Description

The Elmer A. Henderson: A Johns Hopkins Partnership School is a project that shows how a school can act as a catalyst for transforming an entire area. The school is run by Johns Hopkins University, a dominant institution in Baltimore, to educate teachers and give children a better education. The school comprises also the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation Early Childhood Center and is located in East Baltimore, holding 175 children in the nursery, from 0–5 with 40
staff and 540 children from grades 1–8 with 60 estimated staff. David W. Andrews, Ph.D., Dean of Johns Hopkins University School of Education, said ‘Henderson-Hopkins School will not only change the way we think about training teachers for the future, it will fundamentally change the way its students learn by providing personalised learning and a leading-edge educational experience.’

Perhaps more critically this school, developed as a series of urban blocks, densifies and reconstructs a part of the city and the neighbourhood. The architects were inspired by East Baltimore’s row house architecture and how this could mirror the neighbourhood’s urban fabric. The buildings are designed to be flexible to accommodate experimentation and change in teaching methods and uses. Architect Robert Rogers states that ‘this project represents what architecture for education can really be about: enabling students, teachers and community. Our goal was to recover and reimagine an urban fabric rich in opportunity and optimism for East Baltimore and innovate a school concept rooted in the familiar yet ever changing to fulfill a progressive pedagogy.’

The school was built by a non-profit developer, East Baltimore Development, with community, government and business partners. Their mission is to regenerate greater East Baltimore and they are committed to the belief that strong neighbourhoods are built around strong community (public) schools. To promote the urban regeneration of the area further, the school’s campus incorporates a family health centre, a library, an auditorium and a gym. All these resources are shared with residents and businesses in the local community.

Students are grouped by age in the small-scale ‘Houses’ that are set within a grid of main and side streets. Each House has a ‘Commons’ for lunching and flexible teaching/learning and a defined outdoor ‘Learning Terrace’. This strategy of de-centralising the school is intended to promote individual learning and growth. The building heights are consistent with the surrounding low-rise urban form. The Commons are taller building elements that rise above the low-scale school campus, and were designed to represent education as the centre of the community: ‘These vertical elements transform the school into a community landmark, following the tradition of Baltimore’s church steeples, which stand as social and visual anchors for local neighbourhoods.’

 

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Originally published in: Prue Chiles (ed.), Leo Care, Howard Evans, Anna Holder, Claire Kemp, Building Schools: Key Issues for Contemporary Design, Birkhäuser, 2015.