老式结构的新设想：将位于芝加哥西北部一个贮木场的建筑，改变成一个为7年级到12年级学生服务的创新学校。      By Cathleen McGuigan An Old Frame for New Ideas: A series of structures that once comprised a lumberyard is transformed into an innovative school for grades 7 to 12 in a northwest Chicago neighborhood. By Cathleen McGuigan

芝加哥的Intrinsic Charter School的校长、创始人兼CEO，Melissa Zaikos之前一直在为寻找新校舍基地这件事情而烦恼，直到她参观了城市西南部Belmont西街空置的原珊农贮木厂。“当我们踏入这个建筑的那一刻我就情不自禁地爱上了它。”根据她的回忆，这个建筑使用的是弓弦桁架结构（这是一个开放的储藏空间），由实木柱支撑，整个内部空间净高30英尺。这个原家庭贮木企业的建筑完成于1954年，是两个相互连接的，分别建于1911年和1928年的建筑的北部延伸。相比于传统的学校，显然这座建筑更适合Intrinsic学校的创新教学模式。当学生要开展一个混合学习课程的时候，可以申请一个独一无二的教室使用。“这所学校就是专门为这种教学模式设计。”惠勒卡恩斯建筑事务所的合伙人拉里•卡恩斯如是说，他们把原先的商业建筑变成一所全新的学校。 When Melissa Zaikos, founder, CEO, and principal of the Intrinsic Charter School in Chicago, was looking for a site for the new school, she visited the former Shannon Lumber Company on West Belmont Avenue in the northwest section of the city. “I fell in love with the barn when we walked in,” she recalls of the bowstring truss structure (once an open shed) with solid wood columns that rise as high as 30 feet. Constructed in 1954, it is the northernmost extension of two connected structures built in 1911 and 1928, for a family-owned lumber business, that seemed far more suitable to adapt for Intrinsic's innovative curriculum than a traditional school building. With a blended learning program, Intrinsic employs a unique classroom configuration. “The school is designed particularly to this model,” says Larry Kearns, principal of Wheeler Kearns Architects, the firm that transformed the commercial building into the new facility.

卡恩斯和他的团队首先把基地南侧尽头的销售办公房推翻，并重新建了一个钢框架结构的建筑。新建筑与原先的建筑物相融合，创造了一个140m（456英尺）长，29m（94英尺）宽的学校。建筑屋顶使用绝缘泡沫塑料覆盖，外立面为绝缘的金属板材，窗户主要安装在西、南两侧。尽管1928年以后的建筑的木结构桁架已经被钢龙骨取代，但是这个建筑的结构依然由砖承重墙、大跨屋顶和弓弦桁架组成。建筑跨度较长，因此将建筑分为三个防火分区，分别设置了三个疏散口。 Kearns and his team began by razing a caretaker's house-cum-sales-office at the southern end of the complex, and replacing it with a steel-frame structure. This was linked to the gutted buildings to create a school that is 456 feet long and 94 feet wide, with a roof covered by insulating foam, an exterior clad in insulated metal panels, and windows installed primarily on the west and south facades. The existing structures have brick bearing walls with long-span roofs and bowstring trusses (though the 1928 structure's wood trusses had been replaced with steel joists). Because of its length, the building was subdivided into three fire zones with separate exits.

学校于2013年建成，Intrinsic在去年秋天搬入了他们的新家。这栋设计可以容纳7到9年级约925名学生的建筑，现在有430人使用。西侧的单面走廊的外侧墙面装置有大面积玻璃，使整个狭长的室内空间拥有充足的采光，同时单层房间和双层挑高的房间则整齐地排列在东侧。门厅抛光的混凝土地板上摆放着大量柔软又色彩鲜艳的座椅，为学生的非正式集会和小组活动提供空间。 Founded in 2013, Intrinsic moved to its permanent home last fall. With a capacity for 925 students from grades 7 through 12, it is currently occupied by 430 students. A single-loaded corridor along the west wall dominates the long interior with ample glazing, while double-height spaces and single-story stacked zones are arrayed along the east wall. The hallway has polished concrete floors and clusters of soft, colorful seating for informal gathering or group work.

