Public / Private, the spring issue 2015 ArchitectureBoston (at the time) examines current trends in how we view the public and private space and the effect they have on architecture. The fight against such diverse areas as social space, the workplace, residential life, transportation, or a civic territory, the question is what happens when the concepts of public and private space cross. In the following article, published under the title "Quiet, please," Laura Wernick FAIA explores the need for joints, private spaces within schools.
I walk by William Rawn Cambridge Public Library the extension twice a day on my way to and from work. I like the transparency of the south facade. It is crystal clear, and I can see through all the exploring, socializing, reading, and the work that is taking place within. When I go to the library for research or study, however, I tend to move quickly away from the opening of the new building in the old. I found a semi-enclosed quiet, away from the crowd, turn off social media, and get to work.
in the world of educational institutions, the slogan for the past 10 years was "collaboration" with the emphasis on the development of physical space to support the efforts of student cooperation. Great energy has been put into the design of classroom furniture to improve students' ability to work together. Classrooms are designed to allow students to easily share ideas, efforts and experiences. Even the rise in university now ubiquitous "common learning" instead of the traditional library, came partly from the impulse to create several groups or social learning spaces.
The seemingly indisputable logic behind this comes largely from business. As Malcolm Gladwell wrote on his blog, "Innovation - the heart of the knowledge economy - is fundamentally social." Business tells us that innovation requires collaboration; Therefore, we should train our students to work in groups. Like humans, this argument insists, we work better when we know how to work together effectively as a team.
But if Gladwell and the rest are false? In his bestseller Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a world that can not Stop Talk Susan Cain denies the power of collaboration theory . As part of an argument over defending her thesis, she describes innovators such as Steve Wozniak toiling alone in his cabin night after night in his quest to create the first personal computer. It provides a letter loneliness love Charles Darwin answer a social invitation: "Dear Mr. Babbage," he writes, "I am very grateful to you for sending me cards for your party, but I am afraid to accept them because I have to meet people out there to whom I have sworn by all the saints in heaven, I never go out. "
some research supports the position that even Cain in the business world. In "Brainstorming Myth," a Business Review Strategy Article 00, organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham indicates that the performance is worse than the group size increases He writes. "If you have talented, motivated people they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority. "
Given that at least the uncertainty about the benefits of collaboration, perhaps it is time to rebalance our thinking about the types of student space need learn, think and be creative. Is there at least some of us who need privacy and seclusion to do our best work?
The Roeper School in Birmingham, Michigan explores this theory. Our firm, HMFH Architects, was hired to design a new dining room and a library for k-12 school for gifted students. The initial design solution called for filling the courtyard of his building donut with a learning common good that included study group areas, social areas and food service. The common learning proposed open directly into the existing building during the renovation of the library. The original concept included a range of spaces for groups and types of different sizes of operations, but the focus was on providing opportunities for collaboration.
The reactions were generally positive, but there were voices with a lingering question that we could not ignore. The voices were students, and they asked, "Where can I be alone?"
Cain would not have been surprised by the question. It reports a series of studies conducted in the 1950s at the University of California / Berkeley on the nature of creativity. "One of the most interesting results, taken up by subsequent studies, was that the most creative people tend to be socially introverted and asked" not a particularly outgoing or participatory temperament. "Students Roeper, who tend to rank high in originality and curiosity, are likely to enter this characterization. They were eager to have to support their renovated school of how they work and learn.
The revised approach for Roeper became known as the "Continuum", and for obvious reasons. Continuum provide a spectrum of large active areas spaces at one end of the building through a range of areas in small groups and, finally, tranquility individual study spaces at the other end. The design offers opportunities for more closed rooms than originally planned, but the Continuum also allows students to enter the level of activity and social interaction that feels right by simply deciding on which the entry get through.
Roeper is not alone. The Brody Learning Commons opened recently at Johns Hopkins University, designed by Shepley Bulfinch, is a clever mixture solitary study and group. Although it has a commons space open for more collaboration activities, which is complemented by 15 rooms in small groups and the quiet room of popular reading, which, according to senior library planner Shepley, Kelly Brubaker, "is intended to promote an atmosphere focused research and scholarship in the individual larger facility. "
We live in a time that elevates the opening and connections. We want our lives are full of experience and information. We want our workplace offer abundant opportunities for meaningful interactions. We expect our institutions are open and transparent. We shape our architecture with these objectives whether in our open office plans, transparent facades of our skyscrapers, or in schools with high levels of interconnection. But perhaps students are Roeper something. Perhaps in the middle of all that openness and interaction, we must also be creating something else too. Maybe we need to cut both time and place for solitude.
Laura Wernick FAIA is a principal at HMFH Architects, Inc. previous president of FAIA, is active in the national dialogue on architecture and education, and has organized and spoken at educational conferences, both regionally and nationally, on the subject. His projects have been praised for their use of design to support innovative learning models.
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