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Building Community Tool

The four strategies of community formation include, cultivating respectful relationships, sense of common purposes, opportunities for cooperation, and opportunities for influence and autonomy. This tool is designed to identify different levels of interventions for each of these categories to fit different timelines and budgets, including major intervention: new and significantly renovated space; minor intervention: refresh with a focus on finishes and FF&E; and re-utilization: operational/function change in existing space.

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Tool Tips

Hover over strategies for further definition and click for interventions

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Improve the ease of navigation and wayfinding in the built environment

Cultivating Respectful Relationships

Navigation

Improve the ease of navigation and wayfinding in the built environment

Privacy

Protect student's privacy, and reduce the feeling of being monitored or surveilled.

Variety

Provide variable sensory levels to students and teachers

Comfort

Comfort in terms of air quality, temperature, sound, vision, and ergonomics

Sanitation

Easy and sufficient access to sanitary facilities

Safety

Enhance student's and teachers' safety

Sense of Common

Purpose

Amenities

Food, drink - things to make people feel energized and soothed.

Imagery

Provide diversity of imagery for students

Celebration

Celebration of alumni or students' achievements, legacy, and build up role models for the cohort

Participatory

Let students or teachers express their needs and participate in school design. 

Narrative

Shared, collaborative narrative to enhance students' cohesion

Sustainable

Promote sustainability within school built environment.

Hazards - Create

Feelings of Exclusion

Inaccessible

Poor or no accessibility to the building of rooms; Lack of availability of resources

Insensitivity

Lack of cultural, historical, or racial sensitivity

Unproportional

Building, furniture, or rooms lack of human scale

Intransparent

Lack of information and lack of transparency -  both policy and space

Rigidity

Having too many rules, or being very inflexible

Uncomfortable

Lack of sensory comfort - visual, auditory, olfactory, proprioception, thermal, tactile

Opportunities

for Collaboration

Resources

Provide access to tools, equipment, and resources

Acoustics

Provide acoustical comfort.

Collab Spaces

Provide variable collaboration spaces for students

Mess it up

Provide maker space and allow students to mess it up

Support

Provide support or facilitation to the students as needed from faculty and admin group

Garden

Bring in the ideas of the community garden, farm, or plants to enhance cooperation

Opportunities for

Influence & Autonomy

Resources

Provide students reasonable access to tools, equipment, and other resources

Adjustment

Allow students or teachers to adjust the environment around them

Balance

Provide clear indications or cues for different types of spaces in the building 

Nooks

Provide some quiet area for the students 

Security

Enhance the campus or building's security

Presentation

Provide variable presentation spaces to foster the sense of influence and autonomy

Institutional: stratified, fossilized, sterilized

What The Community is Saying

Jennifer.jpg

Jennifer Andaluz, Former director of Downtown College Prep

"Learning spaces cannot and will not be pristine, we need colors and images to inspire the students. And we don’t want dark and cold spaces. Furniture in classrooms needs to be light, flexible, movable, and easy to modify.  It will allow teachers to control and manage their space."

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