The Language of School Design Design Patterns for 21st Century

Review Reviewed Work(s): The Language of School Design: Design Patterns for 21st Century Schools by Prakash, Nair and Fielding, Randall Review by: Jelacic, Matthew Source: Children, Youth and Environments, Vol. 18, No. 2, Collected Papers (2008), pp. 278281 Published by: University of Cincinnati Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7721/chilyoutenvi.18.2.0278 Accessed: 26-12-2016 19:00 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 18 No. 2 (2008) ISSN: 1546-2250

The Language of School Design: Design Patterns for 21st Century Schools Prakash, Nair and Fielding, Randall (2005). India: Design Share; 118 pages. $35. ISBN 9780976267003.

In the late 1970s the architect and theorist Christopher Alexander published (with collaborators) a 1,900-page, three volume work with the titles, The Timeless Way of Building, A Pattern Language, and The Oregon Experiment. The first of these, The Timeless Way of Building, sets out the theoretical proposition that architectural space is a composite of patterns of events, and when they are repeated and shared they become, for Alexander, a language. “[Patterns in space] are the atoms and molecules from which a building or town is made.” The second book in the series, A Pattern Language, sets out 253 specific patterns that when combined form “a coherent picture of an entire region, with the power to generate such regions in a million forms, with infinite variety in all the details.” The last book, The Oregon Experiment, is the master plan for the University of Oregon as created using the theory and patterns of the first two volumes. Significantly, the three volumes were published in reverse order, practice preceding theory. Within the design professions, the value of “language” as an idea has proven useful in theoretical discourses with many different guises, but current interests in social, economic and environmental sustainability within the academy and profession have come to eclipse this metaphor. What remains significant in Alexander’s work, however, is a design process, clearly articulated in The Oregon Experiment, that critically relies on community involvement. The underlying principle of the three volumes is that communities identify their own specific patterns of events, evolve their own particular language. The Language of School Design, by Prakash Nair and Randall Fielding, relies heavily on a version of the conceptual framework


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that Alexander and collaborators first articulated in their three volume work. Nair and Fielding begin their introduction by specifically discussing their indebtedness to the second volume, A Pattern Language, and organize their book in a similar fashion, enumerating 25 patterns that they propose schools in the twentyfirst century will contain. Similar to A Pattern Language, each of the 25 patterns identified includes a description and sketches of a particular pattern and a concrete or real example of this pattern built in an existing school. The text and illustrations are well done— the drawings and photographs are superior to those of their model. However, there are significant differences between Alexander and Nair and Fielding. Although The Language of School Design is described as the beginning of a larger set of patterns that the authors hope to evolve through online contributions by adherents to their process, the reality is that their “atoms and molecules” vary significantly from Alexander’s on three key points. First, A Pattern Languageenumerates patterns over a wide range of scales, from “waist-high shelf” to “pedestrian street,” all understood as part of a larger, living set of patterns within a particular culture. The patterns of Nair and Fielding are less varied in both scale and detail, but also they are limited to school building components with one exception. The exception, “Pattern #24: Connected to the Community,” outlines a principle of accessibility for the entire community, but does not go so far as to elaborate ways in which their school building patterns are integral spatial components of a community. The building becomes an object in The Language of School Design, not a part of a larger network of patterns sought by Alexander. Second, the objective of Nair and Fielding is to create a graphic kit of parts that will be useful for professionals and clients as a shared trace, or copy book of ideas. This radically simplifies the aspirations of Alexander’s work in so far as it assumes a common, shared, transcultural set of patterns that everyone invested in the use of their book will share. Finally, the role of the design team in Alexander’s work is conceived from the outset as that of community organizers. Participants in The Oregon Experiment consistently noted that their input preceded every decision, every drawing of their project. The design team entered with no preconceptions other than the value of the community’s involvement in the design


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process. By radically simplifying and codifying the patterns for twenty-first century schools, however, The Language of School Design limits the possibility of deviation from “best practices” as defined by the author/architects. These differences may be the inevitable consequences of the realities of designing and building schools in contemporary society. The practical opportunities for civic engagement, the financial burden of the time that must be committed by a design team to help a community evolve its own set of patterns, and the complexity of the building industry generally may preclude the organic and layered approach that Alexander imagines; nonetheless, much is lost in the process of simplification. In part, the losses are perhaps also the inevitable consequence of Alexander’s construct itself. It is telling that Nair and Fielding never mention either The Timeless Way of Building nor The Oregon Experiment. In a culture that can uncritically adopt the style books of the Congress of the New Urbanism, despite their hegemonic implications, it is perhaps not too surprising that a “pattern book” of school components would seem a useful and efficient tool for expediting, or perhaps glossing over, some difficult questions that communities must face when building any new civic building for themselves. As was proven with Palladio’s I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura, the authority of the traceable graphic is easier to sell and consume than a sprawling call for an inclusive community dialog about values. Reviewer Information Jelacic, Matthew Matthew Jelacic is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Colorado. His current research includes sustainable materials for sheltering displaced people and the role of spaces for education in traumatic urbanization. From 1996-2003 he was a partner in the firm Gans & Jelacic, whose work included emergency relief shelters and school furniture for the New York City School Construction Authority. Prof. Jelacic received his architecture


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degrees at Pratt Institute and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and was a Loeb Fellow in 2003-4.


The Language of School Design Design Patterns for 21st Century

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