Description

Nurseries and kindergartens

Architecture for the education of young children aged 5 or 6 to 11 years has been a distinct building type for over a century. Early years architecture for preschool children aged 0 to 5 or 6 years has been less distinct. Nevertheless early years and elementary school design can be discussed generally within the framework of a number of themes and building typologies. Three approaches have distinctive pedagogical concepts built into the architectural approach and are discussed here.

Firstly, there are new buildings where design priorities focus upon a strictly codified room schedule. This alone will dictate the architectural approach. Here is a case in point: ‘There is a soft corner with a comfortable adult sized sofa, a large rug and some cushions and a child sized bookcase, and an additional accessible storage shelf. Each group room has its own bathroom and a side room exclusively used for naps and sleeping, and equipped with small mattresses.’[1]

Because the schedule is expressed primarily as a series of quasi-functional zones underpinned by a pre-determined floor area relating to child numbers, the architectural narrative tends to be two-dimensional and very limited. There is an emphasis on a prescriptive approach where rules and regulations guide the architectural strategy. Everything is very much pre-determined by the zones or territories which are strictly imposed upon children. The main determinant of the architecture are age-related groupings such as 0-1 year olds, 1-2 year olds, 2-3 years olds etc. Although they are usually described as ’homebase’ areas, many are similar in character to school classrooms. Each homebase area may be further designated into functional zones such as the cloakroom, the wet zone (with sinks for art and craft activities) and the quiet zone. This is a range of activities which is so tightly prescribed that the architecture tends to reduce and limit the scope for learning rather than extending and opening it up. The focus is on adult needs, such as safety and security, rather than on child needs, such as the promotion of exploration and discovery.

Clearly this approach can obscure the potential for creativity and imagination. The free spirit of young children is somehow narrowed down to a set of activities which are deemed to have educational value. Ultimately, the quality of the architecture is very much down to the skills of the architect selected, and his or her ability to interpret the brief in a truly child-orientated way. This is in my view a highly dysfunctional relationship between pedagogy and space, yet it is the basis of much contemporary practice.

The second design typology applies to those institutions which have adapted premises to suit new forms of pedagogy. This is space which emerges organically as a result of enlightened forms of education around which an existing school or nursery building adapts itself. Here the architecture follows the pedagogy. E. F. O’Neill’s work at Prestolee School, Kearsley, set the tone for this approach.

Prestolee School was an unremarkable county elementary school in Lancashire, northwest England, which was transformed between the years 1918 and 1953. Its head teacher throughout this time was Edward Francis O’Neill (1850-1975). He pioneered an active learning approach which flew in the face of convention with its emphasis on structured discipline dictating school design formulaically as, for example, a number of classrooms grouped around an assembly hall with an outside playground.

O’Neill objected to the concept that the child’s day must be divided up between work and play and neatly segmented across the week into hour long subject lessons delivered by a specialist teacher with the aid of a blackboard. His thesis was that children learnt by doing, and he developed a school environment which enabled the children to work at their own pace following their own course of development. He viewed children as constructors and researchers of their own worlds, utilising their time best in a way which developed their own interests. O’Neill fashioned the school interior and exterior as a single seamless environment, which was a deliberate response to what he considered to be the artificial and damaging division between ‘work’ (indoors) and ‘play’ (outdoors).

Children at Prestolee could carry out their tasks indoors or outdoors as they wished. He gradually developed the hard tarmac play yard introducing flower beds, a vegetable garden, water fountains, bathing pools and opportunities for construction; a windmill, 4 metres high standing on a 1.8 metre wall was constructed by the oldest junior boys.

