Growing Minds,
Changing Spaces
Fall 2019 - Spring 2020
Advisor: Sandy Stannard
One-quarter of K-12 schools nationwide do not have enough classrooms for their students. Consequently, more than 30% of schools have been forced to use portable classrooms. They are low-quality and designed to maximize capacity rather than promote academic success.
This thesis challenges the modular classroom paradigm by providing a platform on which adaptive learning environments can grow. Flexible elements at all scales allow students, teachers, and administrators to take agency over their environment, adjusting size, configuration, function, and appearance to fit their needs.
Based on the Waldorf method of education, which promotes multi-modal active learning, this proposal takes the form of a kit of parts that can be assembled, dissembled, moved, shared, and adapted to fit all curricular needs.
Stand-alone classrooms are inserted into a superstructure that provides additional functionality. Independent modules can be craned throughout the building and attached to classrooms to provide extra space or alternative curricular functions.
The way students learn is constantly changing - so why can’t their learning spaces change too?
What's the Problem?
Modular classrooms have always made promises to school districts of short construction times, affordable leasing options, and unmatched flexibility. While these promises are technically fulfilled by modulars, they leave much to be desired.
While they were originally intended to house students displaced by new construction projects, many become permanent fixtures on campuses across the country. Not meant for long-term use, they quickly reveal their faults .
The existing modular classrooms completely ignore student experience. Lack of building identity, poor indoor environmental quality, and true flexibility are among the major issues with these systems today. After being craned into place, the modules are incapable of any meaningful transformations.
Their universal design, a selling point for some, is, ironically, their downfall. They cannot accommodate any curriculum or education system in an effective way. While they do get the job done, that is all that they are capable of doing.
What's the Solution?
Meaningful Flexibility
Flexibility in an education setting is currently limited to furniture. Desks and chairs on wheels promise much more than they can actually deliver.
There is no reason that flexibility should stop with desks and chairs, though. Ideally, flexibility would be found at all scales and for a variety of users. Furniture, storage, wall systems, and shading devices are some of the human scale options. Larger interventions may include independent study pods, open play areas, classroom expansion pods, and a superstructure for modules to plug into.
Flexibility and modularity are closely intertwined, each relying on the other to ultimately create a better learning environment for students.
Reimagined Modularity
Modules need to be able to move easily and quickly. This is the first hurdle to overcome. Without this baseline, modules would never be added, moved, swapped, or adjusted.
In this age of mass customization, classroom modules no longer need to be identical. Instead, there is an opportunity to design an array of modules that serve a variety of functions. By creating an extensive catalog of academic modules, the students, teachers, and administrators would be able to constantly be in spaces that fit their needs.
Additionally, a reimagined form of modularity can allow schools to quickly expand or contract to match fluctuating student populations and evolving curricular requirements.
Types of Flexibility
Modularity
This thesis aims to redefine the model of modularity in educational architecture. Despite this, it is important to have a deep understanding of the multiple forms of modularity in architecture as a whole.
Prefabricated modules are able to speed up construction times, lower costs, and increase precision. Their various methods of assembly of the modules can give the finished building a unique look. Modules do not have to be placed next to each other in long rows. They can begin to form intricate compositions that would not be achievable with traditional construction methods.
Internal Change
The spaces that people inhabit arguably are the most important opportunity to provide a meaningful form of flexibility. While movable walls are the most obvious approach to internal flexibility, there are countless other options to be explored and exploited. Allowing a single building element to serve multiple functions adds an entirely new dimension to flexible spaces.
Walls can become doors. Doors can act as windows. Windows can provide spaces for storage. Storage can become walls. Walls can be moved to redefine spaces. Spaces become flexible.
Expandability
Buildings almost never serve a static population. The number of occupants and their needs are constantly evolving. So why should buildings be unchanging boxes?
The ability of a building to grow on demand can prove to be extremely valuable. The need for a second building can be met by simply allowing a structure to double in size. Additionally, this would reduce the resources required to meet the programmatic needs of the users. A building should be able to come to life, to grow, the move, to change. Through this, the environmental impact of the building would decrease significantly.
