Change…

Change: “an act or process through which something becomes different”(oxforddictionaries.com)

Change… always is difficult to change, especially when there are some establish rules that go against your goals but that you are, nevertheless, required to fulfill. The Chelsea Academy in London, designed by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studio, is in this process of trying to change, in this case the way that we receive one of the most important pillars of our society: education.

The Academy has places for students between 11 and 19 years old. Within these ages the English curriculum establishes: the National Curriculum for students between 11 and 13 years old (a series of compulsory subjects), the GCSE (General Certificated of Secondary Education) for students between 14 and 16 years old (compulsory core subjects plus subjects of the student’s choice) and finally, if the student want to pave his way to university, the A-levels (4-6 modules related with common subjects, e.g. science, fine arts, etc. At the end of each stage students have to achieve not only the requirement of the organization, but also national standard requirements. According with Bernstein (Bernstein, 1971), the English education system is based in what he calls “collection codes”. On the one hand, it has what he defines as a “strong classification”; as the curriculum shows through this idea of “common subjects”, the contents are well insulated from each other between strong boundaries. On the other hand, he speaks about relatively “weak frame”; this is, there is a lower degree of control by the teacher in the selection, organization and pacing of the knowledge transmitted to the student.

Both of these claims are true in Chelsea Academy, since they have to fulfill the national curricular requirements. However, when you go around the building, as subtle as the daylight that leaks through the courtyards and skylights to represent the religious character of the organization, you can see a word everywhere: change, change, change… Indeed, the Academy is trying to change from the collection code that implies accomplish the English curriculum to what Bernstein defines as “integrated codes” (Bernstein, 1971), and it has a perfect ally: SPACE.

Conversely to the collection code, an integrated code tries to blurs the boundaries between the different subjects. Some specific features in the building’s design show that from a spatial point of view, for instance, as the picture shows, trying to join in an only space pure and applied knowledge. In this case, a more traditional classroom layout cohabits with a technological workshop, allowing the students simultaneous experiences in both approaches.

Actually, the general design of the building breaks with the idea of design associated to “collection codes”, a design mostly based in the presence of extremely private spaces that remark the strong boundaries between subjects. Chelsea Academy’s design is, on the contrary, characterized by a high degree of visibility and connectivity, not only between the inner spaces, but also with the context, allowing the community to be engaged with the organization and encouraging the children to include in their process of learning everyday realities. I am just going to enumerate some features of the building that give evidence of that, because the list is extremely wide and we would need another post in order to go deeper in each of them, as we can see in the pictures below, vast open – plan space in the ground floor that contains the main communal areas (entrance lobby, café, restaurant…), wide corridors with great visibility that goes deeply in the building, visual connection between corridors and classroom through big windows or between different levels through atriums, “open – plan” toilets, openness to the surroundings through large windows, etc.

From my point of view, there is still this challenge of find a fully correspondence between what the space is suggesting and the limitations that the English curriculum is imposing over the organization aspirations since, despite their efforts to blur the limits between contents, there is still certain grade of division between subjects from traditionally not related fields, such us science and arts.

But I repeat: Change… always is difficult to change, but Chelsea Academy has started the revolution.

References

Bernstein, B. (1971) On the Classification and Framing of Educational Knowledge, Chapter 11, Class, Codes and Control, Volume 1: Theoretical Studies towards a Sociology of Language, London, Routledge&Kegan, 227-256