Inside, one of the important transformations was the conversion of the assembly hall into an open plan classroom, accessible to pupils of all ages. Screens and other furniture were moved in, with long tables placed back to back forming large flat areas for specialised learning activities such as music, reading, art and construction. The idea was that learning materials could be used informally when individuals or small groups of children required them. The emphasis was on self-generated research rather than forced learning, and the flexibility of the environment became a key component. The school was open for 12 hours per day with children returning voluntarily for evening sessions. O’Neill’s school became known as the ‘learn by doing school’. Broadly speaking this was not high architecture in the tightly pre-planned form. Rather it emerges and develops, as educational needs are defined. Radical pedagogy goes hand in hand with spatial adaptations, which are constantly changing to match the needs of the evolving curriculum.[2]

There are many other examples of such developments during the 20th century from Margaret McMillan’s ideal nursery school in London’s east end in 1923 to Loris Malaguzzi, the renowned Italian educator who developed the Reggio Emilia system from 1963 on. What they have in common is the leadership of a visionary individual educator from which all else follows, including architecture and space.

The third distinct category is where an architect, strongly influenced by his or her personal experiences of childhood, develops a particularly child-orientated approach to design. Because the architect is in tune with his or her own early experiences and is aware of their architectural potency, this category has usually created the most advanced form of pedagogical building design.

Perhaps the prime example is the master architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Due to his fame in designing and building all types of architecture and inspiring subsequent architectural movements in the 20th century the story of his childhood inspiration is well known.

The youthful Wright explained how he and his mother worked together with the Froebel ‘gifts’, which became the source of profound pleasure and his subconscious awakening to the primacy of shape, texture and form. He describes his engagement with the Froebel block system as follows: ’The smoothly shaped maple blocks with which to build, the sense of which never afterwards leaves the fingers: form becoming feeling.‘[3] To understand the roots of this theory we have to go back further.

Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), the important early years educator, had initially worked in the field of crystallographic science. In the first German edition of The Education of Man (1826), he makes the observation that whether organic or inorganic, crystalline or non-crystalline, developmental processes seemed to be the same; in essence they tend to develop outward from within, striving to maintain balance between inner and outer forces.[4] His study of the natural sciences gave him a clear conception of the importance of geometric numbering systems and their underlying relationship to natural phenomena such as plant forms and crystals. Much of Froebel’s slightly mystical theorising can now be dismissed (although it is important to recognise how seriously the Froebel idea is taken particularly in Japan and North America). Froebel’s speculations brought him to the view that the random nature of child like play could be directed into an organised learning system, by somehow connecting this innate knowledge within the child to an appropriate systematic process. He called the system ‘The Gifts and Occupations.’

In purely architectural terms, what was important about Froebel’s system were the building blocks or ‘building boxes.’ Each set became progressively more complex as the child’s understanding developed. Although they contained different shapes, rectangular, square and triangular spheres, they were all based on the same modular system. The child is unaware of the mathematical significance of his or her playthings, but the child’s eye becomes accustomed to a correct sense of form; as a result, notions of proportion and harmony are lodged deep within the child’s psyche.

On an intuitive level, it is clear how many of Wright’s designs incorporated this precocious knowledge. The external view of his Avery Coonley Playhouse (1912), a kindergarten in the suburbs of Chicago for a private client, is formed by pure horizontal and vertical plains of materiality which can be precisely constructed in miniature.

Taking the logic of this towards more detailed features in the same building, we can see in the triptych stained glass windows of the main façade the use of coloured circles and squares in an abstract composition which Wright himself ascribed to the ‘Seventh Froebel Gift.’ (I have described the window designs as abstract but they are open to imaginative interpretation. At the time of their creation, discussion about their meaning between Wright and his client centred on balloons, American flags and confetti.) Wright claimed that these circles and squares of brilliant primaries ‘interfere less with the function of the window and add a higher architectural note to the effect of light itself.’[5] They form what Wright called a ‘kinder-symphony,’ once again evoking Froebel’s kindergarten education.

So what was the pedagogical vision in the work of Wright and other architects who followed him? The buildings which promote these principles develop an empathy with their users, by way of a sort of colour and form language. Rather than relying on a schedule of accommodation to dictate space, there is an altogether richer, more spatially coherent frame of reference. What Wright did in the Avery Coonley Playhouse was to develop a way in which children could quite literally read their environment as they moved around. For pre-literate children in particular, this means that the building becomes an integral part of the learning process, yet in a smooth natural process of seeing, touching and smelling the environment. In other words, perception comes through all of the senses rather than just sight.

