green-classrooms-product

 
What does the Classroom of the Future Look Like?

Project: Bamboowood School
What does the classroom of the future look like? Architecture for Humanity wanted to find out, and held an open competition that attracted entries from everyone from school children in the Ukraine to Pritzker Prize winning architects, trying to answer the question: how can we create innovative, sustainable yet affordable and adaptable learning environments?

Project: Teton Valley Community School
Cameron Sinclair of AFH skyped us this morning to tell us "I'm so so so impressed with the contextual sustainability of many of the entries….from the $4K earthen structures in the desert to the sips modular for wisconsin!"

Project: House In The Wood
Today, eight teams were honored as finalists of the international design competition 2009 Open Architecture Challenge: Classroom. More than 1,000 design teams from 65 countries registered for the competition. Over a four-month submission period hundreds of ideas were generated around the world. Finalists submitted designs ranging from an outdoor classroom for children in inner-city Chicago, learning spaces for the children of salt pan workers in India, safe spaces for youth in Bogota, Colombia and a bamboo classroom in the Himalayan mountains.

Project: Classroom for the saltpan community, Cohesion Foundation
Each submission was rated on feasibility, sustainability, innovation in learning and overall design quality by a team of 50 interdisciplinary online jurors. After four rounds of judging culled the designs a shortlist of 52 teams were judged at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Project: Justified Architecture in a Landscape of Transformation 
Out of this eight finalists were selected and represented teams and schools from Colombia, Czech Republic, India, Nepal, Uganda, United Kingdom and the United States. Next month one of these teams will be announced as the overall winner and awarded $50,000 toward the improvement of their school. The design team will also be awarded $5,000.

Project: Blurred Classroom
It is amazing how out of nowhere, Architecture for Humanity has become such a force. That they can attract a thousand registrations, fifty jurors, the money to build these things, and the quality and originality that comes out of all those volunteer designers. What a model for the profession and inspiration for the architectural community everywhere.

Project: Adaptable Hillside Classrooms
And to top it all off, it is all open source.
Serving as a catalyst to build safe, sustainable and smart educational facilities around the world, the competition has ending up creating an online portfolio of design solutions, all licensed under Creative Commons and viewable at the Open Architecture Network. School districts, independent schools and social entrepreneurs from around the world (and especially the United States) can now download, adapt and replicate these ideas in their current and future learning environments.

 
Joe Cavanaugh
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