The Academy for Global Citizenship is a Chicago public charter school located in the Garfield Ridge neighborhood that takes an innovative and holistic approach to educating its students. With such a unique approach to learning, a unique building in which the learning could take place was also needed.
That is where Studio Gang came in and designed a campus that combines the qualities of an educational institution with those of an urban farm to create a space for students to learn first hand about wellness and sustainability. According to Studio Gang’s website, the new campus is meant to work in tandem with the school’s mission to provide “a model for educational innovation that has the potential to ignite a global movement for change.” AGC’s current campus, which consists of two buildings separated by a busy road, was not adequately suiting the goals of the school.
According to ArchDaily, the proposed design combines indoor and outdoor learning environments that are laid out around a central courtyard. Instead of separating the different areas of the school with strict boundaries, the areas, while still separated by age groups, are designed to overlap and combine for flexible use and collaboration. Additionally, a “wonder path” connects each environment, both indoor and outdoor, to provide a direct route to various hands-on laboratories and learning stations.
Rendering courtesy Studio Gang
Since sustainability and wellness are such strong components of the schools focus, it needed a campus that reflected those goals. As such, the school hopes to achieve net-positive status, meaning it will produce more energy than it uses. To accomplish this, the school will use a combination of solar energy, greenhouses and seasonal gardens (meant to produce a significant amount of the food used to prepare the students’ meals), stormwater management, natural ventilation, and geothermal systems.
The urban farm will cover three acres and is designed in partnership with Growing Power, a national nonprofit organization that helps provide safe and affordable food for people in all communities. The farm will be integrated into the daily curriculum and will connect students with the food cycle, allowing them to participate in farming, food preparation, and animal care.
Continuing the theme of sustainability and wellness, AGC and Studio Gang plan to use building materials and finishes that are locally sourced and have low-embodied energy. The building itself is oriented to provide peak solar access for the outdoor learning spaces and greenhouses and also to maximize the school’s photovoltaic energy collection.
The campus is meant to be a literal representation of the school’s educational strategy that goes beyond just being a structure where learning can occur to become an actual part of the learning process.
Rendering: Studio Gang
Rendering: Studio Gang
For more pictures and renderings of the project, click here.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Great Solutions: Green Building
27. Next-Generation Green Roofs Sprout up in New York New York is not particularly known for its green roofs, but two recent projects may put the Big Apple on the map. In spring 2010, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts will debut one of the nation's first fully walkable green roofs. Located across from the Juilliard School in Lincoln Center's North Plaza, Illumination Lawn will consist ...
| Aug 11, 2010
Dream Fields, Lone Star Style
How important are athletic programs to U.S. school districts? Here's one leading indicator: In 2005, the National Football League sold 17 million tickets. That same year, America's high schools sold an estimated 225 million tickets to football games, according to the American Football Coaches Association.
| Aug 11, 2010
Back to Nature: Can wood construction create healthier, more productive learning environments?
Can the use of wood in school construction create healthier, safer, more productive learning environments? In Japan, there's an ongoing effort by government officials to construct school buildings with wood materials and finishes—everything from floors and ceilings to furniture and structural elements—in the belief that wood environments have a positive impact on students.
| Aug 11, 2010
High School in a Hurry
One of the more compelling arguments for charter schools is their theoretical ability to streamline decision making. Eliminate all those layers of bureaucratic fat that clog the arteries of most public school systems, the argument goes, and decisions can be made to flow much more smoothly, even when it comes to designing and building a major school project.
| Aug 11, 2010
Bronze Award: Garfield High School, Seattle, Wash.
Renovations to Seattle's historic Garfield High School focused mainly on restoring the 85-year-old building's faded beauty and creating a more usable and modern interior. The 243,000-sf school (whose alumni include the impresario Quincy Jones) was so functionally inadequate that officials briefly considered razing it.
| Aug 11, 2010
Managing the K-12 Portfolio
In 1995, the city of New Haven, Conn., launched a program to build five new schools and renovate and upgrade seven others. At the time, city officials could not have envisioned their program morphing into a 17-year, 44-school, $1.5 billion project to completely overhaul its entire portfolio of K-12 facilities for nearly 23,000 students.
| Aug 11, 2010
Financial Wizardry Builds a Community
At 69 square miles, Vineland is New Jersey's largest city, at least in geographic area, and it has a rich history. It was established in 1861 as a planned community (well before there were such things) by the utopian Charles Landis. It was in Vineland that Dr. Thomas Welch found a way to preserve grape juice without fermenting it, creating a wine substitute for church use (the town was dry).
| Aug 11, 2010
School Project Offers Lessons in Construction Realities
Imagine this scenario: You're planning a $32.9 million project involving 112,000 sf of new construction and renovation work, and your job site is an active 32-acre junior-K-to-12 school campus bordered by well-heeled neighbors who are extremely concerned about construction noise and traffic. Add to that the fact that within 30 days of groundbreaking, the general contractor gets canned.
| Aug 11, 2010
High Tech High International used to be a military facility
High Tech High International, reconstructed inside a 1952 Navy metal foundry training facility, incorporates the very latest in teaching technology with a centerpiece classroom known as the UN Theater, which is modeled after the UN chambers in New York. The interior space, which looks more like a hip advertising studio than a public high school, provides informal, flexible seating areas, abunda...
| Aug 11, 2010
High-Performance Modular Classrooms Hit the Market
Over a five-day stretch last December, students at the Carroll School in Lincoln, Mass., witnessed the installation of a modular classroom building like no other. The new 950-sf structure, which will serve as the school's tutoring offices for the next few years, is loaded with sustainable features like sun-tunnel skylights, doubled-insulated low-e glazing, a cool roof, light shelves, bamboo tri...
