Conversations on Educational Architecture
First Conversation: Synchronicity
Jamieson and Fielding

Part of a series of Letters between Peter Jamieson and Randy Fielding

Introduction | Letter One: Synchronicity | Letter Two: Under the Veranda | Letter Three: Yesterday’s Problem

Dear Randy,

Has it occurred to you that apart from your recent visit to Australia in September, all of our discussion about improving teaching and learning spaces has been conducted online. I find it ironic that our common passion for the physical environment in which teaching and learning takes place rarely results in us being in the same place at the same time.

I recall our first meeting at the UNESCO conference in Chile last November. For me as an educator, the highlight was being exposed to so many architects who are regularly involved in designing educational architecture projects. Before that moment I don’t think I fully realised that so many others had an interest and a professional involvement in creating the classrooms, laboratories and libraries that teachers like me use on a daily basis. It was a very sobering experience to be able to use my extremely poor Spanish to discuss mutual interests with architects from various Latin American countries.

I also remember the fear of standing before an audience of architects, as an educator, and basically showing a series of examples of extremely ineffective educational spaces that architects had created at Australian universities. Each of the examples was taken from buildings that had received serious recognition within the architectural profession. I was waiting for someone to shout out: “Who are you, not trained in architecture, to question the work and intent of qualified professionals in a field you can’t possibly understand?”

I was worried even further that the audience might think that there were no examples of effective educational architecture in Australia! There are, but they undoubtedly constitute the minority of new school, college and university projects that are undertaken. Unfortunately, it always seems easier to list the poor examples of educational architecture rather than to point towards projects that enhance the student learning experience and enrich the inhabitants in various ways. As the United States is such a large country and leads the world in many respects, I imagine you have many more examples of good educational architecture than we do in Australia?

By the way, do you remember driving around Santiago in the bus with the conference delegates and visiting various school and campus sites? I found each of the sites interesting in their own way. But it was even more interesting for me to watch the way all of the architects responded. Do all architects carry cameras, snapping photos wherever they go? I kept comparing the architects’ selection of shots, what they had chosen to photograph, and wondered whether their choice revealed something about what they found important architecturally? There seemed to be a clear distinction between those who favoured the external appearance and construction of a building, and those who were more interested in how an internal space functioned for the students and teachers. Unsurprisingly, I fell into the latter category. What did you photograph Randy? Do you use these photographs to assist your work and, if so, how do you use them?

I think the experience that had the biggest impact on me during our bus tour occurred at the site I liked least of all. Do you remember the interactive science museum for young children? As I recall it was quite intriguing externally and most of us rushed into the building with great anticipation. Inside, we found large numbers of children running around madly, actively engaged in all of the hands-on exhibits. It was certainly an interactive experience. I recall that a number of the architects were impressed by the degree of engagement and participation that the museum had generated.

However, I found myself confronted with one of the most challenging questions facing educators across all sectors of education: Although the children in the museum were actively engaged, were they actually learning anything? Is so, how could we know what they had learned?

Across all educational sectors, “active learning” is a catch cry. It seems such a logical, commonsense goal to pursue. But I think it is a much more complex issue than it first seems. Is it something you have had to deal with as an architect?

For now, best wishes from Oz.

Peter

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Dear Peter,

You use the word “irony” to describe a passionate discussion about space between two people at opposite ends of the globe. The feeling for me is more magical than ironic. It felt like magic to wake up this morning and connect with your email. It was in this same spirit of internet-enabled magic that inspired me to sell my Chicago-based architectural practice, and launch DesignShare in 1998.

The internet was not the first experience of technology-enabled magic for me. Gutenberg’s technology had a similar effect. When I became comfortable enough with reading to get into a “flow” state, at ten years old, the world expanded a hundred times over. Prior to that, I felt isolated — more connected to trees, dogs, and the beach than the other kids in my classes. But once reading clicked in, it was like magic — I felt more connected to people and events hundreds of years and thousand of miles apart than I did to kids in the same classroom.

The magic of the internet allows individuals and communities to focus on shared interests and passions, without being tied to geography. Passion is a key word, because it involves emotion, and emotion is a key component of learning, relationships and space. Without an emotional connection, online relationships are not sustainable. However, it’s clear to me that emotion can travel though cyber space, just as it can travel through words in a book. When I have been moved by a printed text, or an electronic one, something lights up — I’ve learned something, and I remember it.

Remembrance and learning is more about emotional impact than proximity in time or space. For example, you don’t seem far away, because the time we spent in Santiago in 2003 and in Brisbane in 2004 is vivid. Listening to you lambaste “star architects” that make monumental aesthetic statements while creating monumentally awful learning spaces a year ago is fresher in my mind (and thus seems closer in time and space) than the comments my accountant made yesterday about tax filings for the 3rd quarter.

