Join us on our latest podcast episode where we discuss the importance of designing schools with an emphasis on creating a positive and engaging learning environment, free of prison-like elements. Our team of architects will discuss various design strategies we use to create spaces that promote mental and physical health, creativity, and academic achievement. Tune in and learn how design can transform the way we learn and teach in our schools.
Skyler: Welcome to another episode of Laying the Foundation.
Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Laying the Foundation. I'm here again with Brian.
Brian: Hello.
Skyler: And today we are joined by David Brockshus, one of our awesome, amazing architects here at CMBA. And today, the discussion topic we'll be going over is how to design a school that is safe but not a prison. And this was actually something that David had brought up to me while we were at a school, I believe it was for one of the career fairs, talking to students about architecture as a career and things like those lines. And you use that phrase, and I thought to myself, that would make a really interesting podcast episode.
David: And here we are.
Skyler: And here we are. And here we are. And so, I'm super excited to talk about this because obviously it got me intrigued. So, I think it'll be a great topic.
David: It should be, yes.
Skyler: Absolutely. So, David, what do you want to use to really kick off this conversation?
David: So, first of all, I'd have to go with, what in your mind's eye when probably when you were in school, what do you think of with the school? Describe to me your classroom or your school environment.
Brian: Do you want me to go?
Skyler: Go for it.
Brian: All right. Well, I'm older than both of you. So, let's see. The first school that I went to was in a small town, not far from here, but typical hallways with classrooms off of those hallways.
David: The corridors and classrooms method, if you will.
Brian: Yes. The cells and bells, or some people call them different things, but mainly a door that had a window into the classroom. The rest was solid in the hallways, so you'd only see the door with some glass. But in the classrooms, there was some natural light because there was windows to the exterior, but you never got to see what was happening outside of that classroom. So, I would say, yeah, just individual rooms, hallways, paths to get to different areas was kind of what I remember growing up.
Skyler: Yeah, for a pretty decent majority of my K through 12 life, I was homeschooled but outside of that, the short time that I was in an actual physical school, outside of that brick walls, fences around kind of, I don't know, cheap playground equipment.
David: More of the classroom environment though itself was more of the opaque experience that Brian was talking about-
Skyler: Yes.
David: ... where you go into the room and you're in the room and then you leave the corridor into the corridor and you're somewhere else, you really can't see-
Skyler: Right.
David: ... what else is going on, correct?
Skyler: Yes, absolutely. And then I think one other thing was that the entire school, the shape of the building, if you did a full go around of the perimeter, it was a square. I mean it was, or a rectangle, but I mean that was it. There wasn't any-
Brian: Real.
Skyler: ... jutting sections.
David: Simple and straightforward.
Brian: It was very efficient, right?
Skyler: I suppose so, yeah.
Brian: Always plan was very...
David: Yeah, cost-effective.
Skyler: We built up that realm.
Brian: That's right.
David: So, my follow-up question to this is now I doubt either of you have been to prison, but in your mind's eye, what do you think of when you think of a prison?
Brian: Well, I will say that I have been in a prison. I was in actually the county jail here a few times because we have done some work there. And very austere conditions, very little natural light inside, hard walls, cells obviously. But it was really set up to control making sure people didn't move very far and if they were very observed very quickly and controlled in that manner. So very, very controlled-
David: Very wise. And in terms of opacity of the building, it's probably has a lot of similar themes to that elementary school discussion we'd had just a few minutes ago where...
Brian: Correct. Much smaller windows.
David: Yes.
Brian: Absolutely. Maybe a little bit of natural light, but you couldn't actually see out the window. You could see the light, but that was about it. Yeah.
Skyler: And jumping back those doors with the little window in the top of it, and then that was it. Otherwise, it was just a solid door.
David: Yep, solid steel stability into and out of those rooms.
Skyler: Yes.
Brian: Correct. Correct.
David: Because you were remember leading with this were-
Skyler: Yes.
David: Is that truly the environment that you want to have for your school while designing it? And the quick answer is no.
Skyler: No.
