Could communication be the key to urban schools that work for their whole community?
In recent years, the idea of designing for multiple uses has become prominent in all areas of design, and none more so than space & architecture. This thirst for adaptability only grew in the wake of the global pandemic, when certain spaces could no longer be used for their intended purpose, or when budgetary constraints left some doors closed for the foreseeable future.
And while the pandemic forced schools to close their doors for longer than many other facilities, when considering the way in which schools and their facilities are used, we are, more often than not, still not using schools to their full potential within their communities.
There is a marked disconnect between developers, schools, academies, local authorities and policymakers, and because of this, opportunities to grow and expand upon the uses of educational facilities and the resources they provide are being overlooked. With so much focus on profit and loss, particular in urban environments where property and land prices are highest, innovation is side-lined in favour of walking the well-worn path of “one size fits all” design that does the intended job but little more. And as the everyday facilities, activities and spaces that communities were once able to enjoy for free continue to decline in many cities, it is becoming more and more important for schools to acknowledge their position in the community and how the breadth of their facilities can fulfil many needs in their localities.
In a recent discussion paper ‘Educating the City: Urban Schools as Social Infrastructure’ Dr Jos Boys (Course Director, MSc Learning Environments, Bartlett Real Estate Institute UCL) and Anna Jeffery (Associate, Architecture Initiative) brought together contributions from key stakeholders across the sector in order to explore the full potential of urban schools and the impacts they can (and could) have on the community.
The paper offers a “5-point framework for unlocking the potential of schools in urban communities” and explores how forward-thinking, long-term design could be the key to ensure that schools work not only for the students but for the community at large.
For a long time, there has been a question around whether the academic standards agenda for schools are too narrow, and therefore lose sight of “learning” as whole, placing a higher value on hitting targets than encouraging a more general exploration of knowledge for all ages. The impact of austerity in the UK in particular cannot be understated, as it has seen the closure of many publicly-funded facilities such as libraries, swimming pools and adult learning centres, cutting off a vital lifeline to many in their local communities. However, schools – particularly in urban areas – often have facilities like these built into their design, but those in nearby communities have no access.
Frequently, school buildings and their grounds are the largest single asset that a locality has, and so it makes sense that such facilities should be of greater benefit to those around them. In the UK, for example, the utilisation of school buildings can be less than 30% of their useful lives, which for their size is simply not an economical use of space. Sports halls, playgrounds, meeting rooms, libraries, and other facilities could all be of long-term benefit to the wider community, and as such, the community-school relationship is something that should be considered from the earliest design stage.
Urban & Civic’s secondary school, Houlton School, in Rugby is a great example of what can be achieved with the cross-department working of government. As the developer worked with the school operator from the outset, there was more of a focus on sustainable community integration and management, which allowed for the sports hall to be increased to Sport England standards for greater community use. The team was also able to bring forward a 5km link road as part of their design, to unlock the site for housing and additional facilities to access.
A seemingly obvious, yet still overlooked, use of schools is to increase local opportunities for adult learning of all kinds. From fitness classes and swimming lessons using on site facilities, to more knowledge-based training programmes and academic courses, opening up schools beyond the academic day can help to overcome potential gaps in the basic skills of adults in a community, or even improve the digital literacy and online skills of those who may not otherwise have access to such facilities, therefore offering more employment opportunities.
Education policy makers at all levels should be leveraging existing facilities and new build projects in order to educate the entire population, not simply those required to be in education.
While an argument could be made that budgets may not allow for such expansions and developments, there are many opportunities out there to instead reconfigure existing structures and repurpose redundant buildings that are already at the centre of their community. A great example of this is the London Screen Academy, a sixth form centre in Islington, specialising in film and digital story-telling. Sponsored by Working Title Films and designed by Architecture Initiative, the school is located within a former factory building, which had also been a Metropolitan University campus before sitting empty for a number of years. With flexible structural framework, high ceilings and large windows, the building was easily adapted for educational use, and through the upgrades to the fa?ade, enhanced frontage appearance and additional biodiversity, it has remained a valuable community asset, adding value to the area.
