Albuquerque's Environmental Story
Albuquerque's Environmental StoryResearch findings in the emerging environmental psychological/design and behavior discipline during the past 25 years indicate the inherent potential of school environments as learning tools for children. This enriching potential has been relatively untapped by architects, educators, and parents, when in fact the built natural and cultural environment can be a potent learning tool.
The concepts and the configurations of the physical space for learning activities has remained, comparatively unchanged, since the Boston Latin School was designed in the 18th century, using an egg-crate model for school planning. This approach to school design assumed that the teaching and learning process utilized mainly textbooks, and that the space in which it occurred was a passive receptacle.
From Alaska to the Southwest and from Florida to New England, our children have been surrounded for 200 years by sterile, antiquated desks, tables, and poorly designed furniture and display areas. Lack of storage has too often resulted in visual pollution, clutter, disarray, and chaos. Little or no relationship has been recognized between classroom or playground design and the learning experiences of children.
Recently the Council for Educational Facility Planners International has identified over 200 billion dollars worth of new and retrofitted construction needs to improve the indoor physical environments of the schools in America. Many schools need to update their playgrounds as learning landscapes from which students can learn concepts of ecology as well as improve their gross motor skills.
In the future with the advent of the information age, students will not be sitting in classrooms listening to a teacher. Students will be moving through redesigned spaces retrieving their own information, creatively solving their own problems, being responsible for their own learning, and using teachers, books, computers, global connections as a means to further their own inquisitiveness. There will be many avenues to learning and many new kinds of people involved in education from the community.
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A number of learning opportunities can be woven into the structure of a school so that the built environment becomes an active, well-ordered work of art and a three-dimensional textbook or teaching tool rather than a passive space housing a disarray of "things". To maximize growth in intellectual development, the school should be a rich, multi-sensory environment with changing stimuli, the design of which reinforces and stimulates the individual interests of the child, playing up his or her cognitive styles, and supporting basic skill acquisition as well as creative/aesthetic behavior. The richer the environment, the greater the learning. The more a child sees and hears, the more he wants to see and hear. Rate of perceptual growth, then, is in part, a function of environmental opportunity, circumstance, and the ability to manipulate within that environment.
Howard Gardner from Project Zero, Harvard University, has espoused the theory of multiple intelligences. He states that we have emphasized far too long one verbal-linguistic intelligence. He says we need to help children who may have other kinds of intelligences such as visual-spatial, mathematical, kinesthetic, musical, intrapersonal, and interpersonal intelligences.
Gardner includes a new intelligence, which he names naturalist intelligence, meaning a knowledge of the environment. Learning environments as well as curriculum and instructional practices need be designed to support these diverse intelligences.
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In designing or redesigning educational facilities, attention must be paid to the relationships among (1) building/activity settings; (2) building occupants; and (3) occupants' needs. Each of these three elements can be further subdivided for the purpose of systematic investigation. The setting, for example, begins with the activity work station and advances to the levels of the classroom and the entire school building. Similarly, occupants are differentiated, whether they are referred to as individuals (children or teaching staff), as social groups, or as an entire organization (the school's staff and student body). Human occupant needs versus the physical and social environments are also considered at three hierarchically structured levels: (1) health/safety/security requirements; (2) functional performance requirements; and (3) psychological comfort and aesthetic satisfaction requirements.
When creating activity-based settings, classrooms, and entire schools as well as their outdoor environments, the habitability framework is applied in a systematic fashion in order not to omit any of the person-environment relationships that are essential for the success of the resulting designs. More than 40 concepts have been identified that relate person/occupants to aspects of the physical environment. An example of these relational concepts is "territoriality". As defined in primate ethology, "territoriality" refers to the acquisition, marking, bounding, occupation, and defense of space. Translated into environmental design, an operationalized concept of territoriality implies a physically well-defined space with boundaries, level changes, partitions, walls, screens, differentiated light levels and sources, differentiated surface treatment or acoustical provision, to name just a few. The related concept of "privacy" illustrates how all sensory modes need to be considered in bringing about satisfactory environmental design supports for activity based classroom settings and for each students concentration and sense of place.
The following section identifies generic settings within the classroom that are essential to all learning spaces and serve the needs of children from kindergarten through twelfth grade, not only in self-contained classrooms, but also in such specialized rooms as language arts, science rooms, resource areas, and special education classrooms. Teachers should be encouraged to study with their children how the classrooms function and to redesign their classrooms every year as an initial experience in the study of space and environmental modification. Students can measure, draw to scale, and plan for modification using the following essential settings.
