Developing Whole Town Models - Educational Landscapes (Lisa Mackenzie Consultancy)

L M C

Lisa Mackenzie Consultancy / Landscape ArchitectureUrban Design / Design/O!ce c/o School of Landscape Architecture / Lauriston Place Edinburgh / Scotland / UKMobile: +44 7977 580 232 / Telephone: +44 131 221 6090 / Fax: 44 131 221 6005

[email protected]

Lisa Mackenzie Principal

Senses of Place 3 - 18A+DS Schools Programme

Whole Town Exemplars

29 November 2009Copyright © LMC All rights reserved

Senses of Place: Whole Town ExemplarsProject Background

Lisa Mackenzie ConsultancyArchitecture and Design ScotlandSenses of Place: Whole Town Exemplars

In Part 1 of this project: Senses of Place 3-18 facilitated by Sam Cassel’s of Architecture and Design Scotland we were asked to explore how a thematic ‘Sense of Place’ innovation might maximise its impact on a whole school and explore how this might look and feel di"erent from a conventional school building.

LMC’s approach was to work with themes of Adaptability and Change and contemplate how to react against decisions made as a result of short term teaching and subject demands. We proposed ‘spatial’ mechanisms that wouldallow a school to modify its estate in dialogue with its existing users without excluding considerations of its future users.

#rough developing this approach and making design explorations our aim was to initiate a highly applicable Exemplar that could shift in response to new theoretical developments in teaching practice or freely incorporate new technological innovations.

#e Urban Landscape of our Towns and Cities underscores our interaction with the built environment. For young people this interaction can be particularly challenging with few urban strategies taking cognisance of their educational or behavioral needs or indeed identifying the complexities of their situation.

In this phase of the project we will examine and explore the inception, design and vision for a ‘Learning Town’ In order to imagine an urban prototype that will

- “operate at a human scale - facilitate improved continuity of educational experience and establish an environment that promotes innovate learning approaches”

Dumfries Learning Town, Executive Summary, October 2009 - Sam Cassels A+DS

Our aim, within the brief we have been set is to explore the meaningful and strategic di"erentiation of the urban landscape in order to provide an exciting range of new learning opportunities for all ages.

#e ability of our ‘Exemplar ‘ to integrate into the context of a Scottish town is paramount along side the potential consequences for activities and the programming of urban space. At present few schools have a strong synchronicity to the landscape resource of the town in which they are situated. We believe that this situation must be addressed and that opportunities exist for designers to ‘Strategically Weave’ both the interior and exterior landscape of the school into the wider landscape.

In our ‘Whole School Exemplar’ we explored the potential of the ‘L shaped classroom’ as a means of allowingdi"erent learning experiences to operate simultaneously. In this next phase of the project we will investigate howa desire for individual learning, group learning and community interaction could manifest spatially in the Scottish townscape and allow a similar flexibility in programme.

Whole Town Exemplars: Introduction

All towns possess ‘landscape thresholds’ such as interfaces to riverfronts, parklands, streams or gardens and these transitions in the urban fabric, are, in our opinion, ripe territory for new educationally related ‘assemblages’. Such spaces also o"er opportunities to connect Neighborhoods into the structural system of a ‘Learning Town’.

Our Scottish towns are often proliferated by untended open ‘voids’. In situations where potentially valuable townscape assets are positioned on the edges of such spaces they cannot be appreciated and are often negatively interpreted by both locals and visitors. #e interface, setting and usability of these sites presents an intriguing opportunity to experiment with new interventions. For pupils, who spend time out of doors in the margins of inside and outside space the interfaces and voids between the buildings is a critical territory for exploration. If we return to our underlying theme of Adaptability and Change these sites also o"er assistance by means of flexibility in the regeneration of existing school facilities. By providing opportunities to ‘displace’ elements of the school estate for short periods of time, reconstruction or repair of the established site can be implemented. Such an approach, developed in line with timing and programmatic constraints could prevent ‘conflicts’ in inner urban sites. Or as Kier Bloomer so aptly put it “redesigning the plane while still flying it”

river

neighborhood

park

voidtow

n

fabric

park

neighborhood


1.0 Transitions and Integration in the Scottish Townscape

Strategic weaving

In contemplating the local integration of a ‘Learning Town’ it is essential that the spaces between the buildings are understood and given priority within the design process. Pupils should be encouraged to spend time out of doors in the margins of inside and outside space. #e experience of the interfaces between the buildings could be used to amplify and di"erentiate the learning experience. Gap sites become binding agents for the exchange of ideas and interaction between the school and the wider community. #ese sites would be selected on the basis of orientation and their potential interconnection to common townscape elements such as council buildings, stations, leisure centre, churches, historic core, river frontage or parkland through the creation of new external landscape + architectural assemblages. Typologies would be designed and integrated to allow safe transit and circulation of pupils but also ignite curiosity and interaction.