Of course, it is difficult to place a quantifiable pedagogic value on what ultimately may simply be described as good design which promotes a particular type of learning for children (which some people call environmental awareness). A child’s conception of space is such a cerebral concept; developers and government funding bodies in charge of developing early years environments today usually seek more pragmatic values. In the UK at present this educational orthodoxy, which relates children’s activities to educational values in an overly simplistic way, is threatening to diminish the richness of a children’s culture which has in the past been closely linked to pedagogical visions and architectural space.

It cannot be conclusively proven that all children depend or indeed need good architectural space to thrive and learn during the early years. However, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that a child’s perception of space is critical, particularly where children come from deprived or abusive homes. Good perceptive design really makes a difference for children at every age, but in particular for those growing towards the end of primary school and the advent of secondary school, it is fundamental.

When discussing early years architecture, its culture and historical development, one must mention the municipal infant-toddler centres and pre schools of Reggio Emilia in Northern Italy. The system has evolved over the past 40 years, largely as a result of the inspirational childcare specialist and visionary, Loris Malaguzzi and his early work on how children learn. ‘Reggio,’ as it is known, is widely recognised as the best system in the world, where an advanced pedagogy connects with some of the most pleasing early years buildings anywhere. Reggio recognises that spaces for children are a fundamental part of the complex development support system which enables young children to gain knowledge.

The system is one which speaks about the exciting process of cognitive and cultural development for young children. This is a highly developed science where a language has evolved which goes beyond the negative discourse which characterises much of the debate currently taking place in the UK and the USA. As mentioned previously, there appears to be a complete separation between the articulation of architectural and educational ideas; early years is often seen as a subject relating mainly to safety and social control rather than a great opportunity for young children. By contrast at Reggio, architecture and pedagogy is fully integrated and the level of discourse is deep and philosophical. Children’s rights are the priority.

Reggio recognises that the development of knowledge does not take place in a simplistic linear way, but rather as a complex network of rich interconnecting influences which the world has to offer; therefore, the more complex and rich the learning environment is, the better the pace of knowledge and understanding will become. The school environment becomes a sort of workshop for research and experimentation where perception of things, and in particular, the relationships between children, become fundamental strategies for building individual cognition and knowledge. Reggio buildings are often beautiful by any subjective opinion, but the extent to which they encourage interaction with the users really defines their success.

‘Reflections on the tools of design, with indications on spatial distribution and on the ‘soft qualities’: light, colour, materials, sound, smell and microclimate. The aim is to provide instruments of analysis and practical indications for designing the interiors and exteriors of infant-toddler centres and pre-schools.’[6]

The Reggio research group have developed a series of guidelines which are framed in a strong pedagogical language. For example ‘recognisability’ means creating an architectural language and an environmental atmosphere which has a precise identity. It speaks of non-hierarchical space, where every area of the childcare building is potentially open to children and adults alike because there should be a democracy of function; every space is a potential area for learning and development. Another important feature which appears in every centre is a large central square called the piazza. The piazza is a place of meeting, a public place of the school which plays the same role as the piazza does in the town. It fosters encounters, group interactions, stories, social relations and the children’s assumption of a public identity.

Many other influences and inspirations are cited as being important within this list of ingredients for the successful early years centre, including light, colour, the use of materials, smell, sound, the quality of environmental conditions and changeability, i.e. the extent to which the environment can be transformed over the year by its users. This is a philosophy which rides through the mediocrity and subjective basis of much contemporary design for early years.

Schools

One of the earliest examples of school buildings with a converging educational and architectural agenda was the work of E. R. Robson, surveyor, architect and educational theorist, who was the main driving force in the development of the London Board Schools at the end of the 19th and into the early 20th century. Indeed the group of school buildings which comprise the Phoenix School campus includes a Robson influenced elementary school which is still in use today, 100 years after it first saw the light of day. In this section we will provide a brief over-view of the key historical movements which influenced architecture for mass education from its inception to the present time.

