Designing the World in a School | Donald Schmitt | TEDxYouth@UTS
A speaker argues that a transformative school environment should operate as a confluence of a city and a house, integrating flexible, technologically advanced learning spaces with the surrounding urban community and natural environment. The core proposal involves designing the school to connect physically and functionally with the adjacent park and community laneway system to support holistic learning. This vision emphasizes flexible physical spaces—including communal gathering points, biofiltered walls, and multipurpose classrooms—that mirror the dynamism of the outside world. ## Theses & Positions - A great school environment should function like a small city but also like a large house, reflecting a confluence of scale and community life. - The school should be conceived as a place that can "create the world" and connect to the world that already exists. - The design must embrace a shift from defined classrooms to flexible spaces that facilitate various configurations, such as seminars, group work, and public gathering. - The school needs a sustainable dimension, aiming for net zero energy by incorporating active filtration systems like living biofilters into walls. - The design should serve as a connective tissue, allowing different functions—labs, music, athletics, theaters—to share and inform one another. ## Concepts & Definitions - **Kindergarten/Orphanage model:** Aldo Van Eyck's early inspiration for the idea of a structure acting as a microcosm of community life. - **Material Engagement:** Learning engaging through multiple senses—visual, intellectual, haptic, and tactile. - **Haptic/Tactile engagement:** A mode of student engagement beyond purely intellectual means. - **Living Biofilter:** An active filtration system incorporated into walls to improve indoor air quality, capable of cleaning 85% of particulate matter. - **Connective Tissue:** The concept of spaces and activities (like gathering points or shared thoroughfares) that bind together disparate functions within the building. ## Mechanisms & Processes - **Learning Access:** Knowledge is accessed via problem-based learning, team-based learning, group-based learning, and guided inquiry, emphasizing a student-centered focus. - **Integration of Space:** Developing a vertical space of community in the former parking lot area, using suspended stairs and terraces to facilitate gathering between different floors. - **Library Transformation:** Reimagining the library from a single destination into a "connective space" that is traversed, linking different floors. - **Curriculum Flexibility:** Ensuring classrooms are not defined by fixed boundaries but by movable furniture and adaptable services to support various academic activities. - **Outreach to the City:** Designing the school to welcome the community by creating visible connections to the surrounding neighborhood, such as through plazas and ground-level access. ## Timeline & Sequence - **1962:** Aldo Van Eyck designed a kindergarten/orphanage, conceptualizing the structure as both a house and a small city. - **Present/Future Context:** The vision is framed by the existing **UTSA** structure, which has over 100 years of history, and the planned future expansion into the East Wing and Huron Street wing. ## Named Entities - **Aldo Van Eyck:** Dutch architect who conceived of a structure as needing to be like a small city and a large house. - **UTSA:** The university occupying the physical structure being discussed and transformed. - **Royal Ontario Museum:** Architect designed by the builder of the current school building. - **Art Gallery of Ontario:** Architect designed by the builder of the current school building. - **Convocation Hall:** A landmark building whose architect designed the existing school structure. - **Emily Carr University:** Mentioned as a comparative model for incorporating external natural space. ## Numbers & Data - **Timeframe for UTSA history:** Over 100 years of academic achievement. - **Biofilter efficiency:** Cleans 85% of particulate matter in the air. - **Gymnasium capacity:** Two gymnasiums, one of which will be tucked under the park. - **Auditorium capacity:** A new 700-seat auditorium. ## Examples & Cases - **Aldo Van Eyck's Model:** Using the kindergarten/orphanage design to suggest a holistic architectural principle for education. - **Plaza Potential:** Identifying the Huron Street entrance corner as an opportunity for a prime, central plaza where people can gather before and after school. - **Natural Light View:** Visualizing a corridor view in the Huron wing that incorporates natural light and a direct view into the park. - **Community Connection:** The recasting of the laneway system running south on Washington Street as a "living lane" to link the neighborhood directly to the university. - **Vertical Community Space:** Designing the former parking lot space as a vertical sequence of stairs and terraces connecting different floors through natural light. - **Biomimicry in Architecture:** Using living biofilters as a modern, sustainable alternative to conventional mechanical air filtration systems. ## Tools, Tech & Products - **Technology/Digital Access:** Must be fundamentally recognized and incorporated into the school's infrastructure. - **Power and Service:** Infrastructure that can be easily routed and adapted to allow different configurations of flexible teaching spaces. ## Counterarguments & Caveats - The initial challenge of the building's existing function: the library being viewed as a single destination rather than a connective space. - The architectural risk: simply replacing existing structures rather than integrating nature and community connection. ## Methodology - **Design Framework:** Thinking about the confluence of "world scale" and "school scale" in physical design. - **Sustainability Mandate:** Requiring the design to meet a "net zero energy" goal, utilizing natural filtration and passive elements. - **Connectivity Mapping:** Analyzing existing transit routes (laneways) and overlooked natural areas (the park) for architectural integration. ## Conclusions & Recommendations - The school must reflect the world by weaving together the historical academic core, flexible modern functions, and the surrounding ecosystem (city/park/community). - Priority should be given to creating interstitial spaces—crossroads—that function as places for gathering, study, and social activity. - Implement a design that allows for the seamless integration of art, athletics, music, and academia. ## Implications & Consequences - **Educational Shift:** Moving away from the notion of specialized, fixed rooms towards fluid, multi-purpose learning environments. - **Urban Impact:** Making the school a porous part of the city, drawing people *into* the campus from the community lanes and *out* into the public spaces. ## Verbatim Moments - *"for a house to be real it should be like a small city but also for a city to be real it should be like a large house"* - *"the focus is really between the material and the place around the student"* - *"learning it happens everywhere not in the classroom"* - *"the space of interface between the city and the school is is a kind of key issue"* - *"a plaza an urban space at the corner at the kind of crossroads in the city"* - *"a green living room again a place for all the kind of activities intellectual and otherwise"* - *"a sense of welcome and transparency glass visual connection to the park and access through to the spaces to the north"* - *"a set of stairs and terraces that are suspended in space where you can connect from the lowest floors to the upper floors through those four floors filled with natural light"* - *"a place that you move through and make connection"* - *"a living biofilter becomes an active filtration system that's proven science in terms of how it makes better indoor air quality"* - *"can we think of the classrooms really as sort of academic communities"* - *"the kind of spaces for four that are equipped with flexibility to support labs and music and gymnasium and theaters"*