case history: the desert home

case history: the desert home

Our ideas about building in the desert come from three months spent crossing the Sahara Desert in 2006, and from 6 years now in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.  From the Sahara, we got a visceral sense of the difference between building with earth and building with concrete.  The bottom line was this: In the absence especially of large quantities of expensive insulation, earthen construction was almost always comfortable, and concrete construction rarely so.  In the Sonoran Desert, we've come to draw inspiration from the creatures that operate comfortably in the environment, and extract typologies from that examination.  The house discussed here draws from the Desert Tortoise, relying on a tough, insulating shell to shield the more vulnerable living space within.

...a face only his mother could love...

In this case, the shell is a reinforced thin-shell of concrete, covered by 14" of earth.  In this way we are able to benefit from the structural capacity of a modern material with the insulating value of earth.  Deep overhangs are calculated to admit sun during the winter, when the desert gets quite cold, and keep the sun out otherwise.  Liberal covered exterior space takes advantage of the opportunity to live outdoors for up to 6 months a year by providing shade.  Patios, driveways and the swimming pool extend out into the landscape, stabilizing the surrounding terrain.

The project is dug into a berm, taking advantage of underground temperatures that remain stable year-round between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  Underneath the shell, the building is open to the breeze with a lot of surface area and large operable glass panels.

The question, especially with buildings that aren't cubic, is always what kind of urbanism would emerge if this were taken as a prototype.  In other words, what does a building like this mean for neighborhoods, and for cities?  The failures of suburbia: impoverished social structures, bland culture, enslavement to the car and to commuting, outsourcing childcare, all the gifts of Henry Ford and Frank Lloyd Wright and Dwight Eisenhower, they demand a better answer.  Our inspiration still comes from Paolo Soleri and Arcosanti and a vision of tremendous density and spatial diversity juxtaposed with great stretches of unabused land in its natural or cultivated state.

learning environments: flow

the learning environment: flow

From a recent article in CNN Money, lauding a new book: The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance, by journalist Steven Kotler, pointing out that peak mental states are triggered by a rich environment.  Our take-away: Peak educational performance will be triggered by rich, complex, novel educational spaces.  If we are going to take education seriously and make the most of what science has to tell us, then the 21st century school will not be business as usual, neutral lecture rooms.

"There are 15 flow triggers that are covered in The Rise of Superman. For example, you want a very specific challenge-to-skills ratio. The challenge needs to be 4% greater than the skills you bring to the table. We took that number and ran with it, and tried to test it in various scenarios, and we have found it's very effective.

A rich environment is another trigger. A rich environment is a fancy way of saying lots of novelty, lots of complexity, and lots of unpredictability. Google (GOOG) is great at this. They talk about 10x improvement and not 10% improvement. When you're asking for 10x improvement, you're throwing out all the existing assumptions, and you have to start radically new. You're massively increasing the amount of novelty, complexity, and unpredictability in your employees' work life."

From: The Science Behind Peak Human Performance, Anne VanderMey, CNN Money, March 17, 2014

approach: visceral and inspiring learning environments

approach: visceral and inspiring learning environments

The modern classroom...as neutral as ever, as drained of psychological content as ever, as boring as ever.  Notice the utter passivity of these potentially vibrant, active kids.  30 years after leaving public school, we remember the rooms far more viscerally than the people: arid, airless, draining.  It suggests at the very least that we pay attention to the environment as much as we pay attention to the lesson plan.

Two classrooms in Agadez Niger, 2006, one on each side of a teaching wall, in the shade of a small bosque.  No resources, no enclosure, no one sleeping, incredible engagement.  You can see the earthen bricks for a future building in the background.

School is too often boring.  Emotion is too often stifled or viewed as a problem, environments are desaturated to the point of complete neutrality, and too many buildings give the word "institutional" a bad reputation.

When we think of teaching as telling stories, and learning as experiencing the world through those stories, then we have to ask, how do we get students viscerally involved in stories?  Furthermore, how do we inspire students to create stories, to make their life an amazing story?  Is the hermetic vacuum of a classroom where stories are born?

Given our understanding of multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1999), and given our perception that learning is transactional with the learning environment (Dent-Read and Zukow-Goldring, 1997, Wagman and Miller, 2003), we propose an approach to the design of educational environments that acknowledges their active, cognitive impact and power.

Here than are 14 environmental typologies we believe worth considering for the school environment as an alternative to the neutral classroom.  We'll explore each typology individually in future posts, but leave you with this image: of a school in which teacher's no longer own their classroom, but instead rotate their class among a wide array of individual learning experiences, a host of unique learning environments appealing to the many different intelligences of their many students.

Here are the 14 typologies:

1. The Bar-Restaurant

2. The Campfire

3. The Digital Environment

4. The Garden

5. The Interview Booth

6. The Kiosk

7. The Library Cafe

8. The Map Room

9. The Sandbox

10. The Speaker's Corner

11. The Tent

12. The TV Array

13. The War Room

14. The Workshop

Gardner, Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century, Basic Books, New York (1999)
Wagman and Miller, Nested Reciprocities: The Organism–Environment System in Perception–Action and Development,  (2003)
Dent-Read, C. and P. Zukow-Goldring, “Introduction: Ecological Realism, Dynamic Systems, and Epigenetic Systems Approaches to Development”, in C. Dent-Read and P. Zukow-Goldring (eds.), Evolving Explanations of Development: Ecological Approaches to Organism-Environment Systems, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, (1997)

approach: visceral and inspiring learning experiences

approach: visceral and inspiring learning experiences

As we spent more and more time analyzing school projects and working with educators, we recognized that the conversation was mired in what was rather than what could be.  Student population projections, state authorized reimbursable venues, and traditional teaching methodologies all froze the exploration before it could produce anything but what we've always built and always seen.

