Description
Nurseries and Kindergartens
The term kindergarten which originally derived from the notion of the school as a metaphorical garden, alludes to children as unfolding plants, being nourished and nurtured with care and love in a plant house or a nursery. Along with this are biblical allusions to the lost innocence of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The German educational pioneer Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) almost certainly invented the term; he imbued the kindergarten idea with a faintly mystical quality believing it to be a symbolic representation of nature, a sort of microcosm of the world, reflecting the positive aspects of a diverse milieu.
Today the nursery or the kindergarten is viewed in a less sentimental way. These terms usually refer either to full daycare, for young babies to children up to the age of five or six, or to part-time education for early years. The framework for these institutions is a highly controlled, rigorously evaluated environment, which often focuses on the health and safety of children over and above their social and educational development. It is in this context that the design of the building and its external play spaces take on a critical role in helping to pacify or stimulate children as is appropriate to their needs.
There is no real difference in terms of their overall aim between the kindergarten, the day nursery or the nursery school. However, each has a particular meaning in its context. The word kindergarten is used as a generic term in Europe and Japan and has particular resonances bringing to mind the somewhat mystical, craft based Steiner school system. In Denmark and Sweden the term relates specifically to facilities for children between the ages of three and five. In the USA it identifies the preschool class attached to elementary schools; nursery schools by comparison are sometimes referred to as ‘childcare centres’ or ‘early learning centres’.
There is in addition a sometimes bewildering range of part-time early years care and education facilities, as well as add-on services to the basic childcare offer. For example, Germany’s Kindertagesstätte (children’s daycare place) often includes before and after-school facilities for older school age children in the form of a Kinderhort. It is felt that school children should benefit from an alternative environment, when formal education is over for the day. They return to the safe, play-orientated environment of the preschool, perhaps the place they attended as young children, albeit in a separate securely controlled zone of the early years building.
In France, state-run nursery schools are usually called écoles maternelles, whilst privately run nursery schools are known as jardin d’enfants. The state sector, which has grown gradually during a 90-year history, now serves over 95% of children aged three to five. Local authorities are required by law to provide pre-primary education if it is requested. France also operates other daycare provision, such as crèches, which cater for under threes, écoles maternelles for children aged 3-6 years and garderies that provide after-school services.
In Italy, preschool education is provided in both public and private nursery schools. Since the creation of the scuola maternal statale in 1969, attendance has risen steadily; at present 90% of children aged three to five attend full-time, sometimes six days per week. Although quality varies from region to region, preschool is widely accepted. There is a clear perception amongst most parents that their children will fall behind in developmental terms, if they do not attend.
Politicians in the UK have at long last recognised the need to catch up and build affordable new childcare throughout the UK. However, there is a tendency to use the school as the context for early years provision. Although there are some good facilities integrated into schools, this approach is generally an economic exigency. With its play based ethos, and the need to ensure that the scales and textures of the early years environment are appropriate for young children, it is important to recognise the specialised nature of early years, and make purpose designed environments, which are totally separate from the school. Here we have only featured examples, which are innovative child-centred exemplars of the highest quality; young children deserve nothing less.
Special Schools
The term ‘special school’ refers to provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities. Due to the stigma attached to these people in the past, very little emphasis was placed on designs which had a progressive or an even vaguely inclusive architectural-educational convergence. In the past, physical deformity and dysfunctional behaviour was viewed as being a social services task rather than an education issue; for a long time it tended to be swept under the carpet. Learning difficulties such as dyslexia were hardly recognised up until the 1980s and autistic spectrum disorder was viewed as being beyond therapy with the confinement of children away from public scrutiny being the only real strategy.
Fortunately, over relatively recent times, this view has changed fundamentally. With the acceptance that special needs children can and should be educated and can be cared for within an appropriate school setting (albeit with additional assistance), what could be described as a new building type has emerged. Since 1994, UK Government policy has been committed to including pupils with special educational needs and disabilities into mainstream schools as part of an ethical view which aims to recognise and celebrate human diversity. Similar initiatives have been implemented across mainland Europe. Where it works well, inclusion benefits all students. However, sometimes it does not function effectively due to a mismatch between facilities in mainstream schools and those required in special needs settings.
