Metro Connection: Chartered Architecture

Barnaby Towns is the director of communications for FOCUS, which is Friends of Choice in Urban Schools.  It's a D.C. nonprofit that supports the creation of public charter schools. Thanks for joining us.

MR. TOWNS:  Thanks.  Good to meet you.

MS. KAYE:  And Milton Shinberg is a partner in the firm Shinberg.Levinas and also a professor at Catholic University's School of Architecture and this is one of your creations we're standing in.

MR. SHINBERG:  It is and it's a creation that we -- the progeny of many, many efforts and we -- this building has many parents.

MS. KAYE:  And one of those parents --

MR. SHINBERG:  Is right here.

MS. KAYE:  -- literally and figuratively is Jessica Wodatch.  She is founder and executive director of the Two Rivers School and also a parent of a couple of kids who go here.  Thanks for letting us come to your school.

MS. WODATCH:  And thank you for coming out and seeing it.  We appreciate having you here.

MS. KAYE:  And Barnaby, for you at FOCUS, what would you hope that people in the neighborhood where a charter school maybe is trying to relocate, what would you hope that they keep in mind and maybe if they're -- they have issues or problems with that what do you recommend?

MR. TOWNS:  Some of the people who live near where charter schools locate or are trying to locate, especially if they are not actually currently parents of young children, they may not really understand what these things are, why do we have these kind of schools or why is it that they can come, and they need to find a space as opposed to already having one.

And I think what they really need to bear in mind is that the public education system in the District really collapsed.  And one of the reforms was to allow other people, educators to come in with public money and to create their own schools with autonomy to create their own educational program.

And where the District had failed the most was with economically disadvantaged children to the point of not only being able to provide basic academics for children but also just physical safety for children in school buildings.

Where the charters have really excelled in the city is in serving that disadvantaged population.  This has caused some, you know, unusual patterns of school location and that kind of thing.

MS. KAYE:  And I guess if you're raising kids trying to educate them, trying to make them good citizens that's -- benefits everybody in the community.

MR. TOWNS:  Right and the most successful charter schools have a strong character element to their educational program, so it's about teaching children how to become good citizens when they are adults it is about teaching them values, about teaching them respect for one another, and respect for their community and their environment and their surroundings; and the best among the charter schools and the typical charter schools are -- excel at this once they are established and if they're successful enough to keep their charter and keep going schools like this one that are really oversubscribed and very popular they're able to become good neighbors in the community.

They're able to make a contribution to the community and a number of charters where they've set up, it's really been the key to regenerating the community and bringing business and life back to neighborhoods where they disappeared, and one of the problems was you know empty warehouse building or empty former public school buildings, so I think they should keep all those things in mind.

MS. KAYE:  Now shall we go ahead on the tour and what shall we see next?

MR. SHINBERG:  The building is color coded and not only that the students really understand the building.  Well we've gone here a number of times and work with students as young as K-level and made songs about the floors, and the columns and the slabs, and the ducts and where the air comes, and where the air goes, and why they like the building and the things that they're curious about, and they point and they walk around.

MS. WODATCH:  Milton, who is one of the main architects, designed the building with a lot of inputs from us.  And if you look around we have a lot of teal columns and those are the original structure of the building and then the cobalt columns are the part of the building that we built and that we added.

It's part of -- we do an expedition -- we are an expeditionary learning school and so every year our kids do two expeditions, which are long-term in-depth investigations into a particular topic.  And in kindergarten -- in pre-K they work on construction.

And so Milton and his team have been very kind and returned a couple of times to work with the kids and help them understand architectural concepts and help them understand this building and why -- we think -- we put a lot of time and effort into how the building looks and how it was designed and making sure it was really appropriate and it supported the kind of learning environment we wanted, and Milton and his team were a key part of that.  So it's a really a partnership with the architects and we like the kids to understand that.

MR. SHINBERG:  And every charter school is different.  Every charter school has a different philosophy.  They have a different set of objectives and that is something that they talk about in terms of the relationships between curriculum and students and teachers and budgets.  We take those things and see how physical forms will result from that.

And one of the things we did with Two Rivers as we do with many clients is to try to understand an ideal solution before we see a building that might be a candidate for them and we did that for Two Rivers and we visited several sites before this one became the prime candidate.

It was a warehouse building and the last record of use that we found, and we needed this for some legal reasons, that it was a liquor warehouse.  And if it was liquor retail, that had a huge result in terms of whether we were legally able to use the site for parking calculations, I'm sure Jessica moans about all things we had to do together.

The problem with this building, there were two problems. The primary problem was that it wasn't big enough, and a two-storey warehouse sounds like, you know, like something you can build another storey on top of, but in fact, it's not so easy.  And that's why the cobalt columns that thread through the building were important.

Those hold up the third floor, and they reinforce this building. So we took a prefabricated building dropped it on to the top of the second floor to make a third floor with its own roof.  If you saw this building, when we first came to see the building, you wouldn't recognize it. It's a completely different appearance.

MS. KAYE:  Describe it.

MR. SHINBERG:  Ugly.

(Laughter)

MR. SHINBERG:  It had a structure that was a little ungainly.  There were some chipping and some spoiling and the infill between all the columns and the beams was half falling out.  The windows looked like somebody had been punching them repeatedly.  It was an abandoned building that looked like it had no spirit and was not a happy place for happy kids.

MS. KAYE:  And what's the workaround for not having a cafeteria or a playground or those kinds of things?  What do you do, you change your whole school day?