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Floor Plan for High School Pre-Engineering Lab
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The generic learning zones can function on an activity basis, from very active to passive, from quiet to noisy, from vertical to horizontal, including various planes, from ground level to elevated ones. They include:
Entry Zone - Every classroom should welcome students and have some form of entry (to define it), such as, hanging plants, hanging fabric, some kind of partition or implied partition. Perhaps a wall two graphic wraps itself around the door from the hallway. It could exemplify a period in history and relate to the Social Studies curriculum. Access from hallways should be warm and inviting and relate to the outside of the room as a "transitionor".
they should be of office or conference room caliber.
Storage Systems Zones - Storage systems in a classroom can be learning tools, too. Putting things away and making the room orderly for the next day helps a child become responsible for his or her environment. It is important in a highly materialistic culture to help children understand, care for, and respect property. Children and instructors alike interact with materials in the learning environment. Circulation in a classroom will be dependent upon careful planning of the storage of coats, boots, hats, books, and supplies. Research indicates that corners of rooms are not used. Perhaps they could be designed as storage spaces. There should be the following classroom storage zones:
hallway storage near the classroom for coats, or, in places with inclement weather, a mud room for children's outdoor gear.
Display Zones and Mini-Museums - Quite often teachers put up and display so much "stuff" that the classroom becomes visually chaotic. This does not help the child to become visually literate, and results in the "super market" effect wherein s/he eventually blocks out the stimuli because there is too much to look at. When a child learns how to read, he must develop his visual and spatial perceptual skills such as figure/ground discrimination, embedded figure, part/whole relationships, positive/negative form and space, rotational shape and so forth. Therefore, selected spaces that are not necessarily bulletin boards, should be assigned for child art work. They could also serve as message boards, as museums for aesthetically pleasing and culturally contextual items, for display of photographs or general artwork. The walls or dividers used for display in a classroom should have a museum-like quality and contribute to learning, especially for such subject matter areas as reading, science, mathematics. There also should be NEGATIVE SPACE (plain walls) around the display area so that the intended message is perceived and digested. Teachers need help from architects and graphic designers and museum exhibitors and curators to learn the art of display.
Graphic Arts - A graphic which covers a part of a wall, a corner, wraps itself from entry to ceiling around a wall can teach. Paint is an architectural membrane that can be changed often. It can help children learn the alphabet, their numbers, color combinations, and left to right sequencing. A graphic can be culturally significant as well as aesthetically pleasing. Signage is important. Messages and items should be labeled. Perhaps bilingual labels can be used for language learning. Works of art are rarely seen in schools. There is a need to promote visual learning as well as verbal learning. Since children watch thousands of hours of television, they need to become visually selective. Graphics and paintings can help to promote visual thinking and the making of critical aesthetic judgements.
Technology and Multimedia Zone - As we move towards more highly developed technology, schools need to tap available machines and expose children at an early age to their use. The exposure and use should be consistent and not sporadic. Many schools have complicated video-taping and other expensive equipment stashed away in closets because no one knows how to use such equipment. Teachers should be given proper training to use technology or perhaps children can be taught directly by technicians how to use such valuable teaching and learning devices. The technology zone should provide a place for computers, language and listening labs, a keyboard, calculators, VCRs and other evolving systems. Technology is a means to an end.
Living Things Zone - This zone contains plants, trees, perhaps a window greenhouse, and animals, such as small animal cages, fish. In no case should classrooms be designed without windows or natural light.
Research Area and Library Zone - This area contains encyclopedias, reference books, and well-chosen children's literature where children can work independently and in small groups. Schools should weed out unused textbooks and cease their reliance on textbook learning. With a well-provisioned classroom environment where applied learning and creative problem solving abounds, there is no need for a profusion of textbooks. Children love good literature and reference materials.
Soft Zone - This zone should be home-like with living room ambience for reading, lounging, quiet play (games), or informal work. It could be considered a quiet personal space and be next to the research and library zone. It could be an elevated loft or a soft amphitheater used for group meetings, discussion, or creative dramatics. The opportunity to use the volume of space above the floor can be facilitated by level change.