On the whole it is a laudable aim to include pupils with special educational needs and disabilities into mainstream schools, to dissolve traditional views and stigmas associated with those who are ‘different’. Yet some recent evidence suggests that those students on the more extreme end of the disability spectrum need and deserve their own purpose designed buildings, as much as young children need specific early years settings. Furthermore, special schools can and should provide particular environmental qualities which actively enhance and support the special needs of their users. As design strategies have evolved, a more various range of facilities have been developed to cater for specific needs across the spectrum whilst maintaining strong connections to mainstream education wherever possible.
For example, children in the middle to extreme range of the autistic spectrum disorder, may have tendencies towards physical violence, usually to themselves, and they may exhibit sudden irrational behaviour such as the desire to run away. This requires a particular view of security and safety, consideration for the design of the building enclosure to avoid sharp, hard surfaces is another dimension of the agenda. Research has shown the need to avoid daunting repetitive patterns, as autistic children are also prone to severe concentration problems. The use of a limited amount of colour and an ordered window or door arrangement to create pleasing rhythms within the architecture may help to support their special needs in this respect. Whatever their need, a close and in depth process of consultation with teachers and carers should be developed which is specific to those stakeholders. Special schools are rarely standard designs as you might expect with a primary school.
Today there are many different approaches being developed. For example, partnerships between special and/or mainstream schools located on different sites with pupils and staff travelling between the two schools sharing facilties and skills can be a viable strategy. A better approach is two separate schools which are designed as distinct institutions co-located on the same site. Here there may be opportunities for pupils to share spaces, such as assembly halls, sports facilities as well as teaching resources, without sacrificing the need for the safety and security of a specific building. All mainstream schools are required to consider resources for current and future pupils with special educational needs and disabilities.
For obvious reasons, many of the featured case studies deal with the institution as a self-contained village, completely separate from the mainstream school. The Pistorius School for Disabled Children is a case in point. Catering for children with mental and physical disabilities, it accommodates a total of 150 students which all have a personal learning plan, tailored to their specific capabilities. This enables individuals to develop at their own pace, with teachers catering for specific needs. In this situation the presence of children without mental disabilities is viewed as a drag to educational effectiveness. However, the sense of a collective belonging to the larger social group is still viewed as being important. Therefore the school has worked towards larger group events which help students to achieve this sense of belonging to a whole school community.
Pupils with learning difficulties or disabilities gain a great deal from outdoor practical experiences. Especially those who are not physically disabled but have learning difficulties have been found to gain confidence and become more relaxed when working outdoors, which is why the outside areas attached to special schools must be designed with this in mind. Interaction with the natural world, with animals such as rabbits and larger livestock has proved to have tremendous therapeutic benefits.
There are certainly advantages for the whole school community when inclusive strategies and design features are incorporated into an existing school. For example, improvements in acoustic conditions that aid students with hearing impairments will help all students. Improvements to the layout and internal design of shared areas such as corridors will promote positive changes in student behaviour throughout the community. However at this point it is fair to conclude that there is or can be no definitive guide to designing for special needs. The challenge for any design group is to build on the existing knowledge which is usually available as design guidance and/or statutory requirements at government level (such as the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act, 2004), whilst at the same time treating the community as unique and special as implied by the term ‘special school’.
Primary Schools
Primary schools have sat alongside secondary schools as one half of the basic state educational structure since the widespread introduction of statutory schooling around the end of the 19th century. Primary schools are given a specific section, as they are distinct from the secondary school on account of the age ranges they cater for. A primary school usually functions for children aged 5 or 6 to age 11, and unlike many secondary schools, they are small, intimate and located close to the residential areas they cater for. Children will tend to stay in a single classroom for much of the school day. It will act as a sort of homebase, they will only leave it for physical exercise, assemblies and specialist lessons such ICT and music.
This well-understood and conservative building type will usually comprise of paired classrooms so they can share toilet and storage facilities. In addition, there will be a limited range of facilities shared by the whole school. The contemporary dimension, which makes the primary school innovative and different, is community access. Most primary schools have been located on the same site for generations, and usually they have generous site areas and a prime strategic location at the heart of things. It therefore makes sense for additional services such as early years facilities, health and adult training to be co-located. Sports halls provide the opportunity for adult evening classes; even playing fields can be used for local community events such as the annual school fete. These facilities are now being added on to many existing primary schools as extensions or new stand-alone buildings within the existing school site.
