Archinect - News

Three contemporary education projects by Newman Architects: Your Next Employer?

2024-04-15T13:39:00-04:00

Following our previous visit to San Francisco-based WRNS Studio, we are moving our Meet Your Next Employer series to Connecticut this week to explore the work of Newman Architects.

Based in New Haven, the firm was founded in 1964 with the principle of “creating functional, nurturing environments that have a sense of belonging to the communities they serve.” Over the following decades, the firm has built a portfolio including educational, commercial, and community projects which have garnered over 150 awards, including an AIA/ALA Library Building Award for their Slover Library in Norfolk, VA.

Over on Archinect Jobs, the firm is currently hiring for a Marketing Coordinator / Graphic Designer to join their New Haven office. For candidates interested in applying for a position, or anybody interested in learning about the firm’s output, we have rounded up three education projects by Newman Architects that exemplify the studio’s ethos.

Lynn University Snyder Sanctuary. Image courtesy: New...

Schools and communities in the Pacific Northwest hope for improved building code standards for earthquake preparedness

2024-01-04T08:35:00-05:00

Current seismic codes require public buildings to be built strong enough so they don’t fall down in a quake. Now, some emergency preparedness advocates want to raise the bar. Not only should essential buildings resist collapse in a strong earthquake, but also newly constructed schools, in particular, should be built so in the immediate aftermath they can be counted on to serve as relief centers.

The article mentions the AIA Oregon chapter’s efforts to push lawmakers towards adopting more stringent building codes in preparation for a cataclysmic 9.0 Cascadia earthquake. Some relatively cheaper proactive measures, such as tsunami towers, are being enacted, but the 1,000 or so schools thought to be at risk for collapse statewide just a few years ago still need to enact drastic changes whose costs are proving too much of a burden for local administrators to get behind.

“A lot of districts have been building schools and not doing this,” local Portland-based architect Jay Raskin explains. “Every year we go without requiring that schools be capable of being used as shelters is a year we miss providing shelter for the surrounding neighborhoods during a Cascadia earthquake.”

Another vote on the Oregon legislation is not expected until at least 2025.

A new Kharkiv School of Architecture student project delivers valuable design solutions for rebuilding schools in Ukraine

2023-09-06T18:43:00-04:00

A new project aimed at improving the educational experience of Ukrainian schoolchildren is helping students at the Kharkiv School of Architecture participate in their country’s concerted response to an infrastructure crisis that began in February 2022 and has seen the destruction of an estimated 331 educational institutions nationwide, thus far.

The "First-Aid Spatial Kit" initiative is being taught as part of the school’s first-year construction practice curriculum and allows students to develop copyable designs for various interventions (furniture, pavilions, play spaces, etc.), which, in turn, can be implemented using readily-available materials by affected school districts looking for “self-help” solutions in rebuilding.

Photo: Zlatoslava Kryshtafovych & Oleksandr Holovashkin, courtesy Kharkiv School of Architecture

Over the course of four weeks, students developed a suite of six solutions that were also marked by a consideration for accessibility and universal design. Each of t...

New York’s School Construction Authority is preparing for a school building boom

2023-08-25T17:41:00-04:00

The body in charge of K-12 planning and construction in New York City was recently profiled by the AIA New York as it prepares for a surge in student enrollment that’s expected over the next decade.

The New York School Construction Authority (or SCA) is a specialty city agency that employs 1,100 people and is tasked with the delivery and maintenance of school buildings in the New York City Public Schools arsenal, a charge which makes it directly responsible for the well-being, safety, and learning environments of more than 1.1 million students.

With a staff that currently includes 170 architects, Stephen Zacks for the AIANY writes the SCA has a unique talent when it comes to the delivery of high-quality structures within challenging construction schedules and have become national examples of the implementation of efficient project management at...

Architects and builders detail Europe's first 3D printed school in Lviv, Ukraine

2023-08-07T14:45:00-04:00

The enormous effort of rebuilding civilian infrastructure in war-torn Ukraine has spurred a landmark example of the design and delivery of 3D printed architecture with the completion of Danish 3DCP Group‘s new Lviv School No. 23 project in the country’s internally-deluged western stronghold.

Their humanitarian design for clients Team4UA foundation was completed earlier this spring using a COBOD BOD2 printer and is now the title holder for the world’s largest 3D printed educational structure, simultaneously helping to bolster a key area of need in a community beleaguered by over 16 months of conflict and displacement.

Ukraine as a whole has lost some 277 schools since the latest phase of the Russian military invasion began last February, according to its Ministry of Education and Science. Jean-Christophe Bonis, a French-born entrepreneur who has resided in the country since 2019, took it as his charge to redirect his business activities towards the war effort, leading to the creation...