Disassemblability
A significant portion of the design process is spent figuring out how to put things together. Rarely is time spent planning how objects can be taken apart. This one-way mode of thinking has resulted in an open loop of waste. Buildings are designed to go together, serve their occupants, and then be demolished and sent to a landfill.
If buildings were designed to be disassembled, parts could be incrementally removed, refurbished, and replaced. As building technology improves, upgraded portions could be swapped in. As a result, the waste loop would be closed, preventing entire buildings from ending up in landfills.
Forms of Learning
Focused
Focused learning most often takes the form of lecture-based instruction. There is a one-way flow of information from instructor to student that is rarely disrupted. It can also include tutoring or any other situation in which one person is lecturing and the other is passively absorbing information.
Guided
Guided learning is most often found in lab and studio settings. Educators do not lecture, but instead help students to make discoveries on their own. Students are given a degree of freedom to hypothesize, research, and explore under the direction of the educator.
Collaborative
Collaborative learning is most effective in small groups. Students are left almost entirely on their own to discuss, debate, and work together toward a common goal or idea. This is often coupled with focused learning and encourages active accumulation of knowledge rather than passive absorption of information
Independent
Independent learning is most common when students are doing homework. This is the time that many students use to synthesize the information they have accumulated. Forming their own ideas and questions is an important way for students to have control over their learning experience.
Multiple Intelligences
Visual-Spatial
“Capacities to perceive the visual-spatial world accurately and to perform transformations on one’s initial perceptions.”
Rhythmic
“Abilities to produce and appreciate rhythm, pitch, and timbre; appreciation of the forms of musical expressiveness.”
Intrapersonal
Access to one’s own feelings and the ability to discriminate among them and draw upon them to guide behavior; knowledge of one’s own strengths, weaknesses, desires, and intelligences.
Interpersonal
“Capacities to discern and respond appropriately to the moods, temperaments, motivations, and desires of other people.”
Naturalistic
“Abilities to identify and distinguish among products of the natural world such as animals, plants, types of rocks, and weather patterns.”
Linguistic
“Sensitivity to the sounds, rhythms, and meanings of words; sensitivity to the different functions of language.”
Logical
“Sensitivity to, and capacity to discern, logical or numerical patterns; ability to handle long chains of reasoning.”
Kinesthetic
“Abilities to control one’s body movements and to handle objects skillfully.”
Test: Free Play
Tiny Table, Big Ideas
The Abstract Show is a physical display of early thoughts of thesis. While it is meant to be a public display of people’s ideas, it also acts as an opportunity to test ideas through the use of interactive pieces.
This project accomplishes two goals: encourage users to feel like children and create a space for free play. A table and chairs meant for small children has been adapted for use by older users. The table, covered in graphics that mimic the desk of a student, has an integrated basket for toys. Once seated, users are able to play with the custom toys.
The toys are a mix of premade, custom, and 3D printed pieces. A collection of Legos is supplemented by wooden dowels, acrylic panels, and custom-made parts that act as an interface between the systems.
This combination of toy systems allows for totally free play — unrestricted imagination, creation, and experimentation. The scaleless nature of the pieces also gives users the opportunity to apply their own ideas of scale, whether it is a campus, building, classroom, or piece of furniture. Observation of users led to unexpected uses of many of the toys.
The Printed Parts
The Table Top
Test: Qube
In recent years, the trend in education design has been to use flexible furniture. Despite the name, the furniture is rarely, if ever, truly flexible; typically, it is only movable. This misnomer has arguably devalued the idea of flexibility within an education setting.
The solution is to start again at the bottom. How can ‘flexible furniture’ actually be flexible? This project proposes one solution that takes a kit-of-parts approach. It is designed around standardized, readily accessible pieces and an open source collection of 3D printed additions.
The rise of 3D printing in education settings has allowed for this project to be truly flexible. Users can print the pieces that they need as they need them. Users are also able to design and create new pieces to add to the system to fit their ever-changing needs. The ways in which students learn are always evolving, so why shouldn’t their furniture change too?