本次设计的中心就是那些沿着东侧墙面布置的不同寻常的教室。这些教室被称为“串联的豆荚”，是由一对对大体量又相互联系的房间组成，一个年级占用一对教室，最高可以容纳180人。一对教室中的其中一个用来进行科学、数学和技术的学习，另一个则用来进行人文教育。学生们在不同学科的混合学习方法中不断转换，并且通过点对点学习和老师的指导完善自己的技术整合。靠墙摆放的是称为“海岸线”的柜台风格的课桌，学生们可以在课桌上戴上耳机，使用Chromebook自主学习电子课程，而教室的其他地方则十分的宽敞，同学们可以转动座椅聚集到一起进行小组学习。一部分学生会聚集在大型橙色吊灯下 的“交流桌”上进行团队项目研究，或者他们会将老师围在课桌中间进行交流探讨，或是进行“头脑风暴”。为了满足更多常规教学的需要，一个封闭的研讨室和一个实验室被放在“豆荚”中间。每对“豆荚”需要至多八名老师。 The central design feature is the unusual classrooms along the east wall. Called “tandem pods,” these are pairs of large, linked rooms, one pair for each grade of up to 180 students. One pod per pair is for science, math, and technology studies; its twin is for humanities. Students rotate among various blended-learning methods, which integrate technology with peer-to-peer or teacher-led instruction. Along the walls is the “coastline”—counter-style desks where students wearing headsets work individually on digital lessons using Chromebooks—while elsewhere in the room, students on rolling chairs can come together for small-group learning. Other students gather under a big orange pendant at the “exchange table” to work on team projects, or they meet with a teacher at a central counter or “genius bar” (with apologies to Apple). An enclosed seminar room and a lab, for more conventional teaching, are tucked in between the pods. Up to eight teachers work with students in each pair of pods.

建筑师们从创新的学校早起办学实验中吸取了教训。比如，学生们会在他们的临时校园中使用旋转坐椅。“学生分组学习的时候简直像是碰碰车的狂欢节，但是同时也带来了混乱”卡恩斯如是说。现在“海岸线”和互动的桌子都有了固定的座位。 The architects learned from the innovative school's early trials. For example, the students used rolling chairs at its temporary campus: “The student groupings looked like bumper cars at a carnival,” says Kearns, “and brought chaos.” Now the “coastline” and exchange tables have stationary seatin.

设计中的一个巨大挑战是如何让日光进入到这些豆荚教室中。在建筑东面边界的大部分区域是承重部分，建筑师不能开设窗户。因此，串联的豆荚教室的采光由教室外单面走廊外侧墙面开窗满足，12间豆荚教室中的五间装了高性能的天窗。卡恩斯说：“我们需要合理地分配从建筑外部借来的日光，并充分利用天窗。” One big design challenge was bringing daylight to the pods. Along most of the eastern edge of the building, on the property line, the architects were not able to punch in windows. Instead, the tandem pods draw daylight through the interior glass that fronts the windowed corridor, and five of the 12 pods incorporate high-performance skylights. “We needed dispensations from the city for the borrowed daylight and to use skylights,” says Kearns.

Zaikos 深深地被这个“贮木场”吸引，建筑师建造“杯中船“：两层的钢框架结构自然嵌入1954年建造的位于基地南端的老房子中，建筑中包含了每层布置的串联的豆荚教室和二楼可以俯瞰体育馆的行政办公室。11.6m高的体育场使用的是裸露的弓形桁架，它既是一个体育馆，也可以通过活动的桌子而简易地变成一个自助餐厅或是一个与入口门厅的学术氛围不同的社区的空间。 In the “barn” that had so attracted Zaikos, the architects built what they call “a ship in a bottle”: a two-story steel-frame structure, inserted in the 1954 building's south end, that contains a tandem pod stacked on each floor and administrative offices on the second level overlooking the gymnasium. The 38-foot-high gym, with the exposed bowspring truss, also flexes as a cafeteria—with mobile tables—as well as a community space that can be isolated from the academic areas at a common entry vestibule.

本次设计是为高度个性化的课程教学独家定制的，Intrinsic学校看起来似乎相当自由。其实则不然，学生们在走廊上必须有序排列，每个年级都有自己固定颜色的衣服。两个身穿绿色Polo衫的9年级女孩描述说：这所学校其实非常严格！学生的自主行动是被限制和被要求的，特别是对低年级的学生。Zaikos希望将这种教学模式发扬光大，开更多的分校，她说“学生将在这所学校里学会如何学习。” With a design tailored to the highly individualized curriculum, it might seem as if Intrinsic would be a free-for-all. But students were orderly as they lined up in the corridor—two ninth-grade girls in green polo shirts (each grade wears its own color) declared the school “really strict!” The level of student autonomy, particularly in the lower grades, is limited and continues to be tuned. Says Zaikos, who plans to open more schools on this model, “The building is important to learning about the learning.”

出处：本文译自archrecord.construction.com/，图片来自wkarch.com/，转载请注明出处。 编辑：陈晓东，范偲慧