A flexible Japanese nursery school that functions like a village

2023-06-07T15:12:00-04:00

Takeru Shoji Architects has designed a nursery school in Niigata, Japan, that forms a seamless connection between its rooms, the building, and the surrounding area. Called The Center for Early Childhood Education and Care, the school is dedicated to the principles of engaging “naturally with nature.”

Image © Koji Fujii (toreal)

The single-story wooden building was designed to establish a mutual relationship between it and the surrounding village, in which the village is involved in the children’s learning and play, and the nursery functions to revitalize the village.

Image © Koji Fujii (toreal)

A series of workshops, including childcare researchers and workers, parents, and local residents, was conducted to discuss the potential of hosting a school that would serve an area with an aging population and declining birthrate. The participants decided on a vision to create the nursery school to work like a village and for the village to function like a nursery ...

OMA and Circlewood develop adaptable modular wood system to build schools in Amsterdam

2023-05-12T13:59:00-04:00

OMA, along with Circlewood, a coalition of architects, engineers, builders, and researchers, have developed a modular wood system to build a variety of schools in Amsterdam.

This project aims to support the city’s goal to halve the use of primary raw materials by 2030 and become fully circular by 2050. As part of this mission and the need to meet the increasing demand for schools, Amsterdam initiated the Innovation Partnership School Buildings program to build nine to thirty “high-quality, flexible, and sustainable” schools in ten years.

Image courtesy of OMA

Consisting of standardized wooden columns and cross-laminated wooden floor panels, the prefabricated system is connected by recycled steel joints. OMA explains, "All of the components are made in a factory under a digitally controlled process allowing for quick assembly and disassembly by an electric crane on site."

Photography by Arthur Wong for OMA.

They are arranged into 11.8-foot wide (2.6m), 23.6-foot long (7.2m), and up t...

SCAPE, ARO, and Colloqate design Brooklyn high school campus with a hydroponics greenhouse and outdoor teaching spaces

2023-05-05T14:40:00-04:00

A team comprising SCAPE, Architecture Research Office (ARO), and Colloqate has unveiled a vision for a high school campus in Brooklyn with anti-racism, climate action, sustainable food systems, environmental justice, and experimental learning at the heart of its curriculum. The Launch School at Floyd Bennet Field will be constructed on a former airfield along the shores of Jamaica Bay, and will see a series of connective outdoor hallways knitting together buildings and landscapes.

Image credit: SCAPE

The design of the 7-acre campus embodies a ‘learning by doing’ approach featuring a refurbished and modernized central building, an urban farm and outdoor classroom, and a harvest and sensory garden. The campus will also hold a greenhouse with hydroponics, a central community hall, and spaces for outdoor art, teaching, performance, and exploration.

Image credit: SCAPE

“Launch at Floyd Bennett Field is an unprecedented opportunity to build a world-class educational ecosystem for communitie...

How schools are adapting their architecture for enhanced student safety amid lack of gun control

2023-03-22T19:57:00-04:00

But now, instead of calling for fortified entrances and security features that can put students on edge, experts are calling for a more holistic approach – where architecture serves as a conduit for both physical security and for supporting students' mental health to prevent violence in the first place.

Responsive elements like magnet-locking classroom doors, “shadow zones”, and even bulletproof storm shelters have been popular design solutions for school districts such as Fruitport, Michigan, which just spent $48 million on a new building based on those and other, less visible concerns.

Architects must consider not only the immediate physical prevention of violence but also the positive impact on the psychological development of pupils their designs can have. This means the K-12 sector may be undergoing its largest change since the 1970s, when the movement towards large classrooms and open spaces engendered many of the challenges safety upgrade projects are tying to mitigate.

Earlier on Archinect: Designing around gun violence

"They have these hallways and lockers, but there's no place to hang out, no place to socialize," architect Rene Berndt, who sits on the Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) board of directors, explained to NPR. "And so, we're trying our b...

Henning Larsen's latest K-12 design provides a lesson in bio-based construction

2023-03-08T12:34:00-05:00

Henning Larsen has released details of its newest K-12 project in the Danish village of Rønde.

The project worked to add an ultragreen extension to the village’s existing Feldballe School that offers carbon sequestering while incorporating plans for its future disassembly and reuse as components in other constructions.

Photography by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST

Using straw, seagrass, and locally-sourced timber as its base palette of materials, the design will eventually have a carbon output equivalent to -3kg of CO2e per square meter per year following Danish standards.

