The main idea of the international collaborative project Design Platform is to introduce innovative design and architecture practices into the Russian social sector. Many public buildings in Russia - schools, libraries, hospitals, day care centers, etc - were built yet in the Soviet era and haven't changed ever since. However, the aesthetical condition of any building has a strong impact on its life and the people who use it. The more comfortable, beautiful and friendly the space is, the more people enjoy spending their time here.
There are many organizations and institutions in the social sector that require change and TOK has decided to start the Design Platform project from the system of education and public schools in particular. For the project, we have picked a typical public school in St. Petersburg, which was built in 1965 and hasn't been much transformed since then. An international team of architects, designers, sociologists, educators and curators will develop a number of design projects aimed at improvement of the learning environment in the school. Pupils, teachers and parents are active participants of the design projects' development – they tell us about what changes they would like to see in the classes, hallways, canteen, school yard and other school spaces. We are convinced that spatial transformations may have a positive influence on the educational process as well and make it more flexible, interactive, creative and fun.
With Design Platform we hope to contribute to the process of making the contemporary Russian schools pupil-oriented, rather than teacher-centered and turn them into multifunctional interactive educational centers, where pupils learn to think.
We have now gathered all the information in the school and have given it to the group of designers, who have already started to work on their ideas for the school. Presentation of design project proposals will take place at the project final conference in the Autumn 2013.
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1/5 | Exhibition of pupils' drawings - this is how they want their school to look
2/5 | School #53, the first working venue of the project Design Platfrom
3/5 | Children draw changes they want for their school
4/5 | Pupils tell the Norwegain artists Bjorn-Kowalski Hansen what they want to be changes in the school and why
5/5 | Bjorn and a pile of the assignments from his 8-year old clients
