Lessons Learned: A Symposium on School Design
LAUSD / USC School of Architecture / J . PAUL GETTY Trust

Session: 4B - The Learning Environment:

Scribe: John Dale

Attendees:
John Dale
Chuck Lagreco

Goals:
Design classrooms and other learning spaces to be effective settings and promote learning enhancement.

LAUSD Design Guidelines need to reflect a concern for the way children work and learn in the classroom.

(Fernando Juarez) The learning environment must incorporate ways of dealing with people at different levels of learning and language proficiency and recognize the range of different learning intelligences present in the public school system. Both the cultural and socio-economic differences of the children need to be taken into account.

Architects need to maintain a larger overview in creating learning environments. They need to work with design fundamentals that transcend immediate trends.

Achieve balance between environmental performance standards and specific cultural needs (prototypical solutions versus community responsive solutions).

Constraints and Problems:
LAUSD District Standards tend to be proscriptive versus performance-based
LAUSD District Standards focus on stock solutions for classroom design. Standards include flat T-bar ceilings with 2 X 4 recessed fixtures. Such rules tend to discourage innovative design.

Standard classroom designs dictate close to square room shapes which reduce the opportunity for affective day lighting and cross ventilation. Some architects have started with longer narrow proportions that work better for natural ventilation but have been pushed towards more standard solutions.

30 day schematic design schedules are too short to allow for thoughtful, innovative design of the learning environment.

Standards don't recognize the very particular needs of high school, middle school and elementary classrooms which are, in fact, functionally different. There need to be different standards for different age groups.
Until now, LAUSD has been focused on the basic housing needs of students rather than on innovation in the learning environment.

An architect's role is to introduce new concepts but architectural solutions to educational concepts can fail. The open concept experiment of the late 60's and 70's led to a regression back to conventional classroom design.

The California State goal is to put all children on a traditional two-semester system versus the multi-track system LAUSD currently employs. This puts added pressure on LAUSD in its push to accommodate its students. Such an approach may not take into account the density of the student population in Los Angeles.

Originally classrooms were designed with the idea that children were soldiers: now, varied learning requirements imply more differentiated spatial needs.

Technology is having a significant impact on classroom design because everyone needs to be able to use a computer as a learning tool.

Lack of ownership of classrooms because of density and scheduling; teachers no longer have a home base and adequate storage.

Because the LAUSD is such a multi-lingual environment, there needs to be a more co-operative learning environment where both teachers and students help each other.

Different teachers have different strengths and need to be able to work together co-operatively.

The learning environment needs to accommodate (group) project-based learning.

Visibility in and out of classrooms: some teachers love to be in portables because they are private, self-contained worlds. Some of the best teachers prefer to collaborate and place more value on transparency and interconnectedness.

The psychological impact of the environment on a student's ability to focus, absorb and retain knowledge must be understood and taken into account.

Solution Types:
Flat 'L' -shaped classroom
Partially exposed ceilings revealing HVAC systems.
Stepped sections in classrooms.
Direct / Indirect pendant fixtures
Reflected, maximized natural light.
Cross -ventilation; open corridors
Shared break-out spaces
Shared storage areas
Learning outside the classroom; outdoor learning spaces
Clustered classrooms that are interconnected for team teaching.
Stimulate children through varied color, volumes and textures in the classroom environment.
Break down the scale of large schools be developing academic houses / academies or 'schools within schools'.

Design the learning environment to reflect / enhance more culturally-oriented teaching: allow for more parental participation in the teaching process; provide after hours training facilities for the parents.

Architects need to be involved in programming, community workshops, Master planning site planning.
Architects need to help create the next group of master plans for the District.
Add a pre-design / feasibility phase to the next LAUSD architectural contracts.
Provide workshops on sustainable design.
Write guidelines to allow adaptable learning environments and to recognize that there can be more than one solution to a given problem.
The next wave of architects working for LAUSD should be given access to successful examples of new schools and get directed to current design treatises and educational websites which offer cutting -edge solutions to the learning environment.

LAUSD standards need to be updated. There needs to be room within the system to try different solutions.

Examples:
Blurock Architects have been able to introduce greater variation in special learning areas like libraries where there is more room for variation. They have used exposed deck ceilings with sprayed acoustical coatings, wall-mounted fiberboard etc. to control sound.

Blurock's Long Beach High school project attempts to encourage communication between teachers by means of glass walls and break-out spaces. Such transparency also helps create a better sense of safety on the campus.

Morphosis has tilted the ground plan so that classrooms step up a ramp; classrooms are grouped around shared 'community' rooms; ceiling decks are exposed with ducts grouped in lower gypsum board soffits.

Leidenfrost Horowitz developed elementary schools in Van Nuys using two-story classroom clusters as the building block.
LAUSD will be developing mock-up classrooms to test alternative lighting configurations, etc. with a new emphasis on sustainable environments.

Rand Corporation has evaluated needs assessment process @ LAUSD and has basically endorsed it.