Photography by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST

A passive ventilation system helps to further reduce the consumption of energy on a daily basis. Solar panels have been installed on the timber roof, adding a further capacity for carbon independence. Compressed straw panels contained by wooden cassettes form the exterior of the walls, which are then completed with a clay plaster support coatin...

Heatherwick Studio’s first ever school features cascading terraces in Tokyo

2023-02-28T11:25:00-05:00

Heatherwick Studio has revealed the design for the first school project in the practice’s history. Situated in Tokyo, The British School seeks to be the largest international school in the city when it opens in August 2023.

The 16,000-square-foot scheme is spread across eight levels and features several landscaped outdoor learning and recreational spaces including on upper floors. The design team imagine the cascading outdoor spaces as social areas where teachers can work with the school’s 800 pupils, with planted balconies to be cared for by students.

Image credit: Heatherwick Studio

“Most inner-city schools don’t have enough playground space and the site was quite restricted,” explained Heatherwick Studio partner Neil Hubbard in a statement. “So we wedged playgrounds between each of the classrooms, creating outdoor learning spaces where pupils can explore and interact with each other and their teachers much more freely than in traditional school environments.”

“[The project’s] bric...

Historian Amber Wiley to lead UPenn's Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites

2022-09-19T09:00:00-04:00

Award-winning architectural and urban historian Amber Wiley has been announced by the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design as the inaugural Matt and Erika Nord Director of the Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites (CPCRS).

The current Rutgers University assistant professor will also hold the title of Presidential Associate Professor and lecture primarily in the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation. Wiley holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from George Washington University in addition to degrees in Architecture and Architectural History from Yale and the University of Virginia.

From Wiley's 2021 CPCRS talk titled “The Revolution Continues.” Image courtesy UPenn.

She comes to the new positions highly recommended as the author of the forthcoming title Model Schools in the Model City: Race, Planning, and Education in the Nation’s Capital and curator of Collective Yearning: Black Women Artists from the Zimmerli Art Museum, now on view at Rutgers’ New Bru...

New Compton High School, featuring a Dr. Dre-sponsored performing arts center, officially breaks ground

2022-05-10T14:57:00-04:00

Construction has officially commenced on the new DLR Group-designed Compton High School in California. Designers, dignitaries, school district leaders, staff, students, and community members came together on May 7th to celebrate the groundbreaking.

The 126-year-old school has a rich history, well known for producing music and athletic prodigies. DLR Group’s design celebrates this legacy through a new campus with a dynamic learning environment that aims to elevate education for both students and educators. The design solution is centered around learning suites that foster project-based learning, student exploration, general instruction, and relationship building. In addition, the learning suites will allow for interdepartmental collaboration. They are designed as separate suites that can be linked together with moveable walls that open and close, allowing students and faculty to customize their spaces to support a variety of learning activities.

“This school represents yet another si...

Influential urban theorist Christopher Alexander has passed away at 85

2022-03-21T17:46:00-04:00

The world of architectural theory is in mourning after news that architect, urbanist, AIA Gold Medalist, and former UC Berkeley professor Christopher Alexander passed away peacefully in his home in the south of England Thursday following a long illness.

Alexander was a pioneering theorist and early proponent of the New Urbanism movement who authored several crucial texts including The Timeless Way of Building and 1973’s seminal A Pattern Language.

Born in Austria in 1936, Alexander read mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge before immigrating to the United States to attend both MIT and Harvard in 1958. Alexander joined the faculty as Professor of Architecture at Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design in 1963.

As a theorist, he was instrumental in developing still-used planning methods first published in The Oregon Experiment in 1975 and known for influencing the development of a software engineering concept that eventually led to Wikipedia. As an architect, he demonstrated ...

A duo of school designs helps Berliner Architects stand out at the 2021 WUF Design Awards

2021-07-16T08:30:00-04:00

Two Los Angeles-area school projects by Berliner Architects have been recognized by the Westside Urban Forum’s annual Design Awards.

The Culver City-based studio was honored for its designs of an after-school community center and a new charter school campus in the city’s Crenshaw neighborhood.

Schools and related community organizations have been looking to architects more and more for community-centered designs that have taken on a newfound importance during the pandemic era.

Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA) Arts and Recreation Center by Berliner Architects. Photo: Tom Bonner.

Berliner’s Merit Award-winning design for a non-profit called the Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA) Arts and Recreation Center arranged 46 prefabricated shipping containers into a hangar-style pavilion space that will eventually house an LA Philharmonic’s Youth Orchestra program. The project was noted for its ability to integrate the 31,000-square-foot complex of classrooms, offices, and ensemble areas into the adjace...

