BUILDING FOR SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY - Kennedy Bibliothek

city; that skill development applies to adults as well as to growing
children. Education, they said, is cultural; and for them that meant
cultural facilities which properly related to the community's sub-cultures.
In defining this point, the citizens themselves were surprised to find how
many families there were in the neighborhood from different national origins,
with parental languages, cultures and talents which could be used in
the Human Resources Center. And so, in addition to requesting facilities
for theater and music to be included in the Center, the citizens themselves
started an "ethnic center" - a sort of voluntary museum for adults and
children to which anyone can bring on loan or as a gift any object which
symbolizes who he or she is as a person: and the ethnic center today has
become a rich, personal and always changing museum and resources center
for the school, reflecting the character of the community and its cultures
- as perceived by itself. In the same way, education was perceived
as dynamically interrelated with housing, health facilities, parks, indoor
recreation, libraries, food services, and a host of other programs. The
result was a public process to plan co-ordination, and to build a facility
which - because it responded precisely to the needs of that particular community
as perceived by itself - was different from any Center that has previously
been designed or built anywhere in the world.
43. A feature which the community schools in the barrios have in common
with sophisticated community centers like 'the Human Resources Center in
Pontiac is that the school is de-institutionalized. In the barrios, the
school building occurs on a street just as other buildings do, and it is
indistinguishable from them in its form. The school building is also
multi-used. It is a school for children during the day, but in the evening
it is used for adult education, meetings and social occasions. The Pontiac
building is similar in many essential respects. When the Human Resources
Center in Pontiac was being planned, the citizens who were involved in the
process called for a building which would perform "like a shopping street".
A design emerged with a community pedestrian street running through it,
off which open, like a stem and leaves, the education components, the
health center, the adult workshops, the restaurant, the theater, the community
indoor recreation center and so forth. In other words, the school
as an institution is no longer separate in form or in function, but becomes
part of the daily processes of the city. It is as easily accessible to
adults and children alike, formally and informally, as walking off the
street into a shop.(l)
l) Margrit Kennedy, op.cit.; also Margrit Kennedy, Die Schule als Gemeinschaftszentrum
Beispiele und Partizipationsmodelle aus den USA,
Schulbauinstitut der Lander, Berlin, 1976; and Janet Bloom, ""Street
Scene School", Architectural Forum, New York, June 1973.
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