, Planning and Design for a 21st Century Public Education
System", May 2000.
Taylor employs the antecedent process of
architectural programming to translate the best of educational practice
into design criteria for architects and communities
of dollars are being spent each year to retrofit, renovate, and build
schools in America, and yet these “new” designs are based on outmoded
concepts, ignore vital ecological principles, and fail to include client
input. All stakeholders, from students to community, must be
involved in the programming and design of learning environments.
Professor Anne Taylor, Ph.D., Hon. AIA, employs the antecedent process of
architectural programming to translate the best of educational practice
into design criteria for architects and communities who wish to build
innovative learning centers that reflect community excellence.
Taylor discusses the School Zone model for participatory planning, which
establishes a system for learning across student developmental needs of
the body, mind, and spirit; integrated subject matter disciplines;
and learning processes. This educational system then is linked to
the design of the built, natural, and cultural environment so that the
resultant architecture can act as a three-dimensional textbook. A
survey of 16 case studies reveals basic patterns for reform in school
curriculum and facilities design: (a) democratic, broad-based
community input into the programming and design process changes the
configuration and design of learning environments and encourages
co-location of facilities (b) as community members develop
design literacy for intelligent participation in the design process, they
appreciate the complexity and the benefits of restructuring schools and
facilities (c) successful communities cultivate the image of
young people as powerful learners, and (d) architectural
planning and design techniques offer a model or map for communities to use
while developing, researching, constructing, and evaluating joint school
and community ventures.
"In order to live well, we must truly “inhabit” a place,
rather than merely taking up temporary residence." David Orr
Need for Pragmatic Synthesis
have been fortunate to work with both children and adults for forty-plus
years in the combined fields of education, design, and architecture and
planning. David Orr has described the lure of this particular
academic territory in his essays linking place and pedagogy (Orr,
1992). In order to live well, we must truly “inhabit” a place,
rather than merely taking up temporary residence. We can know and
respect a place--and ourselves--only through deep investigation and
integrated thinking. As I look back on the schools I have visited,
it seems to me that I have begun thinking more globally, while at the same
time acting in an increasingly site-specific or local way, to imbue our
schools with form, function, and meaning at the individual and the
the years my work has evolved into that of a programmer, or, more
precisely, a facilitator of the program. By that I mean I try to
bridge the gap between what the primary clients (the students) need and
what the architects design, before any designing takes place. The
antecedent process of architectural programming, instead of planning based
on predetermined square footage needs as part of an educational
specification, includes students and community input throughout the
planning process, from setting goals and collecting data to determining
needs and identifying the problem to be solved. When such
participatory planning or programming happens, exciting new issues emerge
concerning co-location of school activity settings for child care, health
care, museums, art galleries, science labs, community cultural centers,
studios instead of classrooms, and outdoor “learning landscapes”
instead of barren playgrounds.
this paper, I will offer reflections on implementing architectural
programming and design ideas in the real world setting of schools. I
hope to motivate and inspire others to “get out there” and
do something with the research that is being generated in massive amounts
every day. To my view, what is lacking in the literature is more a
matter of synthesis than of a topical nature. What we see too often
are increasingly narrow and focused studies accomplished by specialists
working in isolation. This is the blessing and the curse of the
information age. The research might be fascinating and well-meaning,
but it doesn’t trickle down to classroom practice, or to architects who
are looking for futuristic ideas. What we need is a system for
assembling these theories into a coherent and practical tool for
restructuring education and educational facilities within the context of
Programming and Design Capability
seeking to design schools for the future must think in an integrated
manner to join the goals of education to those of architectural design.
Citizens must learn to analyze the best of educational practice and help
translate that thinking into learning spaces or environments.
Architects must move beyond predetermined square footage requirements and
minimum building codes to examine developmental rights (across body,
mind and spirit), subject matter disciplines, and the instructional
delivery system as criteria for design. Schools must become true
learning centers, three-dimensional textbooks celebrating the richness of
the built, natural, and cultural environment. Leaders must encourage
communication between all parties so that goals can be set and varying
groups within a community are operating with one mind to produce unified
results. Ideally, all communities should develop and implement high
quality design and programming capabilities before one more school is
built or one more curriculum adopted.
is a sense of urgency to these tasks. School construction is big
business and enrollment is growing (Council for Educational Facility
Planning [CEFPI], 2000). CEFPI, whose mission is to promote the
development of educational facilities that provide the best possible
learning environments, claims that $120 billion is needed for facilities
to address health and safety issues alone. Enrollment is at a record
52.2 million K - 12 students, and each computer added to a classroom
displaces 1. 5 students (CEFPI, 2000). Estimates are that $210
billion will be needed in America alone to retrofit and build much needed
schools in both urban and rural areas. Districts will need to build
15 billion dollars’ worth of schools each year as the enrollment
increases by 1.6 million students in the next eight years (Pierce, 1999).
This is an intensely active time in school construction, and yet schools
are built or renovated every day without input from students.
Architects design monuments to themselves instead of places to support
learning and curriculum. Educators occupy environments and use
equipment they don’t fully understand and can’t exploit to the
fullest. Children learn to tune out the environment rather than to
develop awareness and a sense of belonging. Now is the time for
foresight, inclusion, and planning, not ten years from now.
needs are not the only concern. Many districts are facing increased
demand for accountability, standardized measurement, and voucher programs
and other over-simplified solutions to complex educational issues.
