Overview Instructions

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Ralph Ellison Campus, Chicago

Many schools were designed for the past and don’t reflect the 21st century learning environment. Some buildings need better ventilation or lighting, while others are simply not large enough to accommodate students comfortably. For this project, you are encouraged to envision an improvement for your school, something that would benefit everyone who uses it. The most successful designs will be ones that identify a specific need and present a strong design solution. The challenge is to add something that changes the footprint of your school building, while addressing a specifically identified need. Projects should include research and development, real world images and information showing why the need exists, in addition to final project design and information.

Our new addition to Curie High school will be a new bigger courtyard designed for students to go out and do schoolwork during their assigned lunch periods or even after school. Our recent courtyard is barely in use and it doesnt serve no purpose to be their. So, we will try and provide a better courtyard that can be used and actually serve a purpose. In that case, the courtyard will have plenty of seats, tables, and benches so students will have plenty of choices to get what they want to get done at school. We will provide trees and bushes so our courtyard can look green and stay like an environmental school. We will also provide bike racks so students can secure their bikes their, rather than having them around anywhere. Since students will be eating out there we will provide a waste area so our courtyard can stay clean.

Comments

It needs to be spacious and cool so we need to plant big trees to provide good shelter and air to students. - Marla Ahlgrimm

It needs to be spacious and cool so we need to plant big trees to provide good shelter and air to students. - Marla Ahlgrimm

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Reeds Spring High School Addition, Reeds Spring, MO

Think About

  • What is the size of your school building? Using Google Earth and other online resources, generate a site plan for your school location.
  • What are your initial thoughts about the building? For example, is your school lacking room for art classes? Physical education? Band practice space? Common areas? Cafeteria space?
  • Talk to someone who has been at your school for a while, like a teacher or administrator. They will most likely have great insight as to what areas could stand to be improved.
  • Has anything like this ever been done in the past? If so, what were the results?
  • For more research, we recommend looking at “The Third Teacher: 79 Ways You Can Design to Transform Teaching & Learning,” by OWP/P Architects + VS Furniture + Bruce Mau. The book is easy to digest with lots of great images and design ideas, meant to inspire readers like you. The website for the book is also a great resource.
  • Search online for newly built schools and others that have been upgraded through similar processes. Do you notice anything in common among newly built schools?

JMedina3200's work for the Collect Information step:

Summary
We will colllect information or brainstorm about different types of things we will have to provide for our school's courtyard. So every single student can be satisfied.
We thought this would be a great idea because everything seems to have a good space and students...
This is our site plan for our new courtyard. As you can see its placed in the middle of the two...
We liked this image because it shows how we want to make our roof between the A building and b...
That square in the middle is our recent courtyard. Thats were our new courtyard will be placed and...
This is the entrance of the school in this case we will take all of that entrance off and then...
The grass wall would be a great thing to add in our school addition so it'll be more...

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Karns High School Addition Plan, Knoxville, TN

Identify the problem you want to solve based on the information you have collected.

Explore at least three possible solutions, each of which will no doubt help you as you search for the best addition to your school.

  • What could your ideas look like?
  • How would it change the landscape of your school?
  • Who will benefit most from your design solution?

Try to answer these questions visually through sketching, and in words by taking notes.

JMedina3200's work for the Brainstorm Ideas step:

Summary
We will brainstorm sketches on how we would like our courtyard to look like.
This is a floor plan of our courtyard. It shows a key so you can know what those symbols are.
This sketch is going to be how our front looks like. Basically its going to be a brick wall...
This sketch is a basic floor plan showng how things will be organized.
This is a 3d sketch showing stuff more in detail in a better perspective.

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Fridley High School Addition Plan, Fridley, MN

From the previous step, where you developed multiple solutions to the design problem, you should select one of your designs.

  • What is your favorite design? Why?
  • What aspects of your school would it improve?
  • Who would benefit most from your new design?
  • What materials would you be using, and why?

Ideally you will want to create plans of some kind to communicate your final vision, so start to sketch site plans, elevations, and even a floor plan if necessary.

JMedina3200's work for the Develop Solutions step:

Summary
In this step we model how the courtyard will look. The courtyard will be made out of recycled bricks, and will have grass walls.
This is a model of our new courtyard. As you can see we will have a glass roof so alot of sunlight...
We added grass into the courtyard so we can now insert trees and other green objects.
As you can see in the inside walls of the courtyard we added grass walls. As part of our...
We added benches and tables that are made out of bamboo wood. As another sustainable feature.
We added recycled brick in our new courtyard entrance.
We added bamboo floor to the pathway from A building to B building.
This is our sustainable concrete. Its recycled concrete.

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Alexander Graham Bell School Addition, Chicago

Present your final design to your class, to get feedback before completing your project. If you talked to other people while working on and researching for this project, show them your design and get their feedback. If they talked to you before, they will want to see what you’ve created! Take notes during these conversations, and try to understand their suggestions before deciding if you wish to make any changes to your final design.

Carefully take stock of feedback from others and do your best to find the information that will help you finalize your project. Someone might tell you something seemingly small, but that bit of information might be the difference between a good project and a great one.

JMedina3200's work for the Final Design step:

Summary
In this final slide we will show our final project pictures and its design on how it will look.
In our new courtyard we added benches and tables around the center of the courtyard. Also, for...
This is a picture of our new school courtyard entrance. Where students can hangout in lunctime or...
In this picture we show the recycled brick wall as part of our sustainable feature. It serves as...
In this view we show how we added the grass walls around the courtyard. We also added wall lights...
In this courtyard we made openings that were made for the students to go from A building to B...
This is a view of our little green area just to give it a good look.
For sustainable feature we added benches made out of bamboo wood in our courtyard.