England was the first country to experience industrialisation and sought educational provision for the so-called industrial classes from the beginning of the 19th century. From the implementation of the 1833 Factory Act, which enforced two hours of instruction daily for factory children, reform developed as an all too evident response to the plight of the exploited masses. However, the level of government grants allocated to erect schoolhouses in Great Britain was slow to get off the mark when compared with similar developments in other European countries at that time. For example the Irish Government provided a 2.5 million GBP subsidy to assist education in Ireland between 1821 and 1828. In Germany at that time, vast resources were being allocated, as the nation geared up to a period of sustained economic growth. In the United States, spending on school buildings in one year, 1851, in one town, Philadelphia, was 184,842 USD, as the population increased at a rate of 20,000 per annum.

It was not until the implementation of the UK Elementary Education Act in 1870, that made education compulsory for all children between the ages of 6 and 11, that the need to construct large elementary schools within the urban areas became an overriding necessity and similar sums were allocated from general taxation. At this time, the London School Board advertised for an architect and surveyor to direct the massive expansion anticipated throughout the mainly working class areas of the capital. The then architect surveyor to the Liverpool Corporation, E. R. Robson, was appointed.

Whilst school systems in some shape or form had been developing throughout the world from the earliest part of the enlightenment, there was no coherent idea as to how an architectural and educational theory should be integrated to create a new form of school building appropriate to its special function. Treatises on the subject were either written from a purely architectural perspective (with an emphasis on the external style rather the internal functioning) or from an essentially pragmatic viewpoint emphasising the health and safety needs of the children during their time in school.

Robson had travelled widely following his appointment in 1872. His view of overseas systems, particularly those he viewed in the USA, Switzerland and Germany, led him to the conclusion that although there was a tradition of secondary school education in those countries upon which England could draw, there was no such tradition in elementary schooling. Nevertheless observing the best systems of education the world had to offer proved to be a valuable experience in balancing his professional background in architecture with his broader remit as a promoter of good educational practice.

Robson’s emerging theories were set out in a book published in 1874, School Architecture: Practical Remarks on the Planning Designing, Building and Furnishing of School Houses. This landmark publication covered key areas of the agenda in some detail such as the layout of schools, the interior environment, school furniture and architectural style. The publication was rich in advice on natural ventilation, orientation and heating. For example, on lighting Robson concluded that the coolest and steadiest light was from the north and recommended that there should be a minimum of 30 square inches of glass to every square foot of floor space (0.22 m² per 1 m²). This he asserted was sound guidance based on previously unpublished German research. In fact, the most interesting dimension of this landmark publication was the extensive reference he made to the projects he had seen during his study trips abroad.[7]

Based on his first hand observations, Robson introduced the Prussian system of separate classrooms organised around a communal hall into his new school buildings in London. Previously lessons had taken place ‘simultaneously’ in vast communal halls. For the first time in English state schools, strict age-related class sizes were proscribed along with advice on their use, for example the need for circulation spaces around desks and at the front of the room for presentations was defined in precise feet and inches. No detail seemed unimportant to Robson. His great skill was to integrate both sides of the agenda by making himself proficient in both the architectural and educational aspects of school buildings.

Robson’s work both in the theory and the practice of school design had far reaching consequences. Having developed many of his original ideas following his study visits to Europe and the USA, his buildings then became a source of great influence for others during the first 20 years of their usage. Visitors from abroad took what they needed, often re-importing the ideas Robson had originally taken from their own country; Robson was particularly influential to the developing school system in North America at the turn of the century.

Robson’s comments on his American sojourn are interesting. He notes how school houses in America, and in particular those of New England, were ingenious, using new approaches to construction and in particular mentioning how important the school edifice was, perhaps for the first time recognising that school architecture communicated to children on a number of levels. One project example he cites as of particular merit is The High and Normal School for Girls in Boston. Erected in 1870, it had five storeys and a various range of accommodation including classrooms with single desks for 50 children, large classrooms for 100 students and rooms for the withdrawal of smaller study groups. The total number of pupils was 1,225. It was a model of robust, high quality space making which set a new standard in terms of advanced environmental design.

