SEN
Two classrooms are shown in the model – each has two doors, a main door and a “back” door to allow children with ASD to leave the room quietly. If they need to be apart but also part of the main room they can go behind a desk. A curtain allows them not to be seen but to still hear what’s going on. Not just a space for one or ASD but for more than one person / one use. Has specific physical attributes rather a label that defines belonging.
Not inside the classroom but part of the wall. Allows secret egress and access. Might form the link to another or between two classrooms. Revolving drum. What shape is it – doesn’t have any corners.
Furniture
Something “flexible” for the classroom – partitions with movement – two different materials sinuous curtain that modifies light and space for different activities, reading playing etc. There are also floor tracks to allow larger bits of furniture, tables etc to be moved by the children. One hard / sharp and one soft and flexible. Another possibility is magnetic. The furniture stores books games pencils by being storage as well. Table is store, curtain is store, walls are stores. So that when you move the furniture to remake the room you are also allowing the resources to follow new configurations of these room(s) created by the children. Then the rooms are able to promote specific uses. They’re not just the whim of the children.
Turrets
Trees centre of our school. Up in the building up in the trees. Roof is treetop. Three cores of the school. Platform sith houses rooms and spaces – like bird houses. Three trees. Books Arts and one more as yet undecided (that was for adults). Relating the school with the town and the landscape. The trees are sited on a hillside (artificially made and containing an out-of-town shopping centre) so that their floors link with each other to make climbing branch spiral. The overall plan gets smaller as it goes up. Circular in plan
Three verticals main components (AKA trees) consisting of platforms that connect the trees together. The platforms are pizza slice in shape but irregular. Each slice of the pizza, though they re all different is approximately 70-80m2 and there are 20 – 1600m2 By putting them on different levels they form fixed floor plates so defining the rooms that they can contain. However as the three trees connect with each other – level 4 on one tree is level 2 on an adjacent tree then we leave behind a topographical arrangement of the school inside as compared with the school’s outside.
How would this work in a flat landscape? Three trees as three floors? And not. Vertically it’s all about the connections between the floors – how you move around within it and how the threeness works.
Acoustics
ASD children in relation to the whole class. 1 Distance. 2 Drawing the curtain, 3 leaving the room to go to a quiet room. One in four children at any time will have an “ear problem”. Stresses the importance of the acoustics.
Status and stigma of spaces – punishment and reward systems – the proposal of different spaces or withdrawal spaces and their design – how they are perceived by the children, each child, particular child. A place of difference not necessarily being stigmatic.
Light
Blinds down on the windows, lights on, screens blaring. No blinds in our school. How will we teach?
Alternative Uses
Animals, swimming pools, parrots, aquarium
Supervision (leaving aside child protection issues)
Reduce or increase the number of adults in a school. Lunchtimes. Learning times, one to ones.
Disembodied relationships. CCTV Being watched without being able to interact or ameliorate the watcher. How to promote child choice, freedom within the school (school grounds) and maintain
CCTV makes me feel safe. I don’t have to be afraid of it. I feel the opposite CCTV makes me feel less safe.
Edge of Town
Forest and animals and fields, managed wilderness. The view from the window. Difference between town and what’s beyond its edge. The school makes and edge to a town. As a way of curating it, conditioning the edge, forming a threshold.
Emma
Being included makes a huge difference. If we presented the pictures or proposals alone there would be less understanding of the offer and so a less of creative relationship between client and architect,