David: Obviously, there's the crux of this discussion, I think is the security school security is one of the hot topics just due to all the school shootings and other events that do happen. So, that is always on the forefront of our minds while developing and designing schools. But there has to be at least a little bit of give and take here too, to provide a welcoming, friendly, inviting, and a creative learning environment to that it all just can't be 100% focused on security.
Skyler: Because then you'd have a prison.
David: Yes. Because then you'd have the ideal school then would be a prison.
Skyler: Yes, a prison.
David: And that's not the end goal here.
Skyler: Exactly.
David: So, I do at least want to start this discussion with security because that should be taken into account. But with prisons there are like, you have the security at every single level, and there should be a similar thought in schools to having layers of security as you enter a prison or as you enter a school now. And most schools have a secure entry point, or at least during the day, so the bus drop off or whatever, there might be multiple entry points to a school. But during the school day itself, there will almost always be a singular entry point by the main office where you enter a sandbox room, if you will, where you go in that room, someone then buzzes you into the office, and then someone buzzes you out of the office into the school proper. So, you have-
Skyler: Sort of a man trap if you will basically.
David: You have two different kind of fail-safe points to prevent you from getting into the school. And then other layers we put in have been once you're into the school from there, different break points to segment the school. So, if someone does gain access to a portion of the school, they're only in that portion, or they can be kept in that portion, or there's these barriers put in place, further barriers beyond that put in place for them to get through. So, it's the layers of security. There's not nearly as many as in a prison, but the prison is preventing people from going in and out. And for the school, we want to prevent people from least from getting in, and we still need to provide the means for people to exit the building, especially in a shooting scenario so they can get away safely. Another key element to that that Brian has already kind of mentioned is the limited visibility.
So, one kind of thing that we're keeping in mind while developing the entry sequence to our school is limiting the availability of what someone can see as they enter the building. Ideally, when you enter that office area, you can't really see much or any of the student environment until you're truly inside the school. So, kind of creating a hard face there to anyone that's coming in. But we're still using glass at the entrance to see who's coming. So, you always know who's coming up to the school. And then it still provides a friendly and kind of inviting environment. But you come into the building, and you can take a hard right and "Oh, hey, now you're in the classroom area." Instead of being able to see from that main entrance, everything that's going on in the guts of the building at that point in time.
Brian: I just realized I'm the only parent that has had kids in school-
Skyler: Oh, that's good. Good point.
Brian: ... in the room, right? So, you have a young one, you don't have any Skyler.
Skyler: I don't have any.
Brian: So, as a parent, it does give me somewhat of a secure feeling that my kids are protected, obviously with that secure entry scenario. But I also, as a parent, I want to feel welcomed as I come up to the school too. So, it's a balance there. I think there's some amount of thought there.
David: See that welcoming thing too, even from the parent's side, you're visiting a school much less than a student would, but if it's an intimidating environment, the environment we're trying to create for the school is that of kind of a joyful one where you want to go to school, you're excited to go to school, that the entry sequence to how you enter the building can bring a little bit of energy or vigor to hopefully have students start the day in a positive outlook there instead of trudging their way through the dark corridors into a prison. So, everything really starts at that main entrance for the opening of the building, and we're kind of trying to carry that theme throughout of the visibility. So, the big three schemes that we're trying to incorporate into the design for all of our schools in terms of these open learning environment, in lieu of having a closed prison style school, we create community within the school.
We've already talked about that friendly environment and creating a positive community is kind of one way to get students excited about going to school, creating some more engaging learning areas instead of the kind of closed cell with a people out of it we've talked about. And then to increase collaboration and communication within those spaces, a lot of the current learning trends, not just the physical trends of the building, but the learning trends are collaborative learning, whether its students working in teams or classes working together or classes competing against each other to bring some more of that energy and excitement into the learning environment to really engage students.
Brian: I was just thinking as you're talking about that, I remember myself, but also my girls saying, "Hey, this is at the end of the school year." But they have a day where they go up, they go to that next class. And mainly because they haven't seen what happens in, let's say, third to fourth, they haven't seen what happens in fourth grade. So, they put them in that environment. Well, we're introducing ways for students to truly see what happens now in schools-
David: To get excited about what you're going to do. Oh, it might be, "Oh, we got to do that next year."
