(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-05-19)
Reves, Ian P.
The design and construction of American public high schools are forcibly influenced by ultra-cost effective techniques demanding simplicity in construction and durability of material. The inflexibility and banality of the architecture this paradigm typically delivers begs for exploration of the feasibility of innovative construction technologies. Technologies that influence both form and technique such as prefabrication of modular elements, utilization of CAD/CAM techniques to mill customized parts and pliable materials (i.e. plastics) crafted to achieve dynamic forms. More engaging, flexible learning environments could be realized that significantly increase the performance of the architecture, both formally and ecologically, as well as ennobling students.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-04-08)
Finau, Emily
This thesis explores the various meanings and implications of transparency in architecture and in learning environments in particular. Architectural transparency, achieved through choice of materials and principles of formal composition, creates a diversity of relationships and can facilitate visual, conceptual, and functional clarity as well as offering simultaneous perception of different spaces. It offers a range of phenomenological qualities and so provides an opportunity to explore and complicate such dichotomies as translucency and opacity, openness and closure, and public space and private space.
While celebrated throughout modern and contemporary architecture, transparency raises issues of privacy and safety even as it breaks down hierarchies and social boundaries. The research-based design of transparency in a school building necessitates careful planning to achieve a balance between the access to views, natural light, fresh air, and social interaction that transparency may bring and the continuing obligation to provide a safe, secure environment for schoolchildren.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-04-08)
Fagge, Megan
Research shows the environment affects the user both psychologically and physiologically. Teachers often alter their classrooms in order to effect these changes, for instance, by adding elements for warmth, offsetting harsh lighting, or using found objects to mark and divide space. Research and observed use communicate a need for a planned variety of spaces in function and in character.
The project is a redesign of Therrell High School in southwest Atlanta seeking to complement the new movement to small learning communities, which embeds programmatic variety in the public school system.
Therrell is divided into three small thematically described academies, which effectively function as three separate high schools: the School of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math; the School of Health Sciences and Research; the School of Law, Government, and Public Policy.
The design focuses on the necessary variability of spaces inherent in small learning communities. These spaces seek to address the varied instructional strategies that accompany the thematic endeavors of each school and introduce variety in architectural character, thus accommodating variable needs and desires of students. The focus of the project is on the student and the nature of space that fosters positive experiences as well as positive learning outcomes.