When new primary schools are built, it is usually to service a new housing development as families leave the traditional urban city centres for the suburbs. For example, the Mary Poppins Primary School in Berlin is a central component of the infrastructure for a new residential zone currently under construction. A key feature of this development is the retention of a large meadow, which has been enhanced to serve as a green ‘lung’ for the new residential community. The school is situated between the housing and the meadow, to serve as a symbolic gateway for the children and families who will use the meadow for recreation during the summer months.
A theme often raised when consulting with school users, particularly children, is the desire for building forms, which are more expressive and non-rectilinear than traditional primary school buildings. Architecture which is fun, colourful and legible, is an aim which is difficult within tight budgetary constraints and the conservative attitudes many designers bring to these commissions. At the Burr Elementary School, the designers have managed to address the practical issues with a building which appears from a distance to be a conventional two-storey rectangular block. However on closer scrutiny the basic form is given an exciting twist by the introduction of curved semi-oval cutouts. Like a piece of half eaten cheese, the building is imbued with a spirit and vitality which is expressive of children themselves. It shows a new vibrant attitude for the next generation of primary schools.
Secondary Schools
Many aspects of school design apply equally across all age ranges. For example, the need to define safe secure territories within the overall structure of the institution or the use of colour for wayfinding and legibility. Acoustics are as critical in classrooms for four year olds as they are for 14 year olds. Security is important to keep strangers out and to maintain control of every student within. Maintaining good environmental conditions and providing attractive modern environments which appeal to fashion conscious children are priorities, which apply across the board. However, for a number of reasons, these issues become of critical importance when applied to secondary school building design.
Students are infinitely more mature and independent at the age of 11 or 12 than when they first enter the education system at the age of 3 or 4. Generally, younger children focus more closely onto their immediate surroundings whereas older children will be more outward looking, interested in the wider social and spatial environment particularly as they approach puberty. Secondary schools are almost always larger both in terms of the physical size and the number of pupils accommodated. On average, secondary schools cater for between 780 to 1,200 students, and secondary schools dealing with yet larger numbers are not uncommon. They are much more grown-up environments promoting increasing independence and responsibility as children grow towards adulthood.
Perhaps most importantly, the specialised nature of secondary education generally means that children move around the school campus more frequently to access different curriculum areas. This means that the organisation and grouping of subject areas (often referred to as faculties) is crucial to the efficient functioning of the institution. They can be organised to minimise travel distances, for example art and craft departments should be close to the hall to enable the movement of props and scenery; science and technology faculties should be clustered together for similar logistical reasons. Teachers will feel isolated if they are unable to meet with colleagues in a centrally positioned staff room because travel distances are so long. This is why circulation areas should be interesting and spatially varied; colour used as way-finding is particularly useful.
Schools designed now will be with us for many generations to come. It is the skill of a good architect to plan and organise a complex secondary school brief efficiently, yet at the same time, to challenge educational pre-conceptions and safe orthodoxies prescribed by governments. This is a skill at which architects excel, making visionary proposals which act as a catalyst to social and educational reform. This may mean the addition of new spaces to a traditional schedule of accommodation. Morphosis, the architects for the Diamond Ranch School, have added art spaces, a music space and an auditorium. They have also reconfigured the cafeteria so it could operate as a theatre for community events. It is the mark of a great architect to take difficult site conditions and manipulate them to make even more architecture and more space by relating the programme to the site opportunities. This is what makes the Diamond Ranch such as inspiring educational environment. The intention of the whole is to challenge the message sent by a society that routinely communicates its disregard for the young by educating them in cheap institutional ‘boxes’ surrounded by security fences. Here the environment is an inspiration to all who use it, a turn-on to education for often disinterested students.
Traditionally, school buildings were designed in a conservative way, to reflect a serious and demanding range of competing issues. Usually the need for careful budgetary control cast the architect as the voice of reason within an aspirational client user group who may have been looking for grand architectural statements in their new school buildings. However, the reality with most school projects was that tight budgets meant that ‘star’ international architects (with a few notable exceptions) did not dirty their hands with a project as mundane as a new secondary school let alone a complicated refurbishment of an existing primary school. They were not viewed as particularly sexy commissions. That attitude is clearly changing with high profile architects recognising that these are important and prestigious buildings, central to the life of the community.