Teacher Zone - Teachers do not need, in all cases, a desk. Rather, they have said that they need a well- organized place for things. Perhaps a drop- down table in a lockable storage area with shelves is adequate. The teacher should not lecture but circulate among groups and work with small groups of students in an applied learning format. In this way the classroom of today and tomorrow becomes a learning laboratory, an active studio, an experimentation place, a research resource, and a humanized space. The teacher becomes a facilitator, not a lecturer glued to a desk or one "teaching spot" in the room.
Lighting, Mechanical, Electrical, Furniture and Service Items - Adequate heating, cooling, ventilation, plumbing, and lighting should be provided. Natural light is the best. Fluorescent lights should be avoided. If bands of ceiling lights are used, careful selection of tubes should include a full spectrum lighting system. A sink and water are also needed. A flexible system of learning centers can be set up near the storage and display zones. They do not necessarily have to be organized around the disciplines of mathematics, science, art, or reading. They can be organized in interdisciplinary fashion and around contextual themes and concepts. For instance, a cooking environment can be used to teach math, science, social studies, reading, cultural uses of food, nutrition, promote healthy socialization, and act as an art area when cooking has ceased. All furniture in the schools settings will be on wheels with brakes. It will be deployable and flexible. There will be storage walls with retractable shelves for computers and other supplies. Display systems will be of museum quality and learning spaces will be visually and physically well organized for multiple uses by multiple populations.
Many communities, both rural and urban, want their schools designed as community centers so that gyms, cooking areas, libraries, parks, art studios, and other services are co-located in schools. This is an optimal way for community to spend money that can be used by students with or without mentors and outreach educational sites. In this way there is a viable reciprocity between school and community. There is a need to break the barriers of discrete, isolated classrooms, to better involve educators and children in the real world and in real life. The reconfiguration of the physical environment of our schools can help to literally break down walls that have kept schools in isolation from their communities.
Schools of the future will be very different from the ones we know today. Children are going to be much more responsible for their own learning. Children of different ages will help each other learn. There will be global interaction by electronic means and the world community will be entering the schools. The classroom will be changed, but also the whole school or district may become a learning environment in which students move through environments that provide them studio-like spaces to solve problems, produce products, and assess their progress. Some of the settings envisioned for the future include
Students will be able to have the following learning experiences in these studios:
Students will enjoy the following special learning environments:
Other amenities for adults and communities are needed: trees, berms and hills, benches, walking and jogging trails, exercise stations.
Teachers will need training in space planning. Architects, interior designers, museum curators will be part of a teacher training team. Colleges of Education everywhere need to retrain faculty to think visually and provide new university learning environments as examples for teachers in training.
Many playgrounds in America and elsewhere are considered unsafe, not to mention devoid of learning potential. Fritjof Capra believes that change in schools will come through eco-literacy, knowledge of students' relationship to their environment. The vacuous playgrounds that surround our schools can be redesigned by students who can maintain and begin, by their involvement, to understand their precious relationship to the earth and its ecological logic.
I. Child/Play
II. Child/Ambient
III. Child/Biotic
IV. Child/Spatial
V. Signage Graphics
IV. Adult Eco-literacy
Learning environments such as the ones described above demand a trust relationship
between teachers and students. This kind of environment also helps students
to become independent learners, responsible in many cases for their own learning.
A well- provisioned classroom supports the curriculum and the teachers by acting
as a regenerative research and resource center. Students get excited about learning.
They are not bored or "turned off." Hostility toward boring schools
becomes curious creativity. In this more informal but more efficient setting,
the trust relationship and respect for children becomes the basis for transmittal
of democratic value systems. Setting students in rigid rows, even with computers,
insisting on constant surveillance, staffing schools with narcotics agents,
guard dogs, or surrounding the school with chainlink fences is only preparing
students for a police state, not for a democracy. If Americans value their freedom,
and if schools are here to support the needs of society, not to solely determine
them, then administrators, teachers, and parents need to rethink the architectural,
pedagogical aura of our schools. Every teacher and administrator is a potential
designer of schools. So are children. The potential of redesigning classrooms
to meet developmental needs of students and to support the curriculum must be
given time and creativity. Students can be involved in environmental modification,
too. Great amounts of money are not needed. We are moving into a new century.
Our schools and their learning environments must move with us.
For further information, write to:
Dr. Anne Taylor
Institute of Environmental Education
School of Architecture & Planning
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
Telephone (505) 277-5058
FAX (505) 277-7113
(Up to Section IV, Back to Back to Schools and Their Impact on Environment, On to The Human Environment)