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An interview with Bruce Jilk, Architect and educational consultant

Kim Thomas

Form follows function. That, at any rate, has been the received wisdom of architects since the arrival of Modernism - the idea being that the design of a building should be closely matched to its intended purpose. It's an idea, however, that Bruce Jilk turns on its head: function, he says, should follow form. By defining the function of a school too narrowly you limit its possibilities, he argues: "Learning can happen anywhere - it can happen in a closet, it can happen in a café, it can happen in a cathedral. So how do you create a space for learning?"

Many school buildings, he says, have a 50 year life cycle, not just because they are not built to a high standard but because they become "functionally obsolete." The ability to adapt to meet changing needs, he argues, should be built into a school.

Bruce refers to the schools that he has designed as "experiments": an acknowledgement that there isn't a single answer to the question: "What should a school look like? "In the schools that Bruce has designed, such as the School of Environmental Studies in Minnesota, the Oregon College of Education, and Heinavaara Elementary school in Finland, traditional preconceptions of what schools should look like are nowhere to be seen. The buildings tend to be light and airy, and have an in-built flexibility. In particular, you won't find anywhere that has a series of classrooms dotted along long corridors. "Corridors send a certain message, one of control and divide and conquer. They're places where students feel that they aren't under the watchful eye of an adults, so they behave in a ways that [result in] the adults becoming monitors in the corridors," say Bruce. "It's not to the advantage of anybody, not to the advantage of students, not to the advantage of the adults, so why do we have corridors? We don't need them, they're just a waste of space."

One of Bruce's most successful "experiments" is the School of Environmental Studies (SES) in Minnesota, also known as the "zoo school" because of its close association with the local zoo. Almost nothing about it has been changed in the 11 years since it was built. Like all his projects, it was designed in consultation with teachers, children and members of the local community. They were keen for learning to be project-based, rather than class-based, so Bruce designed individual workspaces for each student that they could make their own. The workstations are arranged in groups of 10 to make a "pod". Each cluster of 10 pods makes a "house" - a grouping of 100 students and about three teachers. The house is also a physical workspace - a large room, taking up half of one floor, with tables and chairs that can be arranged to enable work in small or large groups, or in semi-circles or rows for whole house meetings. At the centre of the building is a "forum": a space that can serve as cafeteria, display centre, assembly hall or auditorium. The informing principle for the entire school is flexibility.

"It's a space in which it would be very difficult to go back to lecturing-type teaching, so in a way one of the real advantages is that they can't regress," says Bruce. "But on the other hand, those teachers are a very committed group; they are teachers who have told me that if that school were to close, they would go and take a job in the business world rather than go back to a traditional school. It's rewarding for them: they feel like they've been born again, because it's all the things they dreamed that teaching would be when they were young."

Students like it too, he says: "I take people to that school frequently, and on one of these tours the principal introduced me to some students who didn't have a clue who I was. I got this group hug - they were so happy that they had this opportunity to be somewhere different from the traditional school."

The idea that a school should be part of a community, and that the community should have a say in the design of the school, is a feature of all Bruce's projects. Heinavaara Elementary school in Finland was built from wood, because Heinavaara's biggest local natural resource was its forest, and using wood was a good way of regenerating the local economy. Once built, the school became not just a place where children go to learn, but a focal point for the whole community. It has spaces where local people can gather for meetings and classes, and they can also use the library. The school itself has overlapping spaces and functions, says Bruce - the dining area overlaps with the presentation area, for example.

Another part of Bruce's philosophy is that learning shouldn't be limited to the inside of the school walls. Technology plays a part by enabling students to connect to the outside world, but Bruce is also keen on active partnerships with organisations in the community. SES has a two-way partnership with the local zoo, which means that students can carry out scientific projects at the zoo, while in the summer months the school is used by the zoo for educational programmes. The outside space of a school is hugely important, he says: "Schools who really want their kids to learn need to give them an opportunity just to play." One school Bruce designed, the Ingunnarskóli school in Iceland, has a farm on site: he likes the idea, he says, that "the student would walk in with mud all over their boots holding a computer."

At a time when so many British children still spend the hours between 9 and 4 confined in buildings with high walls, long corridors and poky classrooms, the radicalism of Bruce's designs is breathtaking. Asked to choose a favourite, however, Bruce falls back on the words of the great Modernist architect Frank Lloyd Wright: "My favourite project is my next one."

Useful links

Photos of Heinavaara School: www.designshare.com/ElementaryLibrary/Heinavaara/Hein_Photos.htm
Picture of Ingunnarskoli School in Reykjavik: www.designshare.com/Research/Jilk/Freedom/Ingunnarskoli_OverView.htm
Profile of Bruce Jilk: www.edutopia.org/php/people.php?id=C518412