Destroy Your School: Building with Kids to Reimagine Learning

Abstract

Too often, our education is disconnected from the physical space in which we learn. Lessons plans and curricula disregard the spatial and physical spaces that define the educational experience. The disciplinary gap between architectural and educational discourse is in need of attention, and bridging this gap is at the heart of my thesis. I seek to discern methods to better equip our youth for the future. Questions of how and where we learn and share knowledge are crucial to the formation of values in the next generation. Our current moment necessitates extensive collective change and a thorough reconsideration of the values embedded in our systems of education. How does our built environment inform our learning experience? How does pedagogy shape our world, and how in turn is our world shaped by pedagogy? How can notions of care and stewardship be generated by pedagogy? How can a shift in pedagogy shape classrooms, schools, and neighborhoods? This thesis approaches these questions through the under-considered and often-forgotten problem of middle school age education. The project examines and puts forward a new pedagogy that aims to instill architectural values of collaboration, community, mentorship, interdisciplinarity, improvisation, and material opportunism through education in order to shape the fabric of our society. The three years of middle school play an enormous role in shaping the next generation. At this critical point, students transition out of learning through play, inquiry, and experimentation to learning as adults in a results-based, structured, and standardized fashion. Introducing a design-build pedagogy into the middle school curriculum becomes not only an opportunity to build a greater sense of autonomy for young learners by elevating students’ existing skills embedded in play and experimentation, but a chance to disrupt the general assumptions we grow up with about our built environment. The design pedagogy I propose gives young adolescents a new set of tools to participate and take action in shaping their education, classroom, and community. At its core, this project aims to enable young learners to find agency and empowerment through their built environment. With the reimagined classroom as site, this thesis advocates for a porous community-wide system of learning and engagement.