A potential issue with schools becoming more integral to an area’s social infrastructure is, to truly be considered “community-centred” schools require the formal and informal involvement of community members in their leadership, management and activities – such as involving the community in the school’s design and planning process, as well and the resourcing and curriculum-planning. This allows for a more inclusive and broad use of the school and its facilities, reaching as many of the community’s residents as possible.
However, Jeffrey and Boys point out in their paper that this is not necessarily a new way of thinking, as the concept of a community school has been around for many years. In the 1970s, scholar Roger Hiemstra, in his paper “The Community School” outlined four conditions for the successful development of a community education programme, which are:
Hiemstra also insisted that it was critical that there be a community school director or another such role that is responsible for brokering and managing school-community relationships, as the lack of an intermediary has been the cause of failure for many of the current initiatives.
Many schools are publicly funded, and therefore it is often governmental bodies that are responsible for making the big decisions, however they rarely consider the opportunities that new build projects can provide beyond school hours. As Matt Goodwin, Managing Director of Architecture Initiative, pointed out in the Educating the City paper: “Government policy is extremely slow in reacting. I’d say 20 years out of date. Developers respond to the challenges they are given and if those opportunities aren’t there, it doesn’t happen.”
It is this lack of long-term thinking that leaves the condition of schools uneven and results in a lack of innovation and flexibility. In education, we must ask questions about the design quality of schools and how they can offer more to their localities when social infrastructure is viewed as fundamental to the design. There are already projects in place that focus on this approach, as The London Plan Social Infrastructure SPG Policy strongly supports development proposals which put a focus on the extended and multiple use of educational facilities for community and recreational use. By supporting the on and off-site sharing of services and allowing space for both schools and housing, developers can maximise the use of land, and reduce overall costs.
Another potentially detrimental attitude that policy takes towards schools is treating them as though they are independent entities in competition with one another, rather than acknowledging their shared skills and experience. If proper time was dedicated to research and development through high-level discussions, policymakers could learn from stakeholders and improve on what is currently being built in order to make proper use of facilities based on the feelings of those who actually use them.
Urban schools in particular are often in close proximity to other schools and educational establishments and therefore have greater capacity to share their resources and knowledge with one another. This could take many forms, from sharing teaching resources through an online learning portal, to sharing physical spaces like larger sports and recreational hubs as well as performance facilities and shared libraries. Through this approach, better use can be made of space and budgets by designing larger, more sophisticated facilities that can be shared by many different schools as well as the communities around them in the urban areas where land and property prices have reached new highs.
领英推荐
Without the commitment of governmental bodies, both nationally and locally, school governing boards and teachers are left to find their own ways in which to enhance the bond between themselves and the local community with little support or guidance. While in this is less of an issue in areas where parents and carers have the individual funds and resources to support their children, in low-income and under-resourced areas, schools are crucial to creating equal opportunities for the next generation of students as well as their families. It is in these more overlooked communities where the relationship between schools and their localities is imperative, especially in the wake of so many closures of free community facilities, as schools often have the capacity to provide these facilities, fulfilling a need and allowing both children and adults access to further education that they might not otherwise have access to.
To properly consider the relationship between urban schools and their communities, it is important to form partnerships within that community and to do this, there are a number of practices that should be in place. A good example of an outline to increase the community use of school facilities is the guide produced by the Department of Education Northern Ireland (DENI) – Community Use of School Premises: A Guidance Toolkit for Schools (2014) - which explains the essential features of such a venture as:
The guide also provides practical advice to schools around the issues of service and maintenance costs, income and funding, and legal and security issues.
Security and safeguarding are of paramount importance in a school setting, and in this sense, the reticence around opening up schools to the wider community is understandable. However, there are many ways to share facilities without sacrificing the feeling of safety that parents and carers must have when dropping their children off at school.
