Edward E. Kirkbride, NCARB, REFP, is an educational architectural consultant. He was awarded “2002 Planner of the Year”: the highest and most distinguished individual honor conferred by the Council of Educational Facility Planners, International (CEFPI). CEFPI's award read, in part, “His focus to bring cutting-edge educational facilities concepts and programs to fellow professionals set an outstanding example of giving back to the community”. During his 40-year architectural career as a principal, he has been involved in the planning, design and construction of well over 100 school facilities. Now his interests are to connect the educational facilities planning & design industry directly to the needs and educational programs of students, their teachers, and their community with an emphasis on the environment and high-performance learning opportunities.
Ed Kirkbride can be reached at: eekirkbride@verizon.net.
Guerilla Educators – Ed, anyone who has had the privilege of hearing you speak or give workshop presentations is familiar with “The Hat”. You invariably address education and architectural professionals in this manner. What is your purpose making presentations in such distinctive headwear?
Ed Kirkbride:I wear the “Cat-in-the Hat” while I’m teaching to remind others and myself that my clients are the students and my purpose for being is to serve student educational needs.
I personally felt this way and consciously practiced this way since returning from a Fulbright Fellowship to Italy in the mid 1960’s. Thereafter, I have tried to include students in the programming and design of their facilities from pre-K (early childhood) through elementary and high school commissions even into the design of community college facilities. In the mid 1990’s, I was pleased to find the organization of the Council of Educational Facility Planners International (CEFPI), had several concerned and cutting-edge peers to interact with and grow. Working with and on behalf of CEFPI, my educational planning and design world has expanded and become interactive with worldwide cutting-edge individuals and organizations who and which also focus on students and their needs as clients.
I wear the hat to remind others and myself that what we do is fun and should bring joy to others. I also wear it because I’m somewhat of a “Thespian” who played character parts in high school and college theater productions.
GE: So the hat signifies the idea that learning should be fun and joyful and that school architects should have respect for authentic student input the school design process. It sounds like a simple recipe for academic success. In your experience, do you see students having fun and being joyful anywhere across the educational spectrum?
EK: Not just school architects should respect student input, but also planners as well as teachers, educators and administrators. Very few adults give students any credit for being able to think and contribute to their world. The result of 20th Century industrialized education has been (and continues to be) teaching the masses (seats) to perform functions. Children are vessels to be filled with enough information to perform necessary production line tasks (and win world wars).
100 years ago, John Dewey gave USA education the philosophy and tools to move into the knowledge-based world and beyond into the individual value based, environmentally concerned and creative holistic world mankind will need to survive the 21st Century. A small but highly motivated and energetic contingency of educational teachers, planners and architects are transitional and now are emerging as leaders for the future of education.
In the Spring of 2000, I became aware of the power of Project-Based Learning when I attended a modest but significant “Alliance to Save Energy – Green Schools” program for the Philadelphia Public Schools under the direction of Merrilee Harrigan, being taught by Janet Castellini.
During that program, I had the opportunity to visit the Philadelphia Public Schools “Project-Based Service Learning Center”. There I met John Sole and became aware of the powerful opportunities to connect Architecture and Design directly to the educational needs of students through hands-on projects.
In the Fall of 2000, I participated in and became aware of the long history of the “AIE” (Architecture in Education) program founded in the early 1980’s by the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. This program has brought thousands of students together with 100’s of teachers, architects, planners and architectural students. The multifaceted projects across all grade levels (K thru 12) practiced all of the principles and cross-connected all the disciplines of education. The children in these classes of “Green Schools” and AIE were having fun and being joyful while participating not only in their own learning process, but in shaping a world for their Future.
GE: Ed, you were the Council of Educational Facilities Planners International’s (CEFPI) “Planner of the Year in 2002”. Are there significant differences between an educational facilities planner and an architect or a designer of schools?
EK: An Educational Facilities Planner addresses the holistic concept of the place (or happening) of a school facility in the Community Environment, the Learning Environment and the Physical Environment. My colleague David Anstrand, RA, REFP and I have defined this process as the Educational Environment Program (EEP). The Planner may be an educator &/or administrator with years of experience in educational facilities, a facilities manager or director, or an architect. The Planner is responsible for developing and applying theories and principles of the program requirements for the facilities that are to be designed and built by the Architect. The Planner is not held liable for the end result of his work. The CEFPI Guide for Educational Facility Planning “Creating Connections” describes the process and team personnel in detail.
An Architect for schools is concerned with solving and meeting the complexities of putting together the various predetermined space requirements of a bureaucratic program. He/she must meet the various and many Code requirements; all for the price of the lowest bid. Then the Architect is responsible to see that his designs are built correctly and perform reasonably well to the original specified requirements. At the present time, the Architect is trained and obliged to design for “seat” (not student) spaces that fit the 20th Century industrial school model and support “teaching-to-the-test”. In the last 50 years, there have been very few schools that are commodious, beautiful and uplifting. Only in the near past have a few architects begun to consider the students as their clients and the sustainability of the environment as a primary responsibility. Above all, in today’s litigious society, the Architect is licensed and legally responsible to protect life, limb and property.