There is no doubt that the neutral 800 or 900sf classroom, the gym/cafeteria/auditorium/library array, the playground layout, the sports venues and the "office": administrative spaces, nurses space and storage, all have served us moderately well, some of it even remembered fondly by the alumni of the system.  We think, however, that the status quo is more of a budgeting and planning convenience than an inspiration to the parents, students and teachers.  In a world where creativity is recognized as a significant indicator of future success, and where a rich landscape of different learning modalities and intelligences are at work, the notion of a "neutral" classroom seems like a cop-out.

Herewith, our list of learning experiences we wish were commonplace, and better served by the educational venues we build:

1. The Race

We don't mean this literally: schools already build tracks.  We are talking about a situation where students or teams of students compete against each other in pursuit of a singular goal.  That experience: of going head to head, of focusing on a singular result,, of bringing all of your creativity to bear on being faster or better, that experience is indelible.

The race in Geography could be a virtual effort to travel from one place to another using existing timetables and other web-based resources, progress tracked on a world map.  That race requires a maproom, one of a catalog of alternative learning venues we'll cover in a future post. The race in Math could be an effort by teams to solve pressing real-world problems mathematically, and the venue may require a campfire or a purely digital environment.  The bottom line: racing should be a regular thing, and not just in gym or after school.  It can be a powerful learning experience.

2. The Safari

Safari's require leaving behind the habitat you know very well and feel completely comfortable in to enter into a rich, alien environment filled with interesting and even potentially dangerous objects or animals of study.  Safaris bring you in direct contact with the natural world.  Schools already offer "field trips", an excellent example of a Safari.  We prefer to think of Safari's however, as something that can occur regularly and frequently, without leaving the school grounds.  Our design for the Tucson Waldorf School, for example, included a distant classroom and extensive garden venues that afforded the opportunity for classes to move out of their classrooms, no busses or parental permission slips required.

3. The Meditation

The meditation demands silence and attention, two commodities in short supply in our students' hectic lives and therefore all the more valuable.  In a world where attention spans are demonstrably decreasing, the importance of exercising our ability to concentrate for extended periods seems obvious.  Schools should be demanding it of their students, and supporting them with the appropriate venues.

To students, perhaps most of them, meditation might be torture.  No electronic tethers, no friendly banter, only themselves and perhaps a koan, or perhaps an "altar" or focal point. 

4. The Duel

The duel has some qualities of the Race, the winning and losing for example, but it is much more personal, and highly visceral.  The duel could be a gymnasium filled with chess boards, or a series of one on one debates, or a contest in any field whatsoever.  A duel can be a singular event, or many duels in parallel.  The key to a duel is that the participants are on display: the duel is a very public event typically reserved for the middle of town.  Duels require spectators.

5. The Bullfight

The bullfight pits a student or team not against another student or team, but against an implacable inhuman force or problem.  The bull can be an obstacle course, a minefield, a computer game, a math problem, a difficult situation (accomplish the following 10 tasks in this room of non-English speakers), or any number of possible challenges.  Again, spectators create the experience, even when it is simply your classmates.  This kind of learning experience is, of course, not uncommon even in a neutral classroom environment.  We believe, however, that the venue makes the experience.  It was in thinking about bullfights that we began to imagine a campus of unique venues among which classes rotate.  

Today we are in the bullring: we will learn French in a manner commensurate with the room.

In this manner, teachers are motivated and empowered to teach to a multiplicity of intelligences, a lecture rarely welcome in a bullring that could instead invite a spectacle.

6. The Swim

The swim is complete immersion in an alien environment, forcing the student to figure out survival strategies without the usual support structures to enable disengagement. The swim is entering a room where no one speaks English.  The swim is being presented a board full of alien inscription, math for example, and being required to interpret or explain.  The swim is a garden in which students are told to find and identify and solve for pathogens.  The swim is a historical exercise in which students are required to immerse themselves in an alien culture in order to understand and explain a certain mindset in a visceral way, 1936 Germany for example, or 2014 Washington DC.  The swim invites a moment of sheer, visceral panic, in which the enormity of the distance to land is fully understood and acknowledged.  The power is in overcoming that moment to plot a survival strategy.

7. The Climb

The climb is a challenging path to a singular, well-understood and immensely rewarding goal.  It can be an individual or team effort.  The difference between a climb and a term paper is the acknowledged awesomeness of the ultimate achievement, the reward sufficient to motivate students to unparalleled effort.  Some examples of climbs include: pursuing scientific problems no one has solved ever...in the world, solving a cool engineering problem and seeing it implemented, building apps, pursuing a patent, implementing a new program in school, running for office...class treasurer even...building robots...

Climbs demand individual excellence, but it can also build teams.  Climbers are often roped together, and climbers often rely on guides and belayers.  Climbers help each other.  Climbing is an incredibly visceral experience, an unforgettable experience, and a powerful model for learning lessons students will never forget.

8. The Apprenticeship

For students to experience adults pursuing excellence: that's an unforgettable and eye-opening event.  We are not particularly concerned about the one-on-one relationship, though this is undeniably powerful. We are more interested in the visceral nature of the relationship, the experience of working with an adult, and the rich possibility of learning by doing.

9. Storytelling

Stories are essential to teaching and learning.  By providing narrative and context and engaging protagonists, stories escape the trap of rote learning.  Even memorization experts agree: the key to memorizing long lists lies in tying each element on the list to a cohesive narrative.  We might examine therefore how we can bolster the impact of stories by building contexts as powerful as a campfire on a beach.

We believe schools should be built to support and encourage these powerful learning experiences.  Neutral classrooms add little, and too often drain completely the emotion out of learning experiences.  We can do better.