4 ms·

I see no mention of the guiding principles for schools of the past. They were built to be cheap, long lasting, and durable (storm shelters). Every one of these

I see no mention of the guiding principles for schools of the past. They were built to be cheap, long lasting, and durable (storm shelters). Every one of these newer building looks like a high priced and high maintenance design. I don't see any problem with the old bland cinderblock design. I feel that much of the psychology around the building looks is forgetting that people get used to things and that bland isn't necessarily bad if the other content and decor are the primary focus (as they should be Inna school).

ricardobeat 2y ago
> Every one of these newer building looks like a high priced and high maintenance design Not really possible to judge from pictures, as it depends on material selection, durability etc. Good architects can make nice things without breaking the bank.
- giantg2 2y ago
  Just cleaning the vaulted ceilings and all the high windows is a big difference that can be seen in the pictures. Multiple large windows are also a contraindication for it being a storm shelter.
  - volkk 2y ago
    are schools in china traditionally used as storm shelters? perhaps they have separate buildings for that kind of thing
    - giantg2 2y ago
      China's imperative is to build cheap and even disposable buildings. The difference in storm shelter paradigms and design considerations is a tangent at best considering we don't share the same concerns here or whatever alternative buildings you are insinuating.
    - jdietrich 2y ago
      No, but in large parts of China they're supposed to be earthquake-resistant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Sichuan_earthquake#Collapse_of_schoolhouses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Sichuan_earthquake#Collap...
  - Miraste 2y ago
    Why would it need to be a storm shelter? The only place in the world where schools need to be storm shelters is the midwestern US.
    - giantg2 2y ago
      Perhaps the frequency of storms. For example, Europe doesn't have many storms of the same intensity as the tornadoes of the Midwest or the hurricanes of the South.
jimbob45 2y ago
Even worse when the school building is aesthetically designed for a limited number of viewpoints or even just one viewpoint. My own school growing up had a boring rear entrance but a brochure-worthy front entrance that looked traditional and dignified. Unfortunately, that front entrance was virtually never used since the playgrounds and parking lots were much closer to the rear entrance. As a result, us kids were sentenced to staring at the boring posterior of the school and never took away much inspiration from the architecture.
- giantg2 2y ago
  I'd be more concerned with a lack of inspiration from the schooling. Relying on architecture is a poor lesson in inspiration and creativity. People with creative mindsets can create beauty in how they decorate and use the space, just as much or even more so than relying on the space design itself.
lo_zamoyski 2y ago
These sorts of schools were modeled after prisons (and actually were designed by the same people designing prisons). Architecture that looks bad is effectively communicating to its occupants what the institution running it thinks of them and what the institution is about. If you model it like a prison, then think about what this communicates and internalizes. Before the prison/factory campus came into existence, we did have beautiful schools. And they're still standing.
- giantg2 2y ago
  "These sorts of schools were modeled after prisons (and actually were designed by the same people designing prisons)." TFA says this is mostly legend more than fact. "Before the prison/factory campus came into existence, we did have beautiful schools. And they're still standing." This is survivor bias and tends to include expensive private schools and higher education. Most of those designs have similar "negative" features that the article describes as many of them are gothic, built in a time when glass was limited in size or expense, etc. "If you model it like a prison, then think about what this communicates and internalizes." Have the kids spent time in a prision? If the kids don't have a baseline for a what a prison is like, then this conjecture about what it communicates is moot as the fundamental exchange of the idea isn’t present. People reiterating that they are built like prisons are more detrimental than the design itself.
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    You see prison on TV even as a child. remember the first time I saw my US high school in person and my first thought was that it was clearly a prison inspired design. They had an interior balcony where the each level was viewable from each other level. Unlike a mall the walls were opaque and each door identical with a number. If the school was properly organized it could be in an actual prison for all would have cared. I think de-streaming is far worse than bad decor.
- nemo44x 2y ago
