Designs for Learning

Designs for Learning

ARCHITECTURE by Dave Szymanski | Tampa Bay Editor

Harvard Jolly Inc., a St. Petersburg architecture firm, is teaming with an education think tank to design new schools that promote student success.

rchitects are among the first to feel a softening in the economy. But if you're an architecture firm that does public work, such as schools and hospitals, you're a little more insulated.

That's the case with St. Petersburg-based Harvard Jolly Architects, one of the oldest architecture firms in Florida, founded in 1938, and among the top 50 architecture firms in the nation in annual revenue. It does business in most of the school districts on the Gulf Coast.

Now HJ wants to build on its niche.

It has recently teamed up with a New York-based education think tank led by Albany, N.Y. educator-turned-consultant Bill Daggett. The collaboration combines Daggett's studies on model schools and small-learning communities with new school design.

"We want to believe what we do affects student learning," says Jeffrey Cobble, executive vice president in charge of Harvard Jolly's education division.

So far, Harvard Jolly has forged an exclusive relationship with Daggett to design and construct two Florida high schools where the buildings are based on the curriculums rather than putting up a building and hoping it fits: Boca Ciega High School in St. Petersburg and Charlotte County High School. Some of the philosophies put into place are:

• Dividing the large high school into smaller, more manageable "learning communities" or separate "houses" for each grade.

• Separating freshmen into their own "house" to give them extra attention in this sometimes-difficult transition year. (Freshman who fall behind are far more likely to drop out.)

• Better preparing seniors for the transition into college or the work world with project-based learning that mixes science, math and social studies with a team of teachers to explore or tackle a problem. There are learning pods, labs and work areas rather than chemistry wings and math wings with formal classrooms and straight rows of desks.

• The transparent media center in the middle of the school will be a distribution point for technology with a cyber cafe and stage - like a real-world school.

Harvard Jolly, which has attracted Southeast clients, is hoping this partnership will help move its business even farther beyond Florida to other states nationwide.

"This forces us to become better," says Cobble, 45. "We also hope it will catapult us to the next level."

Meeting Daggett

After doing some work for the Charlotte County school system, the superintendent of schools invited Cobble and other Harvard Jolly executives to Nashville for an education conference. They ended up being the only architects and met hundreds of educators from Florida and around the country.

They also heard Daggett speak, met him and eventually got invited to his office in Albany.

After doing due diligence, Daggett offered Harvard Jolly a chance to be an education partner with him. He had already formed partnerships with companies like Scholastic, the education book publisher, and Gannett, the publisher of USA Today, the national newspaper.

It became clear that Harvard Jolly's main goal was to create warm, safe learning environments where students could concentrate on studies, not other issues. As they researched Daggett's principles, security became a big concern.

"Some students in some schools were afraid of certain areas in the school because bullies would hang out there," Cobble says. "These are kids trying to learn. But they have things to think about other than learning."

Harvard Jolly is not the only architecture firm taking a look at different school designs.

At Wilder Architecture in Tampa, the Ybor City firm has designed a new middle school in Citrus Park, northwest of Tampa in Hillsborough County, with a number of outdoor courtyards and a solar clock for collaborative learning. CEO and President Larry Wilder praises Harvard Jolly's effort, but said it is not entirely unique.

"It's nothing new," Wilder says.

In the late 1980s, Pasco County schools developed a concept for middle schools where each building would house four classrooms. Pupils would rotate between them and take an elective class outside of their main building. "It was very successful, we did that for them in the late 1980s," he says.

Wilder also said that some schools have found that interaction between grade levels is helpful.

"You can pull freshmen out, but the interaction between grade levels can be caring," Wilder says. "Isolation is not always good. There's the whole social aspect. It's not teaching. It's learning."

Cobble agreed that building design concepts can go in cycles. Or they can just end. In the 1970s, the trend was windowless buildings with few walls inside.

"It's a trend that architects were sorry that they did," he says. "From those open floor plans, we've gone back an renovated them into traditional classrooms.

Among other things, what architects have consistently tried to do is bring technology into schools and blend that will intelligent design to improve learning, Wilder says.

"Instead of rows of students looking up at a blackboard, kids can learn themselves by reading and researching," he says. "It's positive when you can infuse technology."

Despite Florida's growth, its schools have traditionally lagged behind businesses in getting technology.

"Bowling alleys had overhead projection 20 years ahead of schools," Wilder notes.

Cost is a factor

Like commercial projects, architects have to grapple with the costs of their designs. A lot of separate buildings can be more expensive then a couple of multi-story buildings than share elements, such as elevators.

"All things can happen, as long as the buildings can evolve with the teaching," Wilder says. "The buildings have to respond to the philosophies of teaching. As Churchill said, 'We shape our buildings and then our buildings shape us.'"

As the price of property taxes and homes has risen in Florida, growth has slowed, so new public infrastructure work, such as police and fire stations, has also slowed, replaced somewhat with remodeling and repair work. But Florida architects expect that to change.

"The business always trails," Wilder says. "There will be a build up in need. It's not like people will stop moving to Florida."

Cobble agreed. "The growth has been leveling out, but that won't last," he says. "No matter what, Florida is a great place to live."

THE DAGGETT PARTNERSHIP

The following is an excerpt from a white paper that Harvard Jolly is writing about its partnership with national New York education consultant Bill Daggett. This is a draft:

"Effective learning requires that, 'Standards, curriculum, instruction, and assessment must be interrelated and reinforce each other.' (Dr. William Daggett). Struggling learners need adaptations and accommodations in some or all of these areas to maintain or increase the pace of their learning.

"A major adaptation and accommodation must include providing an optimum physical learning environment. An optimum physical learning environment provides essential environmental qualities that reduce external and internal stressors, both physical and emotional, while creating a positive, supportive learning environment that actively improves student performance by making effective learning possible.

"Design excellence is essential to the creation of an optimum physical learning environment. Design excellence is the creative programming, planning, design, interior design and landscape architecture of the learning environment, based on proven research from a variety of disciplines, that materially improves the effectiveness of the Rigor/Relevance Framework to encourage learning. To define design excellence and a generalized architectural response, it is necessary that the needs of the respective struggling learners be examined."

REVIEW SUMMARY

Company: Harvard Jolly Inc., St. Petersburg

Industry: Architecture

Key: Hone its niche of designing functional schools by tapping into new research on better teaching methods.

Offices: St. Petersburg, Tampa, ForAt Myers, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville and Punta Gorda

Employees: 95

Revenues: $23 million in 2006. Growing at 10 to 15% a year the past five years.