The parts of this kit alone are useless. When they are assembled, they are able to serve students’ needs. Sometimes the needs are unknown and waiting to be discovered. The limitless number of configurations of these pieces can create places to socialize, display or store belongings, read or work independently, or meet with a group, among many other possibilities. In a classroom, temporary walls may be built out of these blocks, which can be disassembled and used for seats. Students are empowered to create their own furniture spaces with the kit.
The joint is the metaphorical heart of each module and provided a testing ground with the goal of simplicity, beauty, and structural efficiency. The gyroid, a mathematically-derived, triply periodic, continuous surface, is what gives life to the joint. Its inherently minimal form is not only elegant, but also structurally and materially efficient. The continuous surface of the gyroid allows applied forces to be evenly distributed through the entire piece, effectively eliminating points of failure. Solid portions were added around the dowels and magnets in order to increase strength. Embedded magnets allow for easy assembly, disassembly, and reconfiguration of the modules.
The New System
1. Growing Pains
2. Temporary Portables
Students need somewhere to learn! Hundreds of thousands of students are displaced due to overcrowding. This can be alleviated by the creation of a new school or the expansion of an existing campus.
Displaced students are housed in temporary portable classrooms. Typically, these are low-quality learning environments that are used far beyond their intended lifespan.
3. Portables, Temporarily
Low-quality portables are replaced by this new system. These learning environments provide a healthier space for students. Soon, these portables will find a permanent home in a superstructure on the school site.
4. Superstructure
A superstructure begins construction. Ultimately, this will serve as a permanent home for the once-temporary classrooms.
5. Moving In!
Construction of the superstructure continues as classrooms begin to migrate to their new home.
7. Learning to Share
6. New Toys
Once inside, classrooms can take advantage of craned modules that can add space and curricular functionality.
8. Keep on Growin'
As other schools begin to adopt this system, a new economy of sharing will begin to emerge. Modules will be able to move between campuses to meet capacity and curricular demands.
Schools can continue to grow, shrink, and evolve with this system. Student populations are in flux and the ways in which they learn are changing. Schools should be able to keep up.
The Kit of Parts
Flexibility at the human scale provides a unique opportunity for students and teachers to personalize their learning spaces, modulate lighting and ventilation, and fully optimize their environment.
These small scale interventions are where students are able to have the greatest amount of control over their learning. By allowing students this control, they become much more invested in their education. These examples represent only a small portion of the full catalog in this kit of parts.
This honeycomb wall (left) is a modular system at the human scale. Made up of a series of hand-folded, aluminum hexagonal extrusion, this piece can be taken apart, reimagined, and reassembled with ease. It can function as a sculpture, storage, exterior cladding system, or shading.
Human Scale
Pivoting Wall
Modular Wall Panels
User-Controlled Shading
Movable Furniture
Independent Pod Module
Flexibility at the classroom scale is less about personalization, and more about maximizing curricular functionality. Once in the superstructure, classrooms can take advantage of a variety of flexible elements. The overhead crane can be used to move and attach curricular pods to classrooms. These not only expand the usable area of the learning space, but also add unique functionality to each, such as an art room or science lab space. Similarly, one entire face of the classroom is able to telescope out to give more space to students and teachers. An adjustable ceiling system is used to modulate acoustics as well as imply new spaces. These variable height tiles can be controlled by students or teachers as needed. Vertical dividers can be deployed to split the classroom into smaller, independent spaces.
Classroom Scale
As the superstructure is built out and the classroom units are placed in, the kit of parts is able to realize its full potential. With the integrated overhead crane, classrooms are finally able to take advantage of the kit. Craned pods are able to latch onto classrooms, providing extra space and new curricular functionality for students. There is continuous movement inside the school as the needs of each classroom change throughout the day. Elevated walkways create unique spaces and experiences for students and teachers alike.
Building Scale
Testing the System
The Sites
Suburban Test Case:
Holy Family School
Urban Test Case:
Downtown Core
San Jose
Test: Suburban Campus
Test: Suburban Campus
