Learning Community 3

Planning the Learning Community Section 3 of 4 How do you design an environment for 5 - 6 learners? The Museum of the Community in Hurricane, West Virginia is a good example: it's a lab, a studio, and a place where hands-on learning and art take place. This can apply to 4-5 students or 20 - 25. The lab is most equivalent to a classroom, but it's not. It has a kiln, tables that move around, a studio, it has sinks, all of the things you need to make art objects; it has paint, construction materials. I don’t think of that as a classroom, I think of the whole building as a classroom, and that as the studio. The gallery is just as much the classroom, also the administrative offices, because they also provide school-to-work programs. Kids go to the museum to learn about making art and about careers in art.
How would you design a computer lab? The art studio has computers in it. It's not a good idea to designate a space for one particular set of functions. We are more inclined to build a learning environment that includes a broad range of alternatives. We don’t have a separate chemistry lab; it's a project lab. The Museum of the Community in WV project lab has a voltmeter and ammeter on light switch; you multiply them to get watts. What's of great significance to me is you do not have to separate math and science. This whole notion of separating things is really a 20^th century phenomena. Presumably we started separating things in the Renaissance. There is something to be said for the idea that art and science were not disconnected from each other. We are looking at more team-teaching, more interdisciplinary learning. To the degree that the physical environment can send the same message as the more progressive kinds of curriculum is doing, we stand a better chance of communicating to students that art and science are part of the same whole. The Museum in the Community (WV) is also a science museum. Because the building is about science as much as art. For example, the word "soffit" is written on the soffit in aluminum letters. So the building becomes like a three-dimensional classroom? You got it. The word "fascia" is written on the fascia. This was the building contractor's idea. When we talk about collaboration, it never ends. Sometimes we get the best ideas from students, sometimes from building contractors. The building contractor in this case was part of the design team, and the design never stopped. The building was already up before he got the idea. And let me tell you how excited and grateful he was. Do you know what that means? We didn't have to do a punch list, because he just did it right. It was "his building."
Fritjof Capra states that diversity is a strength only when there are clear lines of communication between the groups; when this is not the case, diversity can lead to violence. How do you see this affecting your work with diverse communities? We try to promote clear lines of communication between the groups. One way to do this is to look for similarities rather than differences. In Hayward, California, we spent18 months facilitating a master planning process with a community that includes 88 different ethnic populations. In the school system they teach to 43 different languages and dialects. It was the students on the steering committee who first acknowledged that the community’s diversity was something that needed to be celebrated rather than criticized. After months of dialogue, the committee of 100 stakeholders agreed that the next school built in Hayward would be a Multi-Cultural Fine Arts Community Center, located downtown, with 400 students in it. There is still a lot of work to be done, but last May, the school board unanimously endorsed the steering committees concept and now we are moving ahead to define the steps that will be needed to make it a reality. It is important to note that diversity is often more of an abstract construct than a physical one. In places where people are all the same in appearance or national origin, people still find things to fight over. Sometimes it’s the people who live on the north side of the river versus people who live on the south side. In West Virginia, where everyone is essentially Caucasian, the folks at the top of the mountain often times don’t get along with the folks who live in the valleys. My belief is that we all have some natural inclination to modify our worlds to be a little bit smaller and more manageable. That’s why neighborhoods are so important. As planners and designers, we need to acknowledge the importance of these behaviors and provide opportunities to meet these needs. Photographs on this page are of the Museum in the Community, Hurricane, West Virginia Top right: garden view; center left: entry; bottom right: lab with visible electrical elements
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