Baldwin School Students Build a Sustainable City With Help From HMFH Architects
Collaborative Design Education Program with Learning By Design in Massachusetts
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- 5 November 2009 - Over a period of several weeks, 18 volunteers from HMFH Architects, a leading architectural firm focused on the design of innovative learning environments, recently led a design education program at the Baldwin School in Cambridge, MA. Conducted in partnership with Learning By Design in Massachusetts (LBD:MA), a statewide architecture and design education program for K-12 schools, the program brings architectural design alive for young minds.
HMFH and LBD:MA volunteers engaged the entire 375-student body in the K-8 Baldwin School in a series of guided building exercises to create an actual sustainable city in three-dimensional form, known as Box City.
"Students are challenged to think about what makes a strong community," said Polly Carpenter, AIA, Program Director for Learning By Design in Massachusetts. "Through hands-on projects, they create an ideal city in which citizens work, live and play. In the case of the Baldwin School, students also explored sustainable design principles at several scales, from the macro level of transportation, creating a walkable city and the implementation of solar power, to the micro scale of composting bins in individual homes."
Children are directly applying principles of scale, proportion, patterning and other mathematical elements in their explorations and also encouraged to create stories about their city through guided writing exercises. The design process is linked to Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks and incorporates learning standards for Mathematics, Science and Technology/Engineering, Social Science, English Language Arts and the Visual Arts.
"The unique aspect of working with the Baldwin School is our long-standing relationship together," said George Metzger AIA, senior principal of HMFH Architects and architect of the Baldwin School. "We first began working together to explore how to build a new school on this site in the early 1990's and the surrounding neighborhood was directly involved in developing a community-based new school. It is gratifying to see that methods of daylighting and high performance energy standards, which were so novel when the school opened in 1995, are now common practices that students readily understand."
After intensive introductory sessions that grouped several grade levels together, teachers and volunteers worked in smaller sessions where kids spent several hours constructing elements of their sustainable city. The Baldwin School gymnasium, which also sees extensive community-based after-hours use, was the site of the entire Box City buildout.
In celebration of its fortieth anniversary this year, HMFH Architects decided to donate its time and resources to a number of community-based organizations in Cambridge. Having volunteered with Learning By Design for many years, bringing the program to the Baldwin School was an opportunity to directly support the neighborhood and school community.
"Kids teach us so much about what our future can be," adds HMFH's George Metzger. "The infectious energy and enthusiasm of the Baldwin School students was inspiring. What better way to mark our 40th anniversary than to give back to our real clients, the children in one of our schools."
About Learning By Design in Massachusetts:
Since 1999 over 15,000 children, educators and designers have taken part in LBD:MA architecture and design activities. LBD:MA is a 501(c)-3 organization whose mission is to give young people the opportunity and skills they need to communicate their ideas about their built and natural environments through direct interaction with professional architects and designers. It also offers educators the training and support they need to engage K-12 students in interdisciplinary architecture and design projects aligned with state learning standards.
About HMFH Architects:
In the four decades since its founding in 1969, HMFH Architects, Inc. has built opportunities for learning on a local, regional and national level. With its distinguished range of award-winning work from renovated urban buildings to new rural campuses, HMFH is recognized as a leader in the design of innovative learning environments. HMFH's work, noted for its user-centered design and energetic use of color, has been exhibited nationally. For more information, please visit www.hmfh.com.
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