Gensler, WXY, SITU, and others collaborate on 100-page guide for safe social distancing in schools

2020-06-03T14:20:00-04:00

Gensler, WXY, PSF Projects, PBDW, SITU, and Urban Projects Collaborative have come together with Brooklyn Laboratory Charter Schools (LAB) to develop a toolkit that explores ideas for how school layouts and operating procedures might change in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Specifically, the guide is geared toward re-designing the entry sequences at schools to allow for increased coronavirus testing, required social distancing, and for the safe travel between home and school for children. The adaptations are also geared toward reworking the sidewalks and spaces immediately around school entrances in order to accommodate the long lines that will result as new, slower arrival procedures are implemented for students.

Previously on Archinect: "AIA updates pandemic re-occupancy design tools." Photo courtesy of Lincoln Barbour.

Additionally, the guide offers approaches for establishing social distancing within the classroom, ways of providing overhead covering for queuing students, ad...

New high school incorporates design elements meant to hinder active shooters

2019-08-23T15:30:00-04:00

With school shootings becoming a point of concern for many across the country, K-12 design methodologies are beginning to address the issue as well.

Fruitport High School in Fruitport, Michigan, for example, is undergoing a $48 million renovation project aimed at incorporating some of these design approaches. The new work "will add curved hallways to reduce a gunman’s range, jutting barriers to provide cover and egress, and meticulously spaced classrooms that can lock on demand and hide students in the corner, out of a killer’s sight," reports The Washington Post.

Speaking with The Washington Post, Matt Sagle of TowerPinkster, and an architect on the project, illustrated the project's "shadow zones," designed areas for students to hide in that are obstructed from a shooter's sight lines. TowerPinkster also designs prisons; Regarding the project, The Washington Post writes that Sagle "wanted to strike a balance between security and creating a welcoming presence without the pendulum ...

BIG and WeWork complete first WeGrow elementary school in NYC

2018-10-30T19:48:00-04:00

New York City now has its first WeGrow school. Bjarke Ingels Group and WeWork teamed up to design the 10,000 square-foot private elementary school, which is located in WeWork's Chelsea headquarters. The school will teach kids ages 3 to 9 a more “conscious approach to education,” BIG says. Envisioned as an open, nature-themed learning environment, WeGrow is “playful and transparent, yet home-like and structured”.

The school comprises of four classrooms, flexible workshops, community space, a multi-purpose studio, art studio, music room, and other nature-themed playscapes that encourage interactive learning, creativity, and collaboration. Carefully designed furniture, ambient lighting, and other details help create an optimal learning space.

Photo: Laurian Ghinitoiu.

Acoustic felt “clouds” on the ceiling were designed to resemble various patterns found in nature — like fingerprints, coral, and the moon — and are illuminated by Ketra bulbs that change color and intensity according to t...

Valdemar Coutinho Arquitectos completes concrete and wood sports facility in Portugal

2018-09-06T18:08:00-04:00

The Pavilhão do Atlântico sports facility by Valdemar Coutinho Arquitectos was recently completed this year in Viana do Castelo, Portugal. The brutalist gymnasium was built to serve both the local Pedro Barbosa School and community.

Pavilhão do Atlântico by Valdemar Coutinho Arquitectos, located in Viana do Castelo, PT. Image: Joao Morgado.

The firm's design includes a 6997 sq. ft surface to accommodate volleyball and basketball, and includes four adjacent changing room blocks each with a capacity for 15 to 20 individuals.

Pavilhão do Atlântico by Valdemar Coutinho Arquitectos, located in Viana do Castelo, PT. Image: Joao Morgado.

The facility also includes an entrance space with a reception, surveillance area, and a cafeteria.

Pavilhão do Atlântico by Valdemar Couti...

Deborah Berke Partners completes new $19M residence hall for Dickinson College

2018-08-23T18:06:00-04:00

Ahead of the new academic year, Dickinson College has opened a new $19 million residence hall that will house 130 students. The High Street Residence Hall, the Carlisle liberal arts college's first new residence hall since 1973, is part of a $46 million campus investment plan that began in 2012. Officials said demand for on-campus housing exceeded available space, prompting the start of construction on the new residence hall last year.

Deborah Berke Partners' new dormitory for Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA is now open for the upcoming academic school year.

The 40,500 square foot building is currently targeted to be LEED Platinum, making it the first college residence hall in Pennsylvania to achieve this level if approved. The dorm features an upgraded stormwater management system with four rain gardens.

The residence hall was designed with an energy efficient roof, exterior walls, and windows. The facility connects with the colleges' central energy plant to reduce carbon emissions.