Academies and Vocational Schools
As a distinctive and relatively new school form, academies and vocational schools are an attempt to bring progressive change to the secondary school traditions within the state sector. The Academy School programme, which is particular to the UK, takes elements of the semi-privately run Charter School movement in the USA and mixes them with a more vocational curriculum form, which is relatively common in Europe. In this category secondary schools in mainland Europe, which illustrate a progressive or radically different approach to the traditional comprehensive educational umbrella, are also included; to the extent that they are specialist schools, however the terminology should not be confused with special schools for students with more extreme educational difficulties. Definitions are not strictly consistent across national boundaries, however we have grouped those institutions together, which reflect a culture of change within this final category.
The secondary school sector is notoriously conservative and resistant to change even where it is seen to be failing. What is clear about this section of case studies is the extent to which architecture is used to make grand statements about the significance of a specialist educational institution, largely state funded, yet outside the mainstream secondary school academic tradition. Progressive thinking acts as a catalyst to new and innovative practice, with the emphasis on architecture as well as education to promote new ways of thinking in the secondary school sector.
In the UK the Academies programme aims to challenge the culture of educational under attainment and to deliver real improvements in standards. Most academies are located in areas of deprivation with high levels of family unemployment and poverty. They either replace one or more existing schools facing challenging circumstances or are established where there is a need for additional school places. Perhaps the most contentious aspect is the semi-private ownership of essentially state funded schools, which is described as ‘sponsorship’. The context for this is that a faith group, a commercial organisation or even a local authority can submit £2 million in sponsorship in return for a degree of control of the institution. The key idea is that private management strategies will help to bring efficiencies into the system and connect education more readily with the needs of the commercial world. Huge investment has been underway over the past five years, however the success in academic terms is open to question. The jury is out, as they say.
For example, the Bexley Business Academy is sponsored by City of London institutions to provide special support for children in this traditionally deprived part of southeast London. Designed by Foster and Partners, it uses the architectural language of the contemporary office building to illustrate its specialist qualities and appeal to its often disaffected pupil intake.
The Charter School movement in the USA is an attempt to free publicly funded elementary or secondary schools from some of the bureaucracy that applies to normal public schools. This is in exchange for some sort of accountability for producing certain results, such as an educational experience which is qualitatively different from what is available in traditional public schools, hence, the term ‘charter’. The idea here is that new and creative teaching methods can be replicated in traditional public schools for the benefit of all children. In 2006-2007 the number of charter schools was up by 11% with schools in 40 states educating more than 1.15 million children. Often a progressive form of environment signals the schools agenda of change. For example the Perspectives Charter School in Chicago eschews the traditional modesty of low-key secondary school architecture. Instead it states its support by the city fathers for lower-income students with a landmark building which has a city wide profile in this most architectural of cities.
Dutch education is characterised by a system in which both public and private education facilities enjoy equal governmental funding while being subject to some national regulation. For several decades the Netherlands has implemented policies aimed explicitly to address the needs of children with educational disadvantages. Traditionally these were geared towards disadvantaged Dutch pupils. However, due to large increases in migrant groups from the 1960s, they have become the main focal point for change strategies, with an increasing emphasis on a vocationally orientated curriculum. The Montessori College Oost in Amsterdam offers practical job training, with workshops, kitchens and a small sports hall to provide vocational training for the students who come from 50 different countries. Many of them are from unstable family backgrounds, and the less academic, more practically based curriculum options enable skills to be learned for a highly competitive workplace. However, the most important features of the building are proving to be incidental elements such as generous circulation spaces outside the classroom, which like village streets, with exciting balconies and staircases traversing the open atrium spaces below, make chance encounters between students and staff part of the enriched social experience.
In Germany the tradition of a vocational stream from the secondary school level is well established. It is system to which the British and US systems aspire. One of the most distinctive new specialist schools is the Marie Curie Gymnasium in the suburbs of Berlin. Its architecture is very much of the moment, modernistic and utilising cutting edge sustainability technology. However, it is not a specialist building for deprived students; rather it is for those students who are gifted academically in science subjects, with an intake from throughout the state. Here the response has been to address the needs of gifted children, those who may find mainstream secondary education too slow to cater for their educational requirements. Again the architecture is more contemporary high tech office building than what we are used to seeing in normal run of the mill secondaries.
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Originally published in: Mark Dudek, Schools and Kindergartens: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2015.