Peter, you imagine that we have many more examples of good educational architecture in the United States than you do in Australia. You are right in the sense that the US has provided some of the most innovative educational facility planning approaches. Our mutual friend Bruce Jilk comes to mind. He was a key member of the planning team for the School of Environmental Studies in Apple Valley, Minnesota. This high school for 400 students is grounded in small learning communities and project-based learning, and functions successfully without classrooms.

Five years ago, a group of architects and educators from Australia came to visit the School of Environmental Studies. The same group have shared in the discourse and publication of case studies in DesignShare for the last five years. The results are a series of projects in Australia that exceed the best of US educational architecture. I say this after visiting more than a dozen schools in Australia in August and September of this year. It turns out, Peter, that OZ is a very good place for innovation.

In answer to your question, Do all architects carry cameras, snapping photos wherever they go? Yes, we do. I’ve attached some photos from Chile, November, 2003 for your critical appraisal. Like you, I focus on views that include people engaged in learning, rather than the architecture alone. The key issue for me is not whether it’s interior or exterior, but whether there is a learning context or not.

The photo that I have used the most from Chile is an interior of the gymnasium at the Colegio Altamira (High School) in Penalolen, Chile, by Mathias Klotz, Architect. While I did not care for the classrooms (flexible in theory, but sterile and prison-like in use), I was blown away by the gymnasium. There are two remarkable aspects to this space:

1. It’s beautifully day-lighted, in an age when many gymnasiums have few or no windows, for fear of glare in a basketball player’s eyes

2. It’s an example of a building that functions as a 3-dimensional text book.

The structural elements are visually dominant, and they tell the story of vector forces and engineering dynamics. The structure itself has a great deal of visual movement, and compliments this space that was designed for movement

Now you might be thinking that the gym is not a key earning space. However, recall that at the workshop that we facilitated for your senior staff at the University of Queensland in September, that when I introduced Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences theory, there was a good round of “oh yes, we get this!”

One of the intelligences that Gardner identified is kinesthetic intelligence. My personal experience bears this out the importance of this learning modality. In fact, emotion and movement are pivotal for my experience of learning. I have often felt that I learned more effectively while walking and talking about a subject after class than in the classroom itself.

In addition to attaching a photo of the Colegio Altamira gymnasium, I’m attaching an illustration that I developed for a book that I am coauthoring with Prakash Nair, entitled “School Design Pattern Language.” Pattern # 24 illustrates a space designed to support multiple intelligences. The guy juggling is me. The scene depicted is of a four-day brainstorming session at my studio in Minneapolis, in May 2004, with Prakash, Karl Jones (DesignShare technology guru), Michael Gehling (our young Austalian data analyst), and I. We gathered to talk about the future of DesignShare, education, architecture, and online communities.

Peter, you mentioned the interactive science museum in Chile — wondering what I thought about this as an educational space. Like you, I question how much learning is happening there. To my observation, the large scale and uniformly open, noisy spaces is a problem for learning. Large, marketplace type spaces are stimulating, but for learning to take place, we need smaller, quieter, more intimate spaces as well, to assimilate our experiences. Sometimes we refer to this kind of area as “cave” space (see illustration). Another good example of a varied space to the side of the action is a cafe on a lively street or piazza.

The piazza dazzles our eyes and ears, but it’s in a quiet conversation, or writing in a journal or on a laptop, that the experience turns into learning. The museum lacks this type of space. It’s like a piazza without the café. Additionally, it’s too much of a planned experience. Great piazzas (and educational spaces) have an inherent flexibility and unpredictability — they are not over-designed. You are often surprised by the procession of people, the weather, the shopkeeper’s offerings, and the street musicians. Although the museum’s offerings change, once you get the idea of the exhibit, it is largely predictable and static.

You ask “how can we know that they learned at the museum?” I look to you as a university educator and researcher to quantify the findings — an important factor, since educational institutions want facts. As an architect, my own method for determining when people are learning, in fact, the success of a school, is through personal interaction and observation. Learning equals growth and is evidenced by movement, emotion, and conversation. People engaged in learning or “flow” are curious — they notice visitors and ask who we are. They make eye contact, ask questions and comments. I didn’t notice this at the museum. Kids were too jazzed by a cacophony of stimulation. A balance of marketplace and café or cave space is needed.

For now, best wishes from Lake Harriet.

Randy

Part of a series of Letters between Peter Jamieson and Randy Fielding

Introduction | Letter One: Synchronicity | Letter Two: Under the Veranda | Letter Three: Yesterday’s Problem