Somerville Intermediate School

Narratives

Architect Narrative

Between 1995 and 2004 we were fortunate to design 3 new schools, commissioned in response to rapid suburban population growth. These projects presented us with opportunities to rethink traditional educational design and delivery models, to enhance the learning opportunities available in each facility.

While each school is different — one is an intermediate school, one a primary school and one a secondary school — the projects share many design themes, and many of these ideas were able to be evolved further in each successive design.

In each case the architecture is specifically arranged to support learning concepts. Key concepts may be briefly summarised as follows:

1. Consideration of the Whole Student
Each school is designed to accommodate a large number of pupils. The designs all recognise the importance of creating appropriate environments for socialisation experiences on a variety of different scales. Buildings are arranged to support the creating of whanau (family) groups within the overall school population. Over the course of the 3 projects we have developed many different Whanau spaces, commons, and street or courtyard arrangements which enhance the delivery of pastoral care. We’ve learnt that the flexibility they impart to each design also supports the creation of high quality learning environments.

2. Focus on Learning Environments
Environments created in each school are driven by a performance based agenda, These flexible or “elastic” spaces cater for a full range of learning experiences — from traditional instruction through to self-directed research, group work, or virtual learning and teamwork experiences.

3 An Eye on the Future
The flexibility of the buildings, and their structural, information and environmental arrangements reflects an optimistic view of the future. On a micro level, each facility has become more extensively cabled than its predecessor to allow anytime / anywhere access to digital resources, Taking a wider picture we’ve learnt to ensure that the fabric and backbone of the buildings themselves can facilitate straightforward and inexpensive reconfiguration should this becomes necessary.

4 Environmental Sustainability
Each project features a range of sustainable technologies appropriate to its micro climate and intensity of use. Systems including passive ventilation, rainwater recycling, solar hot water heating, heat recovery are not only built into the fabric of the buildings but exposed wherever possible so that the interactions of the buildings with their environment are able to be observed by students — so that the building itself becomes a tool for learning.

5 Community Participation
Community involvement was a key driver in the delivery process of each facility. In each project the community welcomed our proposal to create bold buildings and locate them on their sites so that each one would be an obvious, accessible and inviting statement of the school’s involvement with its community.

The project delivery process improved for each project. Timeframes became longer for each successive project, to reflect the importance of pre-design research and community consultation. The delivery process also evolved from one where initial concerns were focussed on buildings, to one where the focus is now firmly grounded in educational outcomes.

Educator Narrative

In response to significant urban population growth and large scale residential development activity, we commissioned three new schools.

The first school, an intermediate school, was commissioned in 1995. A primary school followed in 1999, and a secondary school was completed in 2003. We selected our architect for the first project based on their track record of school buildings and their ability to demonstrate a clear understanding of the educational possibilities inherent in the construction of an entire new school. The decision to retain the same architect for two further schools reflects not only the successful delivery of each project, but it also allowed us the relatively rare opportunity to develop and evolve conceptual ideas over a number of projects.

Our overarching concern was to construct educational buildings that would be flexible enough to provide learning environments for the 21st century. A significant amount of research was assembled, and added to over each project, as we sought a model that would provide for the uncertainties and opportunities of the future.

We were also very keen to build upon existing successful school designs, and integrate the lessons learned over the previous twenty years with the current best practice thinking from around the world.

The above big picture ideas were able to be implemented in each facility by utilising and developing a number of fundamental concepts. The first, which builds upon our local experience, is called the Whanau Concept. Our experience is that the architectural design of a facility is critical to the creation of smaller student groups (schools within a school) inside the entire school population. The socialisation, pastoral care and management benefits of this kind of organisation are well known.

Experience with early Whanau Concept designs showed that a complementary arrangement of teacher spaces would be desirable, to encourage faculty teamwork and facilitate exchanges of ideas across traditional curriculum boundaries. The challenge we set for our architect was to incorporate this requirement without sacrificing flexibility or diluting the benefits of Whanau Concept organisation.

Another significant concern, upon which we have placed increasing emphasis, is that of environmental sustainability. Our understanding of the correlation between ventilation quality, lighting levels, acoustics etc and learning performance is constantly being improved . This knowledge is applied to the goal of providing the best quality environments at the same time as utilising sustainable resources and low energy systems wherever possible. The design team has responded with enthusiasm to these requirements, and we have deployed sustainable technologies in very obvious (and cost effective) ways, so that students and teachers can utilise the buildings as learning tools where appropriate.

The above discussion is necessarily general in nature. Naturally the built results, and the operating schools themselves owe their successes to the input of a large number of people. However, in conclusion we would like to note that under enthusiastic management these school designs have provided stimulating and desirable learning environments, and these results give us great confidence for their future, and the future of many other schools to come.