Robson is critical of the lack of convergence between educational and architectural theories stating that: “As in England, there is much critical investigation and discussion of education itself, but no trace that some of the vital points affecting buildings (and, therefore, indirectly the education) […] have as yet been sufficiently tackled at close quarters or in the careful manner common to Germany.”[8] There is a genuinely held esteem for the German system of building for education, which he recognises as highly influential to most of what he had seen in America. Robson even asserts that it is their superior system of education to which the Prussians owe their success over the French in war, referring to the compulsory primary schooling which had been in place for over a century; it was not surprising to him that the Germans were so far ahead of the UK in many aspects of the developing urban culture. In 1870, Robson eulogised about the German system of mass education, especially that of Saxony and Prussia, describing it as the best system in the world. From the age of six, he observed, a German boy attends an elementary school. “Theoretically he goes under compulsion, practically of his own pleasure, for the German parents no more think of depriving their child of tuition than of breakfast.”[9]

Building for education developed in juddering movements over long periods of time with phases of relative inactivity, followed by periods of frenetic investment and usually very speedy re-development. This happens in roughly 30-year cycles. So for example in the UK, there were major developments from the end of the 1950s through the 1960s, where architects experimented with system build solutions and high modernism, a reflection of 1960s Premier Harold Wilson’s ‘white hot heat of technological advancement’. An important forerunner was the Hunstanton School in Norfolk designed by Alison and Peter Smithson (1953). However, much of its technology was underdeveloped and has not stood the test of time. Currently there is a massive wave of renewal, with virtually every school in the country having at least a make-over, if not a total re-build by 2010, a case perhaps of political expediency finally recognising what a good social and economic investment education is.

In Germany, there was a significant investment during the 1980s, although it has to be stated that the German economic model has facilitated a much more steady investment. In the years following the Second World War, for understandable reasons, education in Germany took on a new significance; Nazi indoctrination which had infected the body politic during the years leading up to hostilities, was viewed by the allies as an anti-education mentality which helped Hitler to power with little widespread resistance from the people. The new education would stress a more progressive attitude developing thinking individuals with a democratic spirit and a responsibility to the liberal federal constitution rather than to the state.

Many of the new school buildings would help to express this mentality by adopting a modernistic, almost Bauhaus aesthetic (the design school founded by Walter Gropius which had been condemned and closed by the Nazis as being degenerate). A key idea was the open-air school, which was interpreted as a symbol of liberation from authoritarian rules and regulations – a concept which looked back to late 19th century Prussian ideas.

However, the new post war buildings did not mimic the open-air concept literally, instead extensive single-storey pavilion-like structures were created during the 1950s with dual aspect windows so they could be passively ventilated and naturally lit. Towards the end of the decade there was a tendency towards sober functionalism. For example, architect Paul Schneider-Esleben created a clearly articulated three-storey structure in exposed concrete, which became a much-imitated model of good practice.[10]

In Switzerland, with its clear functional school design, there was a different reaction to political developments. Jacques Schader’s cantonal school in Freudenberg near Zürich (1960) is more of a reference to the Modern Movement in architecture than to historical concepts and ideologies.[11]

The work of Hans Scharoun with his unbuilt proposal for an elementary school in Darmstadt (1951), followed by Günter Behnisch from the 1970s, for example his Secondary School at Lorch (1973), illustrate how some German States were interested in new architectural concepts for an educational system which had for too long been obsessed with control and regimentation at the expense of creativity and imagination. Whilst Robson, 100 years previously, had invested in his own research, looking at the best ‘foreign’ examples of school design, sadly little of this visionary ethos was explored within UK and USA settings during the 1950s and 1960s, and architects and architecture perhaps from the 1970s on took a back seat in the evolution of school design until quite recently.

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Originally published in: Mark Dudek, Schools and Kindergartens: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2015.