Well, it truly doesn't look like most other schools. But is that a good thing or a bad thing? I can imagine some students loving it, especially if it becomes an arts magnet school like the architects hoped. I like that it is built around a courtyard. On the other hand the classrooms are in the four nondescript rectangular boxes you can see in the aerial photo, and there seem to be lots of blank concrete walls at ground level, so I can imagine other students calling it the prison and referring to the tall bit as the guard tower. More images here.
It also cost $232 million. I have to say, though, that this is probably not all that much more than it would have cost to build a pedestrian school of this size in downtown LA; the last time my county built a high school it cost $120 million for an ordinary building on a suburban site. (Think about that number next time you wonder where your local tax money goes.)
I also wonder, in a general sort of way, how much architecture matters to education. It seems to me that school reformers of various sorts have from time to time gotten captivated by school design as a way to magically make things better, whereas, really, what matters is the quality of the interactions between teachers and students. MIT seems to do a pretty good job with the ugliest collection of buildings in the world.
1 comment:
The girls school I attended(5th grade through 12th for me) looks a lot like many of the buildings at Yale. I wondered, as I headed off to University of Wisconsin for grad school, if I was even capable of learning in a building that didn't look like it was inspired by Oxford.
I'm still not really convinced. ;-)
Even though I do love modern and post-modern buildings.
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