2011 Honorable Mention winner for the CAPstone Design Competition sponsored by Cripe Architects+Engineers

East St. Louis is ranked among the most dangerous and neglected cities in the country. In its heart is a 220 acre superfund site. How can a city recover from such devastation? Starting with a small one room schoolhouse, filled with local children and scientists to teach them within a greenhouse habitat, together they can work to create a hub of new and inspiring studies and experiments on land reclamation. Since reclamation is a process, the school will reflect this. Growth will occur in phases. From the one room schoolhouse will turn into learning pods, which are designed to promote both happenstance and planed interaction of both the students and the scientists. The scientists located in the middle act as surveillance and are also surrounded by the library stacks. The children, who are free to wonder from classrooms to the scientists and the other facilities, will then be able to learn from observation, or be enlisted by the scientists to help in an experiment, learn botany, or other activities. Teaching the local children invests in a knowledge base to which the city can begin to grow with again.