New Academic Facility: Engaging the SCARP Community

As many are already aware, a design team comprised of SHAPE Architecture, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios and PWL Partnership has undergone a Feasibility Study for a facility that would house both SCARP and the School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture (SALA). The proposed site for the facility is in the Arts precinct; an infill located in or near the Lasserre courtyard and has generated a lot of buzz in the SCARP/SALA communities. A shared research and academic facility brings with it the potential for stronger ties between the schools and new transdiscplinary pedagogies. True to SCARP culture, the students and faculty have urged high levels of engagement.

 SCARP has been involved both formally and informally. A Project Committee, composed of both faculty and students, was formed in December 2010 with the purpose of providing information advice to the Consultant Team during the feasibility study. The stakeholder engagement component of the study was divided into three event weeks which each had a presentation, public lecture and a workshop. The event weeks were themed “Learning Landscapes”, “Spaces for Learning”, and “Low Energy Landscapes”.

As an additional component, SCARP’s Director Penny Gurnstein had the vision and foresight to have student bodies facilitate a broader engagement. With tremendous faith in her students, Gurnstein created a directed studies course that gave students the opportunity to engage the broader scarp community in the feasibility study, explore their own related research interests and to document the process for future students to learn from.

The students were given the responsibility to develop their own assignments and engage the public as they chose. The students engaged the community by workshopping visions, discussing ideas in focus groups, asking for input from staff, faculty, students and alumni via survey, conducting private interviews with the faculty members, and researching what businesses and other institutions around the world are doing. Their outputs can be found on their online blog at: https://ipddirectedstudies.wordpress.com/ongoing-student-work/

 As the term came to an end, the students presented a summary of their findings on April 13th to representatives of the design team. They highlighted that their efforts reflected SCARP’s vision of “sustainability through the democratization of planning” by expanding the outreach and engagement for the proposed facility.

 Some main themes that the students gathered through their engagement and felt were important to cycle back to the design team in their final meeting were:

•  The design team must understand that students are classified by various “areas of concentration”, but are trained as generalists first, with specializations second.
• SCARP emphasizes different ‘ways of knowing’ and oral histories are valued as much as hard numbers, street experiences as much as formal education.
• SCARP is very social and needs a space that is not only welcoming to the internal SCARP community, but to external communities as well.
• Students want a building that connects them to the environment.
• The building itself should challenge norms; it should be a flexible space that allows experimentation with behaviour change and new experiences.

The students, faculty, and design team all agreed that the feasibility study and the broader engagement was a process of mutual learning. Whether the proposed building and site are feasible or not will be announced over the course of the summer. Whatever the outcome, we can be sure that SCARP will continue to make great strides in encouraging broad engagement practices.

The Design Team will present the final study on July 19th. Please check the website for further details.