Legibility and walk-ability are vital to the success of such an approach and would require the consolidation of the urban structure along side the ‘demotion’ of vehicular routes through the town. In many situations this may mean a simple ‘de-cluttering’ of the urban realm to activate surfaces. Key destinations in the townscape linked into a town circulatory system would allow students to orientate themselves within the urban realm and also provide security in the form of school ‘thresholds’ and facilities populated by teaching sta". Routes would be easily negotiated by pupils and involve short walking distances of up to 10 minutes. #e appropriation of Landscape Interface sites (such as river edge or parkland thresholds) would allow the continuation of this approach into the urban fabric beyond the town centre and hence o"er opportunities to connect residential neighborhoods into the system.

#is approach of ‘Strategically weaving’ new architectural and landscape typologies would break the homogenisation of the town fabric with a new confident simplicity. #e interface of proposed or converted architecture with external ‘surfaces’ can lead us to imagine a network of interrelated assemblages with a strong synchronicity to Landscape. Conceptually this tactic is intended to provide an antidote to the decay of our Scottish town centre’s and facilitate a community and extra curricular overlap. One objective of this approach is to develop a social maturity and confidence in our young people.

Whole Town ExemplarsApproach


Whole Town ExemplarsApproach: Local Integration


2.0 De-cluttering our townscape and activating surfaces

Strategic weaving continued

In order to initiate meaningful community participation in the design process and encourage a widened field of participation it is essential that engagement is facilitated at the earliest possible stage of project development. We propose that in the inception and translation of ‘Strategic Weaving’ skilled professionals could work with local people in order to establish a methodology for townscape analysis. LMC propose that a series of ‘Exploratory Inventories’ and ‘Explanatory Itineraries’ could engage all members of the community and help the Council to co-ordinate funding, prioritise its implementation and generate dialogue around the appropriate delivery mechanisms for the town. By employing this approach we imagine that short term‘experiments’ in the urban realm could be used to construct a long term vision maximising connectivity of the Educational Resource at all scales - International - National - Regional - Local - Neighborhood.

#e approach outlined above would be the first step in establishing social sustainability in the urban regeneration process.

Consultation would allow designers to determine critical activities, associated user groups and potential conflicts in both internal and external space. By appropriating redundant architectural elements and abandoned landscape resources our intention would be to activate ‘streetscapes’ with live frontages. Retail would benefit and the opportunity exists to allow permeability and insight into the educational resource of the town encouraging wider participation.

Facilities such as Art Centre’s have a good ‘through flow’ of users and encompass a shared vision for creativity. #ese centres could be used as catalysts to provide controlled environments for experimentation and observation in line with our Phase 1 (Whole School Exemplars) approach. #ese small ‘catalyst’ projects could be embedded in the fabric of the centre or function as ‘entrance’ sites serving as a continuity of the neighborhood. ‘Urban Apprenticeship’ schemes could provide important ‘stewards’ from the community to liaise with design professionals council o!cials and educationalists.



Whole Town ExemplarsApproach: Local Integration


External Landscape Typologies

‘Intervention’ Experiments are intended to be a series of small highly practical and achievable maneuvers implemented through the town to generate conversation and activity. #ese spaces would function as urban curiosities to engage and delight.

#ey are as follows:

An Urban Cabinet A small teaching space with apparatus to allow small spontaneous performances

An Urban Gallery A Covered Space - A place for drawing interpreting and sharing of ideas

A Garden Vennel A Linear Binding Element in the urban fabric for safe transit and outdoor learning in a bounded space. A walled garden

An Urban Clearing A simplified surface Pulls together the various components of the urban scene

#e L Shaped Classroom Allow for alternative learning exercises to run simultaneously Highly adaptable structure to ‘repeat’ and cluster forming useable outdoor spaces

!e Geese of the Garden Santa Eulalia, Barcelona3.0 An urban curiosity

A tactic may be to take elements of the ‘rural’landscape that surrounds the town as a means to integrate or ‘displace’ nature into the urban fabric. Such interventions are meant to functionas catalysts for debate and get people interested in the inception of new projects.

3.1 Urban Insert Typologies (Intervention Experiments)

A

C

D

B



A Town Centre Integration

B Urban Quarter

C Natural Setting Spaces

D Campus (Stand Alone)

‘Control Edge’

Garden Vennel

Find adjacencies

Make incrementaladditions over time

Natural Resource‘Green’

Natural Resource‘Blue’

SmartSurface

Initiate Human Scaleadjacencies

Max

imise

Fron

tage

#is concept diagram illustrates a new woven fabric of spaces and educational resources. It has been conceived in order to facilitate an integrated network of movement through a town. #e scale and layout suggests the use of connective spaces such as ‘lanes’ and ‘vennels’ to embed a finer grain and a human scale.