  It's because they're built by tax dollars and the last thing you want to do is be seen to be wasting tax dollars on frivolous things. Nice private schools look great because the clientele expects that and pays for that aesthetic. Also consider that often the highest tax payers and most influential people in a community won't send their kids to the local school so have no interest in having higher taxes fund a nice building. I'm not saying that's good or bad, just that it is. > Before the prison/factory campus came into existence, we did have beautiful schools. And they're still standing. The nice ones are. There are likely many old school buildings that were cheaply constructed and didn't stand the test of time. The nice old school building in my town had to have hundreds of millions of dollars put into it because it didn't have AC, a staircase collapsed, and about 100 other serious issues that needed addressing to modernize it. Our community voted YES to funding it through a raise in property taxes but our community is already affluent and the town did a good job specifying exactly what the money would be spent on. So it costs money and often times people don't see the value in that.
xemoka 2y ago
This was very much my first thought as well, that the costs of these buildings are far higher than schools of the past. It's good to want nice things, but there is a tradeoff. There is a new highschool being built in my community to replace an aging one. The time and cost overruns of the custom designed building, featuring a towering atrium/lobby and ascetically pleasing frontage, has pushed back the move-in date to midsemester/next year. Part of me loves that these schools look so much nicer and contain an environment better than the ones I went to growing up---another part of me knows that we have _many_ schools that need replacing of the same age as this new one's predecessor, and hardly a budget capable of doing so if they all are to be completed similarly. Our drive and desire for "nicer" things (or at least things that dress up well), when we can barely fund the necessities, seems to be a hard dichotomy to deal with. How do we accomplish both?
- rachofsunshine 2y ago
  This feels like a very important question: why the hell don't we seem to be able to do this efficiently, despite our vast resources and all the advances we've made in engineering, materials science, and automation in recent decades? As much as the leftie in me wants to say we're not funding it, we are. Per-student, inflation-adjusted funding for education has gone up a full 50% in my lifetime [1], to more than $18k per student-year. $18k is a lot - for a classroom of 30 students, that's half a million dollars a year. We have the money, and indeed far more money than we once had, in a world where things are cheaper and easier. We should be able to do everything we did generations ago and then some. Sure, there are demands we make now that we didn't make then (like "maybe not with the asbestos", "kids with wheelchairs should be able to get places", and "maybe people with learning disabilities should get a chance"), but I have a hard time believing that those are adding >50% in real terms. To me, the interesting question isn't the trade-offs, it's why we need to make them at all. It seems like we shouldn't. The most appealing explanation to me is that there's a sort of low-grade hum of background corruption that is hard to detect but acting as a sort of friction on public-works projects. But that's hard enough to falsify that it's hard to be too confident in it, either. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/203118/expenditures-per-pupil-in-public-schools-in-the-us-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/203118/expenditures-per-...
maxglute 2y ago
Evidenced based design studies on how some designs better than others at promoting healing in hospital design. Not familiar with school studies but I imagine at some point schools should be calibrated to facilitate learning instead of storm shelters (or in US, securitized against shooters). IIRC old enviromental-psych, "nice" enviroments reduce stress, increase attention etc. Regardless why get used to bland? It's good to just be in a nice built enviroment.
- giantg2 2y ago
  My point is, what defines "nice" is based on one's experience. If you get people used to luxury, they will demand it and see declines if it's not met. Most of the hospital improvements are not about having pretty rooms. The pretty rooms are usually only one part of a much bigger group of changes to make things more tolerable. Those other changes are likely bigger factors in comfort.
  - maxglute 2y ago
    Evidenced based design is an architecture field. They try to quantify what aspects of built enviroment improves XYZ. I don't disagree with your gist, but sometimes it does come down to more expensive layouts (i.e. trying increase light/window coverage) or finishes that pushes per sq cost up in institutional buildings. I can't tell you if a lot of these designs are architecture wank, or actually seriously informed by literature, although architects do pour over relevant literature if only to post rationalize / sell designs.
  - dmix 2y ago
    A lot of newer urban public libraries look like the buildings in the pictures. If it works for them it can work for a school where we send our kids for a big part of their life. I think it's a good investment when building new ones, probably at a way higher priority than most things the gov wastes money on.