Schools and communities must communicate with increasing precision and
depth in order to meet these challenges. Gregory J. Cizek, in a
recent Phi Delta Kappan article, suggests that educators and educational
researchers need to break away from the crisis-reaction approach to
education policy, and should focus instead on anticipation of future
challenges and innovation (Cizek, 1999). Cizek suggests that policy
solutions should take into account the complexities of the
educational process, attitudes toward, and support for, education in the
community as well as from parents, and motivation of students.
Closely linked to the crisis mentality is the pendulum effect whereby
educational reforms swing from one extreme to the other, effectively
outlined by Jeanette Throne in her article entitled, “Living with
the Pendulum: The Complex World of Teaching” (Throne, 1994).
As Throne states, either/or choices limit teacher effectiveness by
preventing teachers and students from developing a more comprehensive
view. Both Cizek and Throne have recognized that due to the complex
nature of education, successfully addressing reform in schools means
seeking balance and integrating multiple viewpoints. In
restructuring learning environments, planners need to develop methods for
identifying complex issues and must use design processes to synthesize
approaches rather than focusing on dichotomies.
schools does not mean pasting something on the top of existing curriculum
or facilities (Orr, 1992, pp. 129, 138). As is illustrated in
the several case studies cited later in this paper, restructuring means
using research to design new patterns that function well and make use of
what schools do best. What do schools do best? What are they
designed for? They develop work that intellectually engages students
according to the most compelling research available in order that those
students may become well educated in the eyes of society (Schlechty,
key implication behind this statement is that learning must be authentic.
Students are telling us in ever increasing numbers, “Make our
education real!” (Concordia, Inc. & Anne Taylor Associates,
1996). Learning must be relevant to students and to the life
students will lead after graduation as citizens of a community.
Design education answers the dual requirement that student work be
intellectually engaging as well as useful to society. Not only does
the design process
require higher level thinking skills through interdisciplinarity, but
design products must function or perform for people in the real world.
The design process outlined below has real world value:
and analyze data
alternative solutions, build prototypes
and select appropriate solutions
outcomes (Davis, Hawley, McMullan & Silka, 1997).
Design education closes the gap between thinking and doing, while at the
same time increasing the connections between schools and society. Communities and students benefit when the design process becomes a part of
curriculum, when architectural programming needs are expressed in terms of
student needs, and when students are involved in facilities planning and
The Scope of this Article
provide discussion of the above issues, this article first will review an
integrated model for addressing school design and curriculum, the School
Zone design process. It will survey several recent innovative
projects or case studies which show how implementing change at the school
and community level works and what is happening right now in the areas of
planning, design and school initiatives. These cases have been
selected to illustrate the philosophical framework behind the School Zone
children can learn.
community must cultivate the image of children as strong and powerful
thinkers (Edwards, Forman & Gandini, 1996)
learn from the context of the built, natural and cultural environment.
environment is used as a three-dimensional textbook for teaching concepts
(content) across all disciplines.
learn by constructing their own knowledge through a variety of learning processes across body, mind and spirit.
for learning should support hands-on exploration by functioning as studios
rather than as traditional classrooms; and furniture and equipment systems
must be modular, flexible, deployable, and easily manipulated by students.
is a creative problem-solving process involving teamwork and collaboration.
integrated systems thinking and the Principles of Ecology is essential for
all learners in today’s world. This is described by David Orr as “education for sustainability” (1992, p. 137).
Following the case studies, this article examines four key issues or
patterns extrapolated from the studies to show how involving children in
the design process, both as a pedagogical model for learning and in the
actual design of their own schools, has implications for the role schools
play in the community. Patterns for reform using design criteria
from multiple sources are outlined so that communities may take action to
build and evaluate programs that synthesize community and educational
needs. Research questions based on the patterns observed in the case
studies are offered for further study. The focus in posing these
suggestions and questions will continue to be on pragmatic implementation.
Because implementation of the participatory process with respect to school
design is in the early stages, most of the case studies have not been
evaluated over the long term and can only be used to suggest evaluation
procedures which arise naturally out of the projects themselves.
Fortunately for future researchers, it is inherent in the structure of
design education that evaluation is embedded in the process (Davis, et
al., 1997). Design projects are relatively visible, accessible, and
easily documented, and in some ways are more readily measured than
curriculum based on abstractions. Finally, at the conclusion of this
paper, an appendix offers additional topics for research.
School Zone Institute Design Process:
Model for Cooperative Endeavors
Anne Taylor and architect George Vlastos founded the School Zone Institute
in order to combine the curricular and child development goals of
education with the design elements of architecture. The prime focus
of the School Zone model is that the physical setting of the learning
environment does make a difference in, and directly contributes to, a
child’s behavior and learning. The model expresses a system for
learning: the context for learning, the content to be learned, and
learning processes (see Table 1, below, for an overview).
After these educational factors are identified and concepts are listed
according to district requirements and standards, the information is then
translated into design determinants that plot the course for every design
decision made by the architect. In this way, the environment is
designed as an active learning tool from the onset of the project (Taylor
& Vlastos, 1983).
1: Simplified Overview of the School Zone Model
|| Systems thinking
and cultural environment
is a 3 - D textbook
Integrated subject matter
Standards and benchmarks
based on curriculum content
(e.g., courtyard design contains working sundial)
|| Concrete to abstract
across body, mind, spirit
process addresses client
and diverse ways of learning