#e approach is intended to ensure the safe transit of learners between the school estate components and encourage walking and exploration. Public, Semi-Public and Private Space are considered and distributed through the public realm.

4.0 Conceptual Framework A

An urban clearing

Urban Gallery

L Shaped Classroom



5.0 Conceptual Framework B

Placement of Intervention Experiments to regenerate the townscape at key thresholds. Learningat the heart of an evolving townscape.

A Garden Vennel

Urban Cabinet

Whole Town ExemplarsApproach: Urban Quarter


#e placement and clustering of buildings and landscape.

#e Urban Quarter typology ‘gives back’ useable space to the town. Architectural arrangements can be incorporated into neglected ‘patches’ of the townscape in order to initiate a resource created through negotiation with local people. Within the ‘matrix’ of the urban quarter design should be able to facilitate multiple forms of communication. Sensitivity towards the delineation of Public, Private and Semi - Public space presents an acute challenge for the design professional who can only make meaningful interventions throughlistening to stakeholders and presenting a balanced tactic.

Surfaces and Landscape Spaces determine important psychological transitions as the public or learners move into the vicinity of the space. A design sophistication is necessary to capitalise on the potential of di"erent unities and assemblages between architecture and landscape.

Vegetated Strips - Linear plantings divide the public space initiating a human scale, platforms lifted slightlyabove the base level delineate crossing points, orientate, organise movement and anchor assemblages of landscape form into the urban surroundings. #e Urban Quarter is fundamentally a garden where a profiledsurface unites the architectural fragments.

An intertwine of pupils, teachers and community.

6.0 Urban Quarter Integration Plan

A Garden Vennel

Safe routesUrban Gallery

Urban Cabinet

L Shapes Clusters

Whole Town ExemplarsApproach: Urban Quarter


Garden Vennels

‘Vennels’ are a common yet often forgotten and unappreciated resource in the Scottish Townscape. In the context of this project we have appropriated the term to apply to proposed connective spaces in the urban fabric. #e Garden Vennel can function as a central element in the evolution and incremental assemblage of an ‘Urban Quarter’ learning environment and are conceived as highly flexible - useable spaces.

#e Garden Vennel can o"er shelter, connection and where necessary, division. #ese are placesto inhabit, to sit, to read, to play and to learn and they o"er a safe threshold into the architecturalcomposition of the Learning Town. #ese spaces are intended to o"er an element of ‘urban theatre’as spontaneous events and impromptu collectives find space and a fleeting home.

It is intended that these spaces within the Town can strengthen a sense of ‘identity’ and give meaning to the complex ‘personal’ relationships that people have with the urban fabric on their doorstep, surrounding their place of work or on the edge of their learning environment. #ese spaces are deliberately tactile to encourage people to engage with materiality and want to linger in the space.

#oughtful adaptation and improvisation can give teachers ownership over gaps in the urban realm. #ese spacesare full of growing nature and within them the school and community can establish a resource to watch, enjoy andlearn about. #ese are external learning environments that can be used throughout the day and night. they are conceived to have a strong internal - external dialogue.

7.0 Garden Vennel

Tactile SurfacesGrowing SpacesSunlit outdoor rooms

Whole Town ExemplarsApproach: Stand Alone


Landscape Synchronicity

#e Stand Alone campus must stimulate collaboration and interaction and contribute to a positive regional consciousness. A facility of this scale, although confined by its own territory should not be an autonomous entity. It should give rise to many unilateral and bilateral opportunities for relationships to other learning resources and to the wider community of the town.

Placement of the Stand Alone facility within the landscape is paramount so that new architecture can synthesise to an existing environmental situation and allow the continuity of the functioning landscape. No site is a Tabula Rasa and idea’s of creating exploratory inventories gathered in communication with site users also apply in this situation.

E"ective assemblages of learning resources may contribute to an existing architectural vocabulary but must also initiate a meaningful Sense of Place.

Exploration

#e ideas illustrated on the right are intended to explore an intensification of the idea of the L Shaped Classroom presented in Whole School Exemplars by LMC. Slight modifications in form and the adoption of a dis-symmetry in places allow an integration and repetition of the unit through a site to encase spaces, maximise adjacencies to natural resources and provide sun-lit outdoor learning ‘gardens’. Our hope is that days spent in these spaces can stimulate and invigorate learning activities.

#e ‘style’ of the prototype in this situation is anonymous. It could either be inserted into an existing situation/configuration of buildings (irrespective of age or an existing aesthetic) or begin to generate new space. ‘Richness’ would be derived from an engagement with landscape.

#is approach moves very deliberately away from the notion of ‘iconic’ institutions and the rigors of a ‘masterplan’. We proposed synthesised solutions that liberate the plan. #e outcomes are intended to generate a learning ‘fabric’ across the site - localised spaces that connect to nature rather than single forms. #is approach comes from a belief that building’s should evolve in time and cannot be wholly designed and that the forms and spaces between and inside buildings are vital to the working ‘life’ of a school.