Brian: Yeah.
David: And this is a weird one that I can vividly remember, but in grade school, when you dissect pick heart, I really remember that one.
Skyler: That's a hard one to forget for sure.
Brian: Yes.
David: It's in. But I mean, that's all you heard up until that point. Was just hearsay and rumors of it and go, "Oh, it's kids whispering about it at the lunch table. What's going on there?" Well, now you can see it and some... Yeah, that I probably chose the most gruesome one-
Brian: It could be you did. I know you did. Yes.
Skyler: Smell the hideout in here.
Brian: Yes.
David: The smell thing is a little... We're thinking we're talking about visibility.
Skyler: Right, right. Oh, sorry, sorry.
David: But that was one that was to be excited about that, to look forward to something that does all the themes that we're talking about here. And if you can see that makes a big, big impact. But going back to the community, so our goal is to take the pieces of the school and break them up into little miniaturized communities if we can. Typically, life is best done, we talked about by grade level. But in high school learning environments a little bit different than in grade schools. But one of the more common grade school kind of environments is taking the classrooms and breaking them off of the corridor and making kind of a shared pod with them. Depending on the size of the school, this kind of looks differently. I have two examples that I have floor plans of today. Our Hartley example is a true pod where each grade level is broken out.
And then between the classrooms, they have a shared classroom that's more set up for science and hands-on learning items, but is still used as a traditional classroom. And then more of a commons learning core area where they can go together. And all the classes at once can have a speaker come in, whether it's Google Resources officer talking about whatever, or my own favorite. My sister works for Iowa State Extension and does the different AG seminar classes where she gets all the students together, and she likes it when there's all the students at once because it's a quick shorter day for her, but she can reach everybody at the same time. And then she always brings fun things to play with. And it's just interesting to see all the kids interact together with baby chickens or whatever that she happens to bring in for school that day.
But kind of creating those little pods, you can create identity too within those pods, whether it's with color or with grade level, and build up some student pride with that. And I know everybody has the student pride for whatever your school mascot or sports might be, but this helps you build it at the grade level side and brings in some responsibility for kind of kids taking over some of their own learning and pride in what they're doing within their grade pod. So, I've talked about how the pods are shaped, but oftentimes too, and we're not just breaking down how the corridors and the rooms are laid out. We're taking the actual wall and kind of taking the lockers off that wall, because that's one other thing we really didn't describe is in all those school corridors where it's a long corridor with classrooms on the side, there's the wall there and it's covered in lockers.
Skyler: Just lockers.
David: Typically, yeah.
Skyler: All the way down.
David: Yeah.
Skyler: Usually too high.
David: Yep. So, to take that away to let people see into those rooms. And we're finding more and more kind of creative ways to pull the lockers off that wall or have at least some of the lockers away from by the door entry, just so you can see in, and you can glimpse, "Hey, this class is doing that." Or even in your pod, if you're rotating activities and it's the science classroom or like, "Oh hey, they're bringing in a chinchilla today for a science class." Kids can peek in there and see it and get excited about it and be excited for whatever they're going to learn coming up in the day.
Skyler: Right on.
David: There's also a benefit on the administration side too, of having that visibility in your classroom. If you need to go grab a student for either specialized ed or specialized individual education or someone's in trouble, you can go and you can see very quickly someone is in and grab a student without having to open the door and more interrupt the classroom more by popping that door open and making a little more noise. Because at that point you become the focus of the room, but if people see you walk up and you're standing there, and you can wave and point to somebody. They're more used to ignoring you at that point in time, and you might just be invisible in their part of the day.
Skyler: Sure, sure. You're not like the warden that's bursting into the scene of the prison riot.
Brian: The whistle and all that.
Skyler: Yeah, exactly.