GE: It sounds as if an educational facilities planner wears a number of different hats, Ed.
EK: Yes, John, Planners and Architects for School Facilities wear many different hats, This talk about hats also calls to mind Dr. Ed DeBono's "6 Thinking Hats of Decision Making".
When talking with High School students about careers in Architecture and the Construction Industry, I often refer to the many hats each of us wear during our lifetime and in today’s world, how many of these hats change differently and drastically. Fifty years ago our grandparents and parents might have worn the same hat and performed the same tasks for their whole life. Their education system (and unfortunately, our present one) prepared them for those roles. Today, we change jobs, life styles and directions in our personal lives, as corporate America and even as a world super power (or not). Today’s education must meet these needs, not just for our affluent, but also for our whole society so as to ultimately survive. Teaching to the brain has become a necessity for this survival and is just now emerging from the dark ages of centuries of Euro-American ignorance. Very recently we are finding our brains are connected in a trillion ways to our experiences that will give us not only knowledge, but wisdom to act. Experience and experiences require learning through DOING. Learning through doing is Project Based Learning. Learning through doing with the purpose of being a holistic part of our earth environment is Project Based Service Learning.
GE: Why do you emphasize that the school itself, the physical facility, should be used as a 3 dimensional textbook?
EK: This past century, all the parts and pieces
have been available but have not coalesced, to emphasize the school
facility and modern architecture itself as a 3 dimensional textbook.
Perhaps
the best example/explanation that the human being has evolved beyond
the rest of the animal kingdom is our ability to build complex and
sometimes beautiful structures and physical systems to protect us from
the elements. Along with the history of language, the history of
building and architecture is one of the most fascinating stories we can
write and weave about our accomplishments and ourselves. It is also
one of the most horrific tales of destruction of our planet and
ourselves that universe-history may record (if at all remember).
Mankind has brought so much destruction upon ourselves and the world
around us in our short stay on earth and particularly the past 100–150
years, that end damage may be irreparable. However, rather than speak
to apocalypse, I think we should be speaking to crisis damage repair.
And I believe the immediate turn-around in education of our children
and citizens of tomorrow is our hope for salvation, if not for
survival.
Historically, Architects have been master builders
who have risen through the construction ranks (and/or family politics)
to their esteemed position of creativity and responsibility. Lasting
works of architecture such as the Egyptian pyramids, the Greek and
Roman temples with their public squares and the Gothic cathedrals with
their carved stone facades and stained glass windows were each the
embodiment of a 3 dimensional textbook teaching the masses. Very few
other than the wealthy and noble could read or had any sort of formal
education.
The late 19th century in Europe and North America
was an exciting period of dramatic change, invention and philosophy.
The Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, suspension bridges and
skyscrapers have been (and still are) our 3 dimensional textbooks of
what man has wrought with an over abundance of natural resources and
ego. In the United States, the 20th century was a continuing glut of
obsessive consumption with excessive waste fed by an industrialized
(mechanized) public education.
We are in a period of false
prophets along with mass produced thoughtlessness and ugliness of 20th
century deeds that have given us very little direction, means to
discern or sense of moral right. As we closed the 20th century and
excess spills over into the 21st, a small but growing minority of
pragmatic visionaries and creators are emerging as leaders, rather than
naysayers, to look for and find order in a world of self-destructive
chaos.
One of our great living leaders and philosophers in this effort is David W. Orr.
His lifetime of work gives us accurate analysis of our condition and
direction for healing and resolve. His most recent work “Design on the Edge; the Making of a High-Performance Building” is a textbook for those of us who plan, design and build not just schools, but all buildings for the future.
GE: Who are some of the influential thinkers who have articulated the school as a 3-dimensional textbook and emphasized Project-Based-Service-Learning?
EK: Anne Taylor, Ph.D., Hon. AIA, in my mind, is the most outstanding educator and the leading proponent and practitioner in the 3-dimensional textbook field. She has been our physical facilities planning mentor for more than 35 years. Her book “School Zone” coauthored with Architect, George Vlastos in 1983 is still the finest resource available for connecting students to their learning environments and vice-versa. Anne and George’s “Architecture and Children”: (along with Alison Marshall, Ph.D.) is one of the best “Teacher’s Guides” available for Interdisciplinary learning activities of the “Architecture and Children Curriculum”. Anne Taylor’s work can be “found” at many and various websites such as, www.edutopia.org/taylor.
I did not become aware of Anne Taylor’s work until the mid 1990’s when I attended her workshops and presentations at CEFPI events and particularly in July 1998 at a Thomas Jefferson Center Conference led by Daniel L. Duke. As a result of Anne’s teaching’s along with those of “colleagues”. Steven Bingler, Bruce Jilk and later Jeff Lackney, David Anstrand and I became collaborators in developing the Education Environment Program (EEP) which I consider a program model for Project Based Service Learning as an alternative to the straight jacket of the Educational Specification.
I'll have more to say about influential thinkers in Project Based Service Learning and the 3 Dimensional Textbook in a future posting
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