THE NATURE TRAIL
Type: Educational (University of Oregon)
Role: Research, Design, Digital Model, Storyboard, Diagram Animations
Collaborators: Brieanna Waggoner / Andrew Calnen
Software: Rhino, Grasshopper, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premier Pro, Lumion, Revit
The Nature Trail was a project working in conjunction with Pies Descalzos, an education foundation in Colombia. The organization had already purchased a site for a new P-12 school and are looking for inspiration on what it could be. Through research of students, the site, and the foundation, we took the stance that the school should be designed around education through the surrounding environment. We wanted to use the natural beauty of the country and our site as a method to educate students, complete with natural hydrological treatment systems on site.
Get to know your audience.
The best way to understand what is needed in a school for the future, is to understand the needs and wishes of the audience itself, the kids.
We had the pleasure of working with a second grade classroom to understand both the needs and wishes they desire in their ideal school. Asking them to take pictures of their favorite places outside of the classroom, as well as asking them to draw their ideal spaces to learn, read, and play, we were able to really consider what our designs could be. We found interesting themes revolving around the outdoors, varying scales of space, and places of ownership as well as shared.
The perfect idea can come from anyone
Redefine a “school”
When you imagine school, what do you think of? Cinder block buildings, rows of chairs, and central learning figures? Through our research it doesn’t have to be this way. Let’s re-brand “school” and give the kids something to really get excited about. Just because it was done a certain way in the past, doesn’t make it the best way in the future.
Class Subject Rotation
A classroom can grow with a student, just as a student can grow in a classroom.
The ability for am explorer’s (student’s) space to evolve with the student was a method developed to provide safety and gradual change for the explorer. In the elementary school, students are taught all their subjects in a cluster, a collection of nature labs (classrooms). Different nature labs are designed to reflect surrounding natural elements based on their subject. As an explorer transitions into middle school, a little more independence is given as the explorer’s subjects rotate between different levels of their clusters. By the time a student reaches high school, the same explorer is now navigating between subjects in more of a campus feel. As all grades are taught in the same school, this was a strategy for those explorers to feel a sense of progression through their accomplishments.
Let the school and the student grow together
Learn from your surroundings
We don’t learn from a classroom alone, but rather our daily interactions with the world around us. Let’s exploit that as an opportunity.
The re-brand of classroom to nature lab was not in name alone. In working with people of all different ages, and talking with current students from all over the world, we learned the value and under stressed importance of the outdoors in education. For this reason we wanted the nature labs to do just that, study the nature surrounding them. The different spaces interact with the site in different ways depending on their location. As an example science classes take on a more grounded stance, right in the bedrock of nature itself while arts are more focused on the whimsical nature of what is above, the free flowing breeze and dance of the trees.