3/4 review

Expression of the adaptable classroom at a larger scale
Identifying the different classrooms through materials
- the adaptable classroom, versus, lab/ studio classroom versus the special project rooms/ presentation rooms

Develop a building parti where the classrooms engage the outdoor space

Circulation
- differentiating between a corridor which connects versus a walkable gallery where students can gather, sit, view displayed work, or study. Narrow versus open

Planning
- Defining the open spaces on the site
- define 'the center' - creating an outdoor meeting point where ultimately people entering the site would use as a meeting point
- redefing the edges of the field so they are less orthagonal and thus becoming more inviting to the community and connected to the whole campus

Abstract

The objective it to create a community school which provides an opportunity for the disparate community groups to equally use the facilities. The school is thus conceived as a transformative institution which functions simultaneously as a school and civic cultural center. The school is transformative in its nature as it meets the needs of its various school and community users throughout the course of the day and the week. Currently the design is imagined as an integration of three systems: the natural landscape, the interconnected spaces of the classrooms, and the volumes housing the shared school and community resources. The classroom spaces are flexible such that they can be broken into smaller learning communities or expanded for larger group activities. The shared school and community volumes are broken into three focuses: the primary is the media center, followed by the fitness center and the performing and visual arts center. These shared programmatic volumes are to reach out to the community and activate the currently abandoned site. For example, the fitness volume could be open in the early morning to the community, then during the day it would be available to the students for physical education classes and finally in the evening open as a community health club. Currently the surrounding communities are isolated. The community school program is to ideally bring together the separated communities to create an enriched cultural environment for everyone.

Reactions to 1/4 Jury

That was tough!! I definitely wasn't as prepared as I could have been. I realized I should have practiced what I was going to say beforehand - I mean I wrote an outline but that wasn't enough.

So from my notes, the issues I wrote down are the following:
- establishing a hierarchy
- owning the initial gestures/ lines from the diagrams
- determining program within the site
- hard vs soft edges
- Defining: transformative and flexible and then putting them in the driver's seat as I further develop my initial parti ideas