ricardobeat 2y ago

> Every one of these newer building looks like a high priced and high maintenance design Not really possible to judge from pictures, as it depends on material selection, durability etc. Good architects can make nice things without breaking the bank.

giantg2 2y ago
Just cleaning the vaulted ceilings and all the high windows is a big difference that can be seen in the pictures. Multiple large windows are also a contraindication for it being a storm shelter.
- volkk 2y ago
  are schools in china traditionally used as storm shelters? perhaps they have separate buildings for that kind of thing
  - giantg2 2y ago
    China's imperative is to build cheap and even disposable buildings. The difference in storm shelter paradigms and design considerations is a tangent at best considering we don't share the same concerns here or whatever alternative buildings you are insinuating.
  - jdietrich 2y ago
    No, but in large parts of China they're supposed to be earthquake-resistant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Sichuan_earthquake#Collapse_of_schoolhouses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Sichuan_earthquake#Collap...
- Miraste 2y ago
  Why would it need to be a storm shelter? The only place in the world where schools need to be storm shelters is the midwestern US.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    Perhaps the frequency of storms. For example, Europe doesn't have many storms of the same intensity as the tornadoes of the Midwest or the hurricanes of the South.

jimbob45 2y ago

Even worse when the school building is aesthetically designed for a limited number of viewpoints or even just one viewpoint. My own school growing up had a boring rear entrance but a brochure-worthy front entrance that looked traditional and dignified. Unfortunately, that front entrance was virtually never used since the playgrounds and parking lots were much closer to the rear entrance. As a result, us kids were sentenced to staring at the boring posterior of the school and never took away much inspiration from the architecture.

giantg2 2y ago
I'd be more concerned with a lack of inspiration from the schooling. Relying on architecture is a poor lesson in inspiration and creativity. People with creative mindsets can create beauty in how they decorate and use the space, just as much or even more so than relying on the space design itself.

lo_zamoyski 2y ago

These sorts of schools were modeled after prisons (and actually were designed by the same people designing prisons). Architecture that looks bad is effectively communicating to its occupants what the institution running it thinks of them and what the institution is about. If you model it like a prison, then think about what this communicates and internalizes. Before the prison/factory campus came into existence, we did have beautiful schools. And they're still standing.

giantg2 2y ago
"These sorts of schools were modeled after prisons (and actually were designed by the same people designing prisons)." TFA says this is mostly legend more than fact. "Before the prison/factory campus came into existence, we did have beautiful schools. And they're still standing." This is survivor bias and tends to include expensive private schools and higher education. Most of those designs have similar "negative" features that the article describes as many of them are gothic, built in a time when glass was limited in size or expense, etc. "If you model it like a prison, then think about what this communicates and internalizes." Have the kids spent time in a prision? If the kids don't have a baseline for a what a prison is like, then this conjecture about what it communicates is moot as the fundamental exchange of the idea isn’t present. People reiterating that they are built like prisons are more detrimental than the design itself.
- cjbgkagh 2y ago
  You see prison on TV even as a child. remember the first time I saw my US high school in person and my first thought was that it was clearly a prison inspired design. They had an interior balcony where the each level was viewable from each other level. Unlike a mall the walls were opaque and each door identical with a number. If the school was properly organized it could be in an actual prison for all would have cared. I think de-streaming is far worse than bad decor.
nemo44x 2y ago
It's because they're built by tax dollars and the last thing you want to do is be seen to be wasting tax dollars on frivolous things. Nice private schools look great because the clientele expects that and pays for that aesthetic. Also consider that often the highest tax payers and most influential people in a community won't send their kids to the local school so have no interest in having higher taxes fund a nice building. I'm not saying that's good or bad, just that it is. > Before the prison/factory campus came into existence, we did have beautiful schools. And they're still standing. The nice ones are. There are likely many old school buildings that were cheaply constructed and didn't stand the test of time. The nice old school building in my town had to have hundreds of millions of dollars put into it because it didn't have AC, a staircase collapsed, and about 100 other serious issues that needed addressing to modernize it. Our community voted YES to funding it through a raise in property taxes but our community is already affluent and the town did a good job specifying exactly what the money would be spent on. So it costs money and often times people don't see the value in that.

