The Bronx

Claiming Space for Small Schools
by Laura Kurgan, 2003

A team from Princeton University's School of Architects followed a group of innovative educators in the Bronx High Schools as they rethought the architecture of small schools. Seeking to imagine the creation of educational spaces where students and teachers can truly learn through collaboration and challenge the traditional ways of thinking about size and scale, this report responds to the diversity of the Bronx, and offers ideas as to how to reclaim space administrative and obsolete spaces for use as classrooms. In Kennedy High School, for instance, administrative space had grown from one office in the original 1969 plans to almost an entire floor.

This toolkit's proposed strategy for the successful incubation and
growth of new small schools begins with architecture, but also suggests
the formation of design teams to take non-architectural interventions
such as graphic design, furniture organization and educational planning
just as seriously.

claimingspace.pdf

New Visions for Public Schools
New Visions recently worked groups of architects and planners to conceive of how to create unique identities for each of the small schools that will be located in reconstituted high school buildings. Their PowerPoint presentation envisions how the New Public Schools might help small, autonomous schools create a strong identity within existing school buildings.

New Visions Powerpoint is a PDF of a Powerpoint presentation.

 

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All learning begins when our comfortable
ideas turn out to be inadequate. — John Dewey

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