Designing for the very young

Shrewsbury International kindergartners stand in front of their enormous indoor hall. “Our emphasis is on creating a safe and secure environment with space,” says planner Susan Foster.

Of course, many of these schools – particularly government schools – operate under severe financial constraints. Commissioning an innovative architect is not a cost they can readily bear. But what if those constraints were magically lifted? What if a school suddenly had the means to plan and construct a learning environment just for its smallest members?

Two Thai schools were recently in that enviable situation: Dulwich International College in Phuket and the brand-new Shrewsbury International School in Bangkok. The learning post visited both institutions to see what resulted.

Neil Smith, Dulwich International college primary head

“My main wish was to have openness within the school,” says Dulwich primary school principal Neil Smith. “It’s what we do. We want children to have open relationships with people. We want them to be honest and to share resources, ideas and space.”

This, explains Smith, who was project manager for the new school, was the origin of its distinctive pod design. “The idea of the pod is to extend the area of the classroom beyond the four walls of the room itself. The pod is a communal or shared area for the six surrounding classes.

“There are four pods in all,” Smith says, “one each for kindergarten, years 1-2, years 3-4 and years 5-6.

The pod area for year 5-6 students (Dulwich)

“It works well as all six classes can come together for pod assemblies to discuss a particular topic – perhaps a religious festival, a special event like the King's birthday or to talk about a global issue such as protecting our environment.

“It is also an area for shared responsibility,” he adds. “The classrooms are open to the pod, so it is important that pupils consider others whilst working in the pod as it could get noisy in the classrooms if they are noisy in the pod.”

Primary students relax in their library. (Dulwich)

The pods are located at the ends of the school, leaving the centre of the building for the library and the rooms for Dulwich’s extensive programme of specialist subjects. These include music, dance, art design, information technology, English as an additional language, Mandarin, French, a special needs centre and finally, a special 25-metre primary school pool.

This is a vast improvement over the old school, he says. “Before I became head, I had year ones right in the bottom corner of the building. To take them up to IT, we had to go from one end of the building to the other and up three flights of stairs. Music was down at the other end and lunch was over here. I thought that was a great lack of efficiency.”

The design of the school was very much a team effort, which included an accommodating architect in Peter Harper, the academic staff, the maintenance staff and even the children, Smith relates.

“We had group meetings for different year groups. The nursery had sessions with myself and then with the architect. The architect was very much hands on. He wanted to be in on seeing what the children were doing. We also looked at subject areas. We had an IT team and we had a library team.

Sue Foster and Michael Bond, Shrewsbury

“The maintenance team obviously had a lot of ideas from what was wrong with the old building. They’d seen a lot of problems. They were able to give input about things like the drainage and those sorts of things. I think it was crucial, actually, that their input came in,” Smith observes.

“We had children to design the play areas. We had competitions. They’d come in with a plan that this is what they wanted and we tried to take the best bits of these different plans and put them in.

“I made the point to all the students and the teachers that this is your pod. This is your communal area. You’re going to design how you want it. If you decide you want a reading corner or an area where you can have art, it’s your area. You’re going to have to look after it when you’ve got it. You’re going to have to keep it looking good. You’re going to have to use it,” Smith recounts.

The link between two classrooms (Shrewsbury)

As you enter Shrewsbury International School’s riverside campus, the first building on your right is home to the school’s kindergarten and key stage one. The children here range from age three to seven and everything has been designed just for them.

Planned before the school had a single teacher or student, the design was largely a collaborative effort between veteran educator Susan Foster and architect Michael Holmes.

“You start with your philosophy,” Foster explains. “What do I need from this building to make sure that I’m creating a secure, safe, stimulating and exciting environment?”

An outside play area (Shrewsbury)

One of her first requirements, one that has made this Shrewsbury building so special, was space. “Space is terribly important for children – to have an environment where they can move around as they’re beginning to develop their independence,” she says.

“In many kindergartens I’ve been to there are very tiny classrooms and the children sit in a very secure space. But if you try and encourage the children to move out, they begin to feel insecure.”

Not so with Shrewsbury. In the inside of the pre-preparatory building, as it is called, is a huge hall. The section bordering on the school courtyard is the children’s dining hall. The rest can be used for teaching activities, special gatherings or assemblies, or simply for play. The upper floor, where the key stage one classrooms are located, also has a large open area that will shortly house a library.

A key stage one classroom with open ceilings, natural lighting and moveable tables (Shrewsbury)

The learning space extends outwards as well. Each kindergarten classroom opens to a spacious outdoor play area. And the upstairs classrooms have their own outside space as well.

“You’re actually extending the teaching space,” Foster points out. “So if they’re doing water work, you don’t have the inconvenience of having water all over the floor. You can go outside and the children can do it themselves. We’ve got outside taps and drains.”

Like most other international schools, youngsters at Shrewsbury seldom, if ever, sit in rows. Instead, they have small tables and chairs that can be easily moved around to fit the learning task at hand.

There are some special touches as well. For example, the classrooms are paired – connected through a middle section complete with washbasins and a children’s loo. “There’s a big opportunity for work between classes,” Foster says.

Sliding glass doors cover the side of the room facing outdoors, giving children easy access to the play areas and the teacher a clear view of what they are doing there. The doors are also an excellent source of natural lighting.

A colour coded storage area (Shrewsbury)

One of kindergarten teacher Michael Bond’s favourite features is the open ceiling design which exposes the sprinkler area, the ductwork, and the piping. “Not many people would have thought of something like that,” he says of architect Holmes.

“It’s been absolutely brilliant for the kids. They ask questions about it all the time. And it’s good for hanging the artwork. So much of our work centres around art and making things, so we can actually hang things from the ceiling to make the classroom a friendlier and more inviting place to be in.

“It’s an amazing facility,” Bond says. “It’s just wonderful the way it complements our teaching styles. It allows for more team teaching, group teaching, and differentiation. That’s one thing we really try to focus on here at Shrewsbury. We teach each child according to his or her ability and really give what that child needs.”

Clearly, the school planners at both Dulwich and Shrewsbury had resources far beyond those available to the typical Thai school, but the key to their success lies elsewhere. It stems from a deep understanding of the nature and needs of young children – an understanding which is not necessarily a monopoly of wealthy international schools.