The physical barriers between urban schools and their surroundings are rarely challenged, and while security concerns cannot be downplayed, there are “hard” and “soft” approaches to security in shared spaces that can be implemented when considering the best and most effective use of spaces. All it takes is a little clever design.
Servete Maci School in Albania was created with a vision of a community place in mind from the start. In developing countries such as this, it is often challenging to allocate new space in the existing infrastructure to allow for dedicated community areas, so developing schools to be more is often a sensible solution. Within the school boundary of Servete Maci, there is an area of unfenced public realm, giving access to the areas of the building most actively used by the community. In a similar way, NORD and Vilhelm Lauritzen Arkitekter’s European School in Copenhagen relies on a network of routes at various levels throughout the site which are open to the public, merging the school and city together. Simple, yet clever gestures like having the sports hall on the outermost part of the site with direct community access ensures that all needs are met without much compromise. The team themselves said of the design: “The relation between the institution and the city becomes a ‘win-win situation’ where spaces, functions and square metres are shared, thus creating a social sustainable utilisation of valuable urban areas.”
“Soft” boundaries can be developed with the aid of communities themselves, and Dr Julia Atkin, an independent education and learning consultant who has worked with educators internationally approaches the design of schools with this in mind. However, this relies more on principles that must become embedded into the community development processes, with strategies in place that support positive behaviours, and ensure that the community is involved in working out the security and design requirements needed to reinforce this behaviour.
Of course, there is also an option for “harder” boundaries in educational settings, such as separate entrances and routes for students and the public, allowing for both groups to exist in the building at the same time without needing to cross paths, or even the more simple solution of timetabled usage of the facilities. Setting hard times for different access opens facilities up for many more potential uses, as well as the potential to make profit during the periods when the buildings are usually completely unused.
The conventional style of school is often a group of buildings isolated behind gates which are only used for certain periods of the day/week/year and left completely empty at others, reducing the property’s potential whilst showing it to be a poor use of public resources. So it makes perfect sense to open up the facilities to a wider community who can make proper use of the outbuildings and classrooms as they stand.
Secondary schools typically contain a large main hall, big enough to accommodate large numbers of pupils and teachers. Such a large space, with moveable furniture - and potentially even external access - can have many different uses for the community, like film nights, talks, presentations, or even small markets in which local craftspeople can sell their wares. Similarly, classrooms are also easily adaptable for evening and weekend adult education classes of all kinds.
However, this kind of adaptability can be pushed even further with the right kind of design and management. Developers and school administrators, such as Kajima, are now looking to more flexible ways of managing their properties – for example, setting up a digital platform, a kind of Air BnB for school buildings, which allows for pop-ups to hire the space when it isn’t being used.
This kind of digital management can reduce the overall management costs whilst also offering an increasing reach and accessibility, as well as delivering services that will have a positive impact on the surrounding community. If buildings are designed with more flexible usage in mind from the start, it would give schools more opportunities to partner with local businesses, allowing them to generate a revenue stream while also supporting their community.
Much like any industry, finance is often a major focus when it comes to building development and construction, with many opting for short-term profit rather than seeing the long-term value of flexible and innovative design. Many stakeholders hold the belief that opting for a more flexible approach to the rules governing the design and size of educational spaces will allow for the best possible use of the resources on offer – not just by adding more space to the conventional layout, but also designing the space to maximise the potential of multiple uses to support the social infrastructure that they are often at the heart of.
Changes in recent years, such as the effect of the global pandemic, the continuing environmental crisis and rising costs of land and materials, have forced designers to innovate like never before, and the ability to create a space with multiple uses is often highly prized – however schools are often overlooked in this area, with many governing bodies and policies approaching their design with a more conventional “if it ain’t broke” kind of attitude, which results in rigid, boring designs that make poor use of the space on offer as well as alienating the community around them. If the pandemic showed us anything, it was the positive impact of community spirit all around the world, so it seems like the perfect time to build (quite literally) upon this sense of community by designing with every member in mind, and giving all a place to gather and grow.
Written by Lucy Cale
For daily inspo check out our feed at instagram.com/kidzinkdesign