David: The other benefit to that too, if you're on the administration side, is staff engagement. There's not a place for a teacher to necessarily hide there, you're performing in front of everyone as well. And then you also have the benefit too of, "Oh, I'm have a couple students that we need to run out and do this with whatever." You can visibly see into another classrooms there you can help each other monitor. This teacher has to run to the office for whatever reason, the teacher across the corridor can see and monitor their class. And if they start throwing paper airplanes, she can walk across the hall and make sure that the people straighten up a little bit and go back. So, there's a behavioral aspect to it as well.
Skyler: Sure. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, it really opens things up. I guess I got a retcon just a little bit. I was K through eighth homeschool for the most part. Sorry, high school. I went to an actual school, and it was a very small school. So, a lot of these ideas that you've mentioned about kind of integrating a lot of the space being used by different classes and the visibility with different classes, even though they're not in the same grade as we shared a lot of activities, whether that be some of the extracurricular stuff or banded art classes and things along those lines, things that weren't super specific to a specific grade level. And I can see a lot of these ideas working absolutely phenomenally with this concept.
David: Even with the shared, I think the term we use most frequently here at CBA is the DaVinci Studio. The intent of that room is to take over at whatever grade level it happens to be either art or science or some of the messier aspects to keep that mess in that room where it's easier to clean instead of sending it out somewhere. And then you can at least gain the benefit too, of, you don't need to have a dedicated art room, per se for that, where the art teacher can go around to each of the DaVinci Studios and do their art activity with students in a different location instead of having a singular dedicated room that may or may not get used throughout the day, depending on the size of the school.
Skyler: Sure.
Brian: And potentially save some time for those students because they're not traversing from one end of the building to the other where these specials typically happen because I've seen that too. It's like they're on a half mile trek sometimes.
Skyler: Their little legs-
Brian: Keep your steps in-
Skyler: ... huge campuses.
Brian: Going back and forth. So, yeah. So...
David: And part of that is just the challenge of depending on the scale of the school that we're tasked to design, there's going to be some of that redundancy built in of scale, just it's harder to fit more classrooms around this pod concept. And that kind of brings us a nice segue to our next school. I have the MOC-Floyd Valley Elementary School. So, this is a much larger school where it's about five or six times larger than the Hartley School that we started with. So, this has a little bit more of a traditional format, but we still kind of keep a lot of the open corridor or the open visible areas through the corridor there. So, this is the same entry feature the Hartley School had, where it's the multiple stages of entry. And then we actually, with this one separated our classroom corridor from the rest of the building.
So, there's another added layer of security that separates off the classroom pods or the classroom super pod, if you will, from the other. But to break up that long continuous corridor that we had previously described, we took this when we actually bent different angles of the building. And if you're in that corridor, you can kind of see a glimpse down that hall, but you can't see this tunnel that just goes all, yeah.
Brian: Long, yeah.
David: So, you can get a little ID. And it's kind of a fun kind of creative thought of going back to the like, "Oh, I can see what second grade's doing. I can see what third grade's doing. But this still kind of blend. All the classrooms kind of blend in a little bit, but we have widened the corridors. They can fit little learning areas outside their classrooms. A lot of the glazing still lines so they can help watch classrooms with each other. And then we even have a shared classroom that's centered on each pod where multiple classes can get together and have a movie event or a-
Skyler: Sure.
David: Whatever happens to be within their dedicated age group pod.
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David: Another feature of this school, because there's a slightly older students in this one, we did provide smaller breakout areas that are resource areas like Brian had mentioned for art.
Skyler: Oh, okay.
David: So, a lot of the new trends that we're also working on or working to incorporate in all of our designs is trying to bring in adjacent spaces that are smaller classroom settings. Some of the students do need, whether it's additional help reading or additional help testing, but to provide a quiet space that's close by-
Skyler: Oh, okay.
David: ... classrooms for that. So, you don't have to walk the entire distance across the building for some of those things. You can take the test at the same time as your peers and not arrive 20 minutes after because it takes you 10 minutes to walk to your... And 10 minutes to go back. You can be very close.
Skyler: Sure, yeah.