8.1 Landscape ‘Joints’

(Above) Joints between the buildings are functionally important to control entry.Clustering allows occasions of privacy, individual space and small group working. Scale, movement and flow are controlled, the spaces evolve over time.

8.0 Clustering of L Shaped Classroom

Whole Town ExemplarsApproach: Stand Alone


#e incremetal generation of the Stand Alone Learning Environment in the context of this document is intended to provide opportunities for all stakeholders to engage in design evolution. By treating the territory as an ‘Experimental Laboratory’ Public awareness could be facilitated and engender a reversal of current project delivery trends. Initiatives that are led by the community could be facilitated by design professionals in order to build trust and mutual understanding.

#e opportunity exists to facilitate a meaningful conversation around Sustainability. Stakeholders could be presented with factual information in order to determine an ethos and build consensus through conversation.

#e Experimental Laboratory would allow teachers to take some ownership of the design process. Professionals, along side duties related to design development would record views, observe and thentest thinking through design prototypes. Utilising ‘Research by Design’ in this way becomes avehicle relevant to the complex requirements of Educators and the often invisible relationships that people have with their urban environment.

#rough use of prototypical classrooms on site learning could centre upon Climate, Energy and Environment and allow teachers to manage their spaces both environmentally and pedagogically.

Key #emes:

Soft Connection Studies and Landscape Weaving - Use of multi-dimensionalconnections (Lanes and Vennels)Integrated wetland systems

Slow Evolution - Unfolding over time to alow flexibility and adaptability. Short TermExperiments - Long Term visionUse of primary source materials in architectural experiments.

Connect to neighborhoods

Implant learning centres to act as magnets en route.Activate safe routes

Campus evolves over timein response to changes inEducational requirements

‘Translocation’ of someelemts from the urban realminto the ‘rural’ scene

9.0 Stand Alone Matrix

Whole Town ExemplarsDumfries


10.0 Dumfries 10.1 Dumfries - Concept Insertion

Whole Town - Dumfries

#is project has been initiated to provoke discussion around the theme of a Learning Town exemplar. Although the ideas within this document are applicable to any Scottish town Dumfries has been selected as a Case Study.

#e notion of an exemplar is important to an evolving philosophy and architectural discourse focused on the School’s Estate in Scotland. As designers, however, it is the task of registering the complexity of a ‘place’ and responding through design that is critical to developing a ‘Sense of Place’.

As mentioned in earlier chapters of this document :All towns possess ‘landscape thresholds’ such as interfaces to riverfronts, parklands, streams or gardens and these transitions in the urban fabric, are, in our opinion, ripe territory for new educationally related ‘assemblages’. Such spaces also o"er opportunities to connect Neighborhoods into the structural system of a ‘Learning Town’.

For Dumfries the Parkland and Riverscape Influence of #e Nith are importantconsiderations. #e diagram (below right) illustrates the composition of Dumfries. Atpresent the Schools Estate is distributed across the town. In diagram 10.1 we have‘Inserted’ our developing concepts and interlinked educational spaces in a route that joins thehistoric centre with the Crichton Campus to the South of the City.

ExistingSchool estate element

Conclusion Lisa MacKenzie ConsultancyArchitecture and Design ScotlandSenses of Place

Phase 2 - Whole Town Exemplars

LMC believes that the essential nature of site specificity, of responding to specific situations and specific circumstances should never be forgotten.

In this project we have shown a series of spatially co-coordinated concept plans in order to imagine how separate design themes relate to each other in di"erent urban situations. Rather than focusing on the idea of a single ‘campus’ we have imagined the appropriation of the whole Townscape to ‘Strategically Weave’ Educational facilities into the urban grain.

‘Intervention Experiments’ (An Urban Cabinet, An Urban Gallery, A Garden Vennel, An Urban Clearing) have been created to engage the community and give useable and space back to the town. We hope that through implementing these small projects the Council can observe their use, collect ideas generated in and around them and as such co-ordinate funding and prioritise its implementation. #is process is intended to maximise the connectivity of new projects at all scales from the Neighborhood through to a Regional, National and International consciousness.

Our aim has been to create a territory of architectural and landscape assemblages that will enrich people’s lives bygiving them beautiful, useable, productive connections between educational facilities.

By de-cluttering the urban realm and inserting a series of ‘friendly’ landscape typologies we hope to make learningmore accessible and more enjoyable for everyone. Although our plans are not specific, the placement of interventions at key thresholds has been a precise tactic. By taking this approach we hope to initiate a sustainable and educationally led regeneration putting learning and landscape at the heart of the evolving townscape.

Documents

Developing Whole Town Models - Educational Landscapes (Lisa Mackenzie Consultancy)