Providence, RI
Nestled within community program, the South Side Community School values intermixing and flexibility. Through the placement of school within community center, the stigma of communal assistance and high school expectations are forgotten as programs begin to mix, shift and interplay. The main collective program pieces of the school – i.e. recreation, performance and health – are thus shared with the public. The core of communal interchange activates the corner of Broad Street, pushing the school back into the neighborhood, protecting it from the busy intersection, as the small library annex becomes the buffer between school and neighborhood. Here scale shifts, the horizontality of the school is lost for a vertical representation, allowing the library to be a hub of interconnection between school and community. Moving up, the main programmatic elements of the ‘traditional’ school are divided between two discovery-oriented motives; research and making. Here there are no classrooms, but a variety of meeting spaces provided to be used in either private or class programs. Students take part in design oriented educational practices, encouraging collaboration and individual freedoms, liberated from the constant confines of the classroom.