Kindergarten as Montage
Thesis Advisor: Annicia Streete
Fall 2020
Since the Industrial Revolution, the ideology of production has infiltrated the spatial and pedagogical composition of schools. The architectures that had “been built largely as a reflection of the factory model for learning” (Upitis) have perpetuated a rigid spatial manifestation devoid of curiosity, imagination, and play. In essence, these built environments were constructed with the goal of upholding rigid educational pedagogies such as the transmission model, where “the teacher has the knowledge, and in assembly-line fashion transmits that knowledge to the students” (Upitis). Ultimately, these bounded spaces and pedagogies have come to be the antithesis of proper environments for early-childhood development, and simultaneously, as 2020 has shown, have lacked the capabilities to flux during the swift emergence of public health crises. Could there be a new archetype of the kindergarten that could simultaneously address the future contingencies of a post-covid world and foster environments conducive to emergent educational thought?
(Above) Final Review presentation, December 2020.
(Left) To begin, the cataloging of more recent, progressive models such as the Waldorf, Montessori, and Reggio Emilia schools uncovered the possibility of a spectrum of play as a result of the multiplicity of power structures between teacher and student, sequencing of experience, and the ways in which bodies are dispersed across space.
(Right) A common thread between many of the cataloged models implicates John Dewey’s discourse surrounding sequences of experience, where “different situations succeed one another, but because of the principle of continuity, something is carried over from the earlier to the later ones. As an individual passes from one situation to another, [their] world, [their] environment, expands or contracts” (Dewey). Through the accumulation of experiences and discoveries, children acquire knowledge and understanding of the world around them. How then, can space render this phenomenon?
In aligning pedagogy with architecture, Bernard Tschumi’s Manhattan Transcripts is considered for the parallels between how Tschumi elaborates on the “montage” and Dewey’s emphasis on sequences of experience. In exploring the idea of interval and framing devices (moments between or before the montage), Tschumi posits that “The relationship of one frame to the next is indispensable insofar as no analysis of any one frame can accurately reveal how the space was handled altogether (Tschumi Index)”. Each frame, in essence, is both the framing and framed material.
To that end, what if the kindergarten became a montage? To test this thesis, an organizational model as a manipulation of the transcripts was derived to assert a sequence of experiences that possess a spectrum of structured to unstructured play, and is structured along a recurrent interval to frame subsequent experiences and impose a system that can be upheld or dissolved based on emergent epidemiological, cultural, or political situations. As such, the “frame” between the fragments become structured spaces, where bodies and pedagogies are collected before being dispersed into the following fragment of pedagogy and play.
A kit of frames is developed to foster the possibility of an array of pedagogies and experiences. Undulations of the ground and/or overhead planes coupled with either repetitive frames or thickened frames begin to prescribe the spectrum of play within respective spaces. Thickening in the X and/or Y directions begin to introduce zones of enclosure (or void) that serve as extensions of associated pedagogies within the frame. This can take the form of an enclosed garden, secondary discovery lab, or hideouts for pupils.
The interval of structured spaces, the moments between the montage, serve as frames in which bodies are clustered and assemble meaning for the subsequent discovery lab. These spaces also serve as an interval of partitions that allow the architecture’s ability to produce discovery pods in times of future pandemic.
As the accumulation of frames undulates through the sequence, children are able to construct new interpretations of play and experience from one fragment to the next.
