Writing on the Wall
A Model for Revolutionary Educational Thinking
Sometimes a project comes to us with a human face, literally. In the case of Springfield Literacy Center in Springfield, Pennsylvania, revolutionary educational thinking was well underway. As architects of this new and radically different learning facility, we were given a personal insight into the center’s mission via the experience of a young student. He was the son of a member of the school’s board. Quite simply, he’d reached the fifth grade unable to read with the level of confidence or skill required for his age. His wasn’t a unique story within American educational systems today, which made Springfield’s mission of 100% literacy for every student by the end of first grade, all the more consequential.
Historically, public education has dictated a one-size-fits-all curriculum. The problem, as educators have come to understand, is that students don’t come in one size. They arrive in masses, but they learn according to their own individual abilities and styles. In response, the Springfield School District has helped pioneer in two of its schools a teaching model informally known as “mass customization.” A significant departure from traditional methods, it identifies individual educational needs for each student, then designs and implements a literacy education plan unique to each student. The new 50,000-square-foot Springfield Literacy Center is the built response to educating students according to their all-too-human learning styles and achievement rates. The school district mandated that the building design support its literacy program, provide a healthy indoor environment, and reduce energy consumption. These goals served as guidelines during the design process, and as a result the project is seeking a LEED gold rating from the USGBC.
In a very real sense, the center, itself, is a tool for learning, a kind of multi-dimensional textbook whose pages begin to turn well before the classrooms are filled. The most readily identifiable difference in Burt Hill’s design of the Literacy Center compared to traditional schools is its lack of rigidly defined and aligned spaces. Flexible spaces are essential for addressing the fit-to-suit needs of individual students within a structured environment that can also integrate various disciplines. Upon entering the Literacy Center, students find themselves not in an administrative area or greeting lobby but in the library, a place that is by its nature the very essence of learning.
From here to the classroom, the experience differs yet again. Instead of double-loaded corridors whose only purpose is to shuffle students from one point to another, single-loaded corridors are given a dual-purpose, widening out at the classrooms they link to, to form educational extensions of those spaces, in particular for literacy interventions or for small group instruction.
And since learning is not confined to the indoors and play has a learning value, educational anchor points are dispersed throughout the grounds. There are science and sculpture gardens. There are exterior classrooms. Sidewalks are intended to be written on with chalk, as are strategically placed word walls. The natural environment, in general, is part of the center’s educational program. A majestic grove of trees overlooks a cascading hillside and creek. The building embraces it. There are abundant views of nature from throughout the school that, along with liberal daylighting, emphasize the interdependence between the built and natural worlds – a connection that is further reinforced by the center’s sustainable design.
The design response was driven by analysis of data throughout the process, including daylighting to evaluate shading and the effects of glazing, the building shell to identify thermal properties of different construction materials and systems, and natural ventilation to determine the best placement of fenestration. BIM technology was central to all our building performance analyses. Through its use we were able to make the architectural design model the energy model.
The Springfield Literacy Center is an innovative example of how, as education becomes more student-centric, a greater understanding of how buildings enable – or conversely, impede – learning results in a successful educational facility.