MS. WODATCH:  Our kids eat lunch in their classrooms.  And their libraries are in their classrooms.  So they have classroom based libraries, and then we just have some information about where the books are in the building in case people want to swap.  We now have two buildings.  So we have a middle school building across the street, and we were able to add a small gym in that building which has been very exciting for us.

But in this building, we really designed it around a couple of key concepts.  And one of them was community and another one was light.  And so we wanted to have at least one really big gathering space where we could get the whole school together, and so that space which we call the Green really serves as a place where we can do PE and recess and performances and things like that.  But it's really our only large gathering space.

MS. KAYE:  And just standing here in the reception area, the light really comes through. You've got this beautiful glass and these glass squares and some visitors too.  Hello.

MR. CALLAHAN:  Are we going to be on the news?

MS. KAYE:  You go to school here?

MR. CALLAHAN:  Yeah.

MS. KAYE:  So what's your name?

MR. CALLAHAN:  My name is Leon Callahan.

MS. KAYE:  Nice to meet you.

MR. CALLAHAN:  Nice to meet you.

MS. KAYE:  What's your name?

MR. FREEMAN:  Conness Freeman.

MS. KAYE:  Okay, and what grade are you guys in?

MR. CALLAHAN:  We are in the fifth grade.

MS. KAYE:  Okay, and what's it like going in the school here?

MR. CALLAHAN:  Well, it's really awesome because it's like all the teachers, like, let's say if you get one question wrong, the teacher would try to help you on it. And she'll keep helping you, like, until you get it right.

MS. KAYE:  Doesn't give up?

MR. CALLAHAN:  No.

MS. KAYE:  Well, where do you live?

MR. CALLAHAN:  I live --

MS. KAYE:  Nearby here?

MR. CALLAHAN:  Yes, I live nearby here.

MS. WODATCH:  You know, Conness actually was one of our students who was at the old building too.  Carnes, this is Ms. Stephanie and she is interested in what this building is like versus our old building.

MR. FREEMAN:  It's better because the old building, it was dirty, and this school is very clean and they -- and the principals and the janitors help to try to keep it clean.

MS. KAYE:  It's a pretty building.  Does it matter if the building you go to schooling in is pretty or clean or --

MR. CALLAHAN:  No.

MS. KAYE:  -- does it matter to you?

MR. FREEMAN:  Well, yeah.

MS. WODATCH:  Why?

MR. FREEMAN:  Because I want to feel like I don't have to clean up everything but have it already set when I get there.

MS. KAYE:  Now do you know this guy?

MR. FREEMAN:  Huh-uh.

MR. CALLAHAN:  Hello.

MR. SHINBERG:  Hi, I'm Milton.

MR. FREEMAN:  Hello.

MS. KAYE:  And he made this building.

MR. CALLAHAN:  He did?

MS. WODATCH:  He is the designer, yeah.

MR. CALLAHAN:  Awesome.

MR. SHINBERG:  I work with the school to make the right decision, so it would come up the way you would like it.

MS. KAYE:  How do you think he did?

MR. CALLAHAN:  He did a really awesome job.

(Laughter)

MR. SHINBERG:  Thank you.

MR. CALLAHAN:  You should do a high school.

MS. KAYE:  Do you have a high school in mind now so we can go on?

MR. SHINBERG:  Yes, we can do one of those too.  One thing that's worth noting is where the ideas come from for buildings and one of the ideas is pretty straightforward, how many square feet does a school need and how do you make that work in an existing building.  But another part is thematic and Two Rivers is about the two rivers in Washington, D.C. and rivers flow and so do the forms that you see on the outside of the building that come in and become part of the curve of this seating area here in the lobby bright and flowing.

MS. KAYE:  And how --

MR. SHINBERG:  And part of that roll around to the outside, you'll see it's blue.  And the blue wall has some pieces of glass block in it just -- so don't you talk about where --what that is about.

MS. WODATCH:  Sure.  One of our struggles was we are located on Florida Avenue, which is a challenge for an elementary school.  And on our first floor we wanted to have a lot of light in the classrooms but we didn't necessarily want to have windows that were open to everything that was happening on Florida Avenue.

MS. KAYE:  Traffic noise and --

MS. WODATCH:  And a lot of people walking by constantly and you know, when you are four sometimes that's very distracting.

MS. KAYE:  Distracting.

MS. WODATCH:  So what we did is we actually put glass blocks into the wall and so when we go into the rooms and you'll see them, which are little cutouts and you -- the kids love to peep through them.  But we also -- the way we have arranged them is if you actually look at them from the outside, they are in the musical notation of our school song which is "Somos El Barco," We Are the Boat.  So that's a little fun fact that we all enjoy.

MS. KAYE:  Now you are just showing off.

MS. WODATCH:  I'm showing off a little.  I'm very proud.

MS. KAYE:  And these are some of the inside stories that really kind of make a building special that really personalize it.

MS. WODATCH:  You know, we just sort of piece about how it is.  Sometimes it's difficult to get the support of a neighborhood to bring a school in and it seems like you at Two Rivers have really tried to make the building mean something, both to Washington, but also to try to make it a special piece in this neighborhood.  How do you do that architecturally?

MR. SHINBERG:  Well, one way to do it is what you see behind you and that's the amount of glasses in the entrance.  Many people in the school design would never ever consider putting this amount of glass in a neighborhood that has some history of crime.  But most schools say that the most important thing for them is community.

And you can't connect to a community with a fortress like building.  So this has glass and that's a self fulfilling prophecy.  Our experience is that when you show your connection and your trust in the neighborhood, you get back good treatment.

MS. KAYE:  And on that note, thanks so much for giving us the tour of Two Rivers Public Charter School.