Schools by design: buildings that teach

beatriz

Schools by design
Kabir Vajpeyi and Vinyas show how to make buildings that teach
Civil Society News, New Delhi

Imagine a school where children learn angles from the sweep of a door: half open at 45 degrees, fully open at 90 degrees and so on. Or fractions from the iron grills of windows always in place to catch the attention of straying minds eager to get out there and play. Or weights and measures from furniture: a 2 kg chair, a 5 kg table. And language from a wall on which the teacher leaves new words for ready reference so that it is easy to go back and check for days together.

Imagine a school so imbued with the spirit of inquiry that the lessons are in its very structure: mystery walls and floor tiles; riotous colours; mud maps and sundials.
Architect Kabir Vajpeyi and his team at their NGO, Vinyas, have been hard at work for several years now reshaping schools to make them more attractive to children instead of being built for adults by adults.

Vinyas has published 'Building as Learning Aid,' or Bala, which shows how this can be done. It has 150 design ideas that can be easily implemented.

Generally a school building is seen only as infrastructure. Teaching is centred round the teacher, textbooks and blackboard inside a classroom. The child is expected to surrender, obey, perform.

But in Bala the entire school is so designed that children can learn from their surroundings. Floors, walls, pillars, staircases, corridors, doors, ceilings, fans, windows, poles, even rainwater, trees and flowers can all be used as learning aids.
"Everybody wants a child friendly school but they don't know how. We can tell them," says Kabir.

Interestingly, the Bala ideas were born in rural Rajasthan where Kabir's team was a part of the Lok Jumbaish programme of former bureaucrat Anil Bordia. The idea then was to redesign dilapidated village schools without changing existing structures.
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Anonymous

Just as important as schools that teach are....schools that heal. The need for design of schools that house HIV affected students is on the increase. Underserved and underfunded is this area of design research.

lets all try to lift our voice toward this...

peter

www.anarchi-tecture.blogspot.com
www.archiveinstitute.org