Collaborating Firms
Deborah Berke Partners – Architect and Interior Designer
Andropogon – Landscape Architect
Kohler Ronan – MEP Engineer
Steven Winter Associates – LEED/Environmental Consultant
PHT Lighting – Lighting...

A look at school design leading students towards prison

2018-07-25T16:13:00-04:00

In the past — or in schools with higher proportions of white students — a student acting out might garner an intervention by their principal, or a concerned teacher’s phone call to parents. But today, throughout the US, discipline in many schools has become a matter of law enforcement, rather than education. In New York, the majority of school guards — 5,000 School Safety Agents patrolling 2,300 public and private schools — are civilians employed by the School Safety Division of the NYPD.

Out of fearful reaction to school shootings and other safety concerns, many school environments look and feel like prison to the students attending. Through an extensive background on how school design has gotten to this point, "Where School Meets Prison" examines the impact prison-like design has on students and argues damaging results of higher student arrest rates and discrimination.

With a strong police presence and physical security infrastructure, student Andrea Colon shares how school design can become a pipeline to prison.

Zaha Hadid Architects: a robot will help build the vaults of Lushan Primary School

2018-04-19T16:07:00-04:00

Zaha Hadid Architects just revealed a design proposal for Lushan Primary School, a new learning center for 120 children from 12 local villages in a remote rural area of Jiangxi Province, China. The campus is designed as a network of intersecting barrel and parabolic vaults that accommodate various school, housing, and utility spaces.

Image courtesy of ZHA.

From the project description: "The school’s curriculum is a synthesis of Chinese and international academic systems; combining an education in the creative arts with a comprehensive syllabus of STEM subjects that also includes advanced internet-based learning technologies. Visiting teachers and artists will make the school a focus for the community it serves."

Rendering by VA. Image courtesy of ZHA.

"Surrounded by mountains as well as the rivers and lakes fed by the Zhelin Reservoir, the school is within an agricultural region that also has a rich tradition in the production of ceramics. [...] The campus includes the school, dormito...

The NRA's design for "hardening" schools

2018-02-26T16:21:00-05:00

NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre offered schools his organization’s “free” support and guidance to protect themselves, saying that communities “must come together to implement the very best strategy to harden their schools.” President Donald Trump echoed the sentiment Thursday saying, “We have to harden our sites” to protect schools from gun violence [...] it’s worth revisiting exactly what the NRA means when it calls for measures to “harden” a school.

Here are a few architectural elements and design features the NRA recommends from its 2013 task force report for "hardening" schools.

A big fence
No trees
No parking lots
Entrapment areas
No windows
A door stop

Join the discussion asking: "Where are the designers, architects, and engineers in the debate on hardening school security through design?"

Did the architecture of your schools leave an impression on you?

2015-10-20T18:01:00-04:00

'None of the buildings seemed built to impose and in all of them one had the sense that what mattered about a room was the spirit and determination with which it was filled, and the uses to which ingenuity could put it. When I want to remember what a first-class education felt like, that is the architecture I remember, and it mattered solely because of what people did with it.'

It seems that no matter how many years have passed, those schoolyard memories — whether cheerful or hellish — will always be buried in the back of our minds. In light of the 2015 Stirling Prize recently awarded to the Burntwood School in Wandsworth, London, some of The Guardian's writers share how the architecture of their educational stomping grounds as youngsters impacted them.

Do you relate to any of their stories? Which school campus from your own experiences left the strongest impression?

How architects are redesigning schools that encourage kids to eat healthier

2015-08-20T18:38:00-04:00

"The design of a school itself might matter as much as something like a gym class. 'The environments in which we live affect not just our behaviors, but our lifelong attitudes about things like healthy eating and active lifestyles...It's also clear that it's so much better to help prevent children from becoming obese than to try to help adults lose weight.'

The Architecture of Loss: How to Redesign After a School Shooting

2014-11-20T14:22:00-05:00

Good architects strive to balance design and function while listening closely to a client’s emotional needs for the space. Public projects often have the added layers of bureaucratic paperwork, media scrutiny, and community outreach. But rebuilding a school after a shooting presents a unique kaleidoscope of intense feelings. Architects must create an environment that not only promotes learning, but also helps the students—and their towns—heal from tragedy.

Kids: Architecture is Good for You

2012-10-23T14:55:00-04:00

After seeing “Best School in the World,” a Center for Architecture exhibition on the progressive learning environments where Finnish students to the top of world rankings, New York’s Justin Davidson aligned the layout of these schools more with tech company offices. We’ve rounded up a few of the design perks that your middle-school self never dreamed of.

The Best School in the World exhibition explores this question from an architectural perspective: in what types of environments does learning take place today, and what kinds of physical settings are the most conducive to successful learning?