Published: December 06, 2008 12:43 am         

OSU students design schools

Oklahoma State architecture students pitched their design proposals for a new elementary school to district officials and a jury of professors on Thursday and Friday afternoon.

Forty-one third-year students toured local schools, researched national precedents, and spent five weeks creating individual designs for their client, Assistant Superintendent Jim Ryan. Ryan said the district doesn’t have plans to build another school, but may need to in the near future based on increasing enrollment figures.

The students consulted with Ryan at the onset of the project, and he asked them to design a place that would encourage students to learn.

Heather Spencer created a four-story radial school design, which she said resembled a spaceship, with a parking lot that resembled a crop circle. She said she wanted to design a place that would be fun to learn, have a small footprint on the environment, and give students an uninterrupted view of their surroundings.

Steven Blair’s design, “Educating a mind unfolded,” had a vaulted library as the center of what represented an unfolded shape. He said school should be like a cocoon where children can transform.

Marrina Boontheekul designed transparent display galleries, which brought in natural light and served as giant showcases for children’s work.

Professor Suzanne Bilbeisi said the architecture school was excited to provide services and ideas to the community.

She said students tried to encompass modern educational trends of hands-on learning and community building in their designs. She said three of Stillwater’s schools were built in the 1950s, and they weren’t designed to support today’s teaching methods.

“There’s a lot of investigation and discovery that happens at the elementary school level,” Bilbeisi said.

Many of the students included extra work spaces and outdoor learning centers, or over-lapping classroom areas in their designs. They also incorporated sustainability, creating schools that would require less maintenance, generate electricity and cause minimal disruption to the environment.

The students grappled with how to work with the topography on their hypothetical site, a hilly, tree-laden, 70,000 square foot area near the intersection of Sangre Road and 19th Street.One design had a jagged roof that contorted with the contours of the land.

Another was elevated with space underneath that could serve as a recycling area.

Professor John Womack said the project was a large undertaking, and students worked hard.

“Even schemes that may not have been highly successful had bits of brilliance,” he said.畡

     

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