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“Tackling the Crime of School Design”
Book Excerpt from Rena Upitis, former Dean of Education at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario; currently Professor of Arts Education at Queen’s University.

Full biographical and contact information available on page 7.
Citations on page 8.

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When I began talking about this book, there was a period during which she became visibly upset about “the sheer ugliness of the place”. A few weeks later, she took direct action. Up to that point, she had been writing “endless e-mails”, asking for broken furniture to be removed and for a whiteboard for the seminar room. One afternoon, I rounded a corner and caught sight of her, sleeves rolled up, painting the department’s bulletin board. She had secured some paint and a dried up old roller from the university service staff, and was busy putting on the first coat of paint over the dull and ancient tan board. When she came to talk with me after the paint job, she expressed her delight at the number of students who stopped and admired what she was doing, commenting on how nice it was to have a “bit of colour” in the hallway. How stunning that a small act like painting a bulletin board can be received with such pleasure. René Dubos, the microbiologist who, along with economist Barbara Ward wrote the pivotal book Only One Earth, ( 45 ) once said, “The worst thing we can do to our children is to convince them that ugliness is normal”. ( 46 ) It can’t be right to convince university students and their professors that ugliness is normal, either. Grey, sterile, and windowless classrooms cannot be the best places for learning, no matter how inspiring the professor or how gifted the students. No matter the healing qualities of music or how captivating the texts, social theories or scientific discoveries, why learn about these things in ugly places?

There are reasons, of course, why school design has not changed in 150 years. Wente’s observations about factory schools are resonant with the speculation of Seymour Papert, computer scientist and educator, in his 1993 book, The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer. Papert mused that a time traveler from the 1890s would find most things incomprehensibly changed if she were to land here now, but would have little difficulty recognizing a classroom or a school. Why have there been so few changes?

A study conducted by members of the Thomas Jefferson Center for Educational Design at the University of Virginia reveals four plausible explanations. ( 47 ) First, most school construction is set in motion to solve one of two problems: to renovate unsafe or overcrowded facilities. The catalyst is not to create a more exciting learning environment, but to fix a roof or get rid of the hideous and uncomfortable temporary classrooms often referred to as “portables”. Second, school districts producing innovative designs often meet with opposition because of the perception that innovative design is always more costly. Third, schools districts see no need to change what is already working, especially in school districts where test scores are high and parents are satisfied. Finally, the study suggests the general public - you and I - parents, business people, stonemasons, lawyers, chefs, secretaries, retailers, and even teachers - do not think much about school architecture. Like my university colleague, most people simply don’t contemplate how the built and natural environments influence education.

Time and again, I run into situations that convince me people pay no attention whatsoever to school architecture. I gave a seminar on one of chapters of this book while it was still in its embryonic states. Afterwards, one of the senior professors who had attended the session wrote to me, saying, “I, for one, had never thought about the effect of school architecture on my own education, but I’m sure now it was profound. It provokes me to consider the spatial arrangements over which I have some control in my own teaching”. My intent is to provoke others to do the same.

For it would seem provocation is central to the mission of re-thinking school architecture. The experience I had with my university colleague reminds me of another tale about incremental changes in school architecture. Paul Barnett is a Canberra architect whose business derives about half of its work from school designs and school improvements. About five years before I interviewed Barnett, he was occupied with a so-called “minor new works contract” to make repairs to the Wanniassa High School in Canberra. This was a school in dire need of rejuvenation. Doors and walls had been kicked in, various areas of the school had been vandalized, and the roof leaked in nineteen places. Some of these leaks had been there since the building was opened. Any repairs had been accomplished quickly and crudely - someone had tacked on some reinforcement mesh to cover some of the gaping holes in the walls. The building was drab and lifeless: dull and stained carpets and peeling paint marked the windowless classrooms and corridors.

Barnett understood the task at hand was to repair the broken walls and fix the leaking roof. But his goal was to do more: he wanted to introduce elements of beauty. In his words, the building called for “a signature, at least, at the entryway to the school”. His attention to the entryway was not accidental: in his university days Barnett had studied the architecture of Aboriginal peoples and was drawn to learning more about other traditions as well, such as the Sufi influences on Persian architecture.

In the Sufi tradition, the gateway or entryway has particular significance as a symbolic gesture, evidenced by elegant gateways to buildings and cities. ( 48 ) Of course, gateways need not be elegant or elaborate to carry deep meaning. Mary Catherine Bateson wrote of the ways in which the Bushmen moving through the Kalahari Desert created temporary shelters to guard against the below-freezing night temperatures. The need for shelter was easily met by scooping a shallow dip in the desert sand and lining it with grasses, where, with the addition of body warmth, those who were sheltered there would be safe from the wind and cold. But the shelter was not considered a home - even for a night - without the addition of a hearth and an entryway. A sideways-leaning curved branch, with one end embedded in the sand, was regarded as the necessary minimum to define an entrance. ( 49 )

Whether an elegant gateway or a simple curved branch, the entryway - as Barnett knew - would signal a great deal about the school building he was refurbishing. But he was accustomed to encountering difficulties when trying to convince project managers and members of the education department to install something seen to be frivolous - like coloured glass, as he hoped to do in this case. And the cost of the glass? Twelve dollars for each of a dozen pieces. Just over a hundred dollars for a project with a budget of over a half-million dollars, where a quarter-million was dedicated to roof repairs alone. But the project was about fixing things, not about beauty. Some of the people associated with the project were adamant that adding coloured glass fell outside of the mandate of school repairs. However, one of his explicit aims in the renovation was to attend to beauty. Barnett argued long and hard for the glass.

Eventually, the glass was approved, partly because of Barnett’s persistence and partly because the principal of the school cared enough about the school and its occupants to support the gesture. Others were supportive as well, including the project manager. Barnett describes the victory as pivotal. In the five years since the glass was put into place, his group has become known for their aesthetic sensibilities in school refurbishing. School officials who contract Barnett’s design group these days expect coloured glass, ceramic mosaics, decorative wrought iron, sculptural steel elements, curved walls, and shaped timbers, along with leak-proof roofs and solid doors.

Barnett acknowledges these incremental accomplishments - teal carpet instead of a bland grey, coloured mosaics on an exterior concrete wall - “are not the stuff of award-winning architecture”. Gregory Burgess, who is an award-winning architect with a glowing international reputation, made precisely the same point upon receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Melbourne. He said it takes ingenuity and imagination to counteract low budgets and lack of vision. In his view, architecture operates in a world where there is often little care and where most commissions are unglamorous. Burgess added that these commissions often unfold with difficulty, and architects who take on such work complete it quietly and effectively, remaining “unacknowledged in our celebrity-obsessed society”. ( 50 )

So, while Barnett’s refurbishing work may not be award-winning, it is the stuff of caring. And it brings a glimmer of beauty to the schools. The cost of beauty in projects like these is often not more than a few thousand dollars tacked on top of a half-million dollar contract. This seems a small price to pay. When I visited Wanniassa High School, I was delighted to see the school was not only well maintained but also unexpectedly and fundamentally attractive. The investment in the glass and teal carpet paid off after all, if it inspired students to care enough about their school not to vandalize it a second time.

Continued on page 7.

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