xemoka 2y ago

This was very much my first thought as well, that the costs of these buildings are far higher than schools of the past. It's good to want nice things, but there is a tradeoff. There is a new highschool being built in my community to replace an aging one. The time and cost overruns of the custom designed building, featuring a towering atrium/lobby and ascetically pleasing frontage, has pushed back the move-in date to midsemester/next year. Part of me loves that these schools look so much nicer and contain an environment better than the ones I went to growing up---another part of me knows that we have _many_ schools that need replacing of the same age as this new one's predecessor, and hardly a budget capable of doing so if they all are to be completed similarly. Our drive and desire for "nicer" things (or at least things that dress up well), when we can barely fund the necessities, seems to be a hard dichotomy to deal with. How do we accomplish both?

rachofsunshine 2y ago
This feels like a very important question: why the hell don't we seem to be able to do this efficiently, despite our vast resources and all the advances we've made in engineering, materials science, and automation in recent decades? As much as the leftie in me wants to say we're not funding it, we are. Per-student, inflation-adjusted funding for education has gone up a full 50% in my lifetime [1], to more than $18k per student-year. $18k is a lot - for a classroom of 30 students, that's half a million dollars a year. We have the money, and indeed far more money than we once had, in a world where things are cheaper and easier. We should be able to do everything we did generations ago and then some. Sure, there are demands we make now that we didn't make then (like "maybe not with the asbestos", "kids with wheelchairs should be able to get places", and "maybe people with learning disabilities should get a chance"), but I have a hard time believing that those are adding >50% in real terms. To me, the interesting question isn't the trade-offs, it's why we need to make them at all. It seems like we shouldn't. The most appealing explanation to me is that there's a sort of low-grade hum of background corruption that is hard to detect but acting as a sort of friction on public-works projects. But that's hard enough to falsify that it's hard to be too confident in it, either. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/203118/expenditures-per-pupil-in-public-schools-in-the-us-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/203118/expenditures-per-...

maxglute 2y ago

Evidenced based design studies on how some designs better than others at promoting healing in hospital design. Not familiar with school studies but I imagine at some point schools should be calibrated to facilitate learning instead of storm shelters (or in US, securitized against shooters). IIRC old enviromental-psych, "nice" enviroments reduce stress, increase attention etc. Regardless why get used to bland? It's good to just be in a nice built enviroment.

giantg2 2y ago
My point is, what defines "nice" is based on one's experience. If you get people used to luxury, they will demand it and see declines if it's not met. Most of the hospital improvements are not about having pretty rooms. The pretty rooms are usually only one part of a much bigger group of changes to make things more tolerable. Those other changes are likely bigger factors in comfort.
- maxglute 2y ago
  Evidenced based design is an architecture field. They try to quantify what aspects of built enviroment improves XYZ. I don't disagree with your gist, but sometimes it does come down to more expensive layouts (i.e. trying increase light/window coverage) or finishes that pushes per sq cost up in institutional buildings. I can't tell you if a lot of these designs are architecture wank, or actually seriously informed by literature, although architects do pour over relevant literature if only to post rationalize / sell designs.
- dmix 2y ago
  A lot of newer urban public libraries look like the buildings in the pictures. If it works for them it can work for a school where we send our kids for a big part of their life. I think it's a good investment when building new ones, probably at a way higher priority than most things the gov wastes money on.