David: In creating those smaller kind of breakout classrooms, we do have an eye on privacy. There are certain spots where certain students that just do need that privacy or that enclosed smaller space either to help kind of calm down or kind of recenter themselves before having any sort of emotional outburst. Or even if you're doing, like I mentioned the exam before, just more of a private sequestered area for some of that. There are those student needs that can stand to benefit from that, we still like to at least try and maintain visibility on the corridor as well for other reasons socially. Bullying is another often described concept in schools. If we're talking about the traditional school model where you have the solid walls on the door with just an aperture in it. If I'm the teacher in the classroom, what's going on in the corridor?
Skyler: I don't know. I wouldn't know unless I can see it through that little window.
David: Unless you can see the window, or you have to go leave your classroom.
Skyler: Right, exactly.
David: And then go see what's going on in the hall.
Skyler: Exactly, yeah.
David: So, another benefit of having the corridor opened or not the visibility to the corridor or other rooms opened is if there is any bullying activity happening in the corridors, you can see that right away and hopefully put an end to it-
Skyler: Exactly.
David: ... before anything happens there. And that's part of the community building is you're essentially kind of, because everyone can see what you're doing, you're kind of forced-
Skyler: You're less to be nice to them.
David: ... be nice to each other, yeah.
Skyler: Exactly, yeah. You almost like need to try something.
David: Or if anything does happen you can stop-
Skyler: They have all the facts, they can see it. If something needs to be discussed afterwards, they're like, well, this is what we saw versus-
David: This is what I saw or-
Skyler: I came in at the end of it and I don't know what I saw.
David: I heard this and it was too late.
Skyler: Yes, exactly.
David: But now you can see something, or hopefully you can see it. And then obviously we'll still have the same modern amenities to school, like cameras in the corridors to fill in those blank spots people can't see. But the goal is to at least design this social area within the pod or within the school itself, to really work through those things and provide a better learning environment for everyone at that point. So, no one's getting bullied.
Skyler: Exactly. Which again comes back to that concept of this is a school, not a prison. At a prison-
David: Correct.
Skyler: ... we need cameras, and we need all these other features in order to be able to see what everybody's doing at all times, versus the fact that I know I can be seen is going to make me less likely to maybe do something I shouldn't be doing, or something along those lines we've discussed.
David: There's no place to hide.
Skyler: Self-policing that's the one what I was saying.
David: No, that's probably more appropriate term for it, but there's not a place to hide out and do some of these illicit activities at that point if you have visibility throughout the building.
Skyler: Exactly. Exactly.
David: So, I think that was kind of our goal and with this school is that the corridor is always monitored. And even on the opposite side of the corridor, there's still windows on the west side of the classroom pod that let teachers see into the other corridors of the building. So, everyone's always providing that passive monitoring of the corridor space instead of not knowing what's going on out there at all.
Skyler: Exactly. Exactly. Better to know than not to know. And I think that's the key to it. All right. As the episode implies, we're trying to create schools that are both conducive for learning as well as being secure, but not being a prison, which a lot of older designs kind of almost imply or mimic or whatever the case, right? And that's kind of the key to it all, right? We're trying to not only use science to develop how the students are learning and increase their learning, but pairing that with strategies and things along those lines that work both for that and to create a more secure environment that's not a prison.
David: And then I have one more example I forgot to talk about today, but this is a high school, so it's different than the elementary schools.
Skyler: Yeah, very different.
David: But you're just starting through everything in middle school. I think everyone is required to take your broad base of classes, whether it's your family consumer sciences, your career technical education, science, math. But in high school, everybody starts to lean towards their strengths and to specialize just a little bit as those first steps of specialization. So, this is a school that we designed with a lot of that in mind, especially the hands-on learning, where we really wanted to put that hands-on learning on display. So, we have the similar corridor concept to what we had at MOC School where a lot of the classrooms open onto a corridor, but in this school concept, we widened the corridor in the center of the school quite a bit to provide a lot of those breakout areas that we had in MOC.
But they were all kind of conjoined, but you still had the corridor through there. And it kind of creates this kind of wacky space that's used for circulation, but can be used for so many other things. And if you think of in high school, how many group projects do you have to do, that's the first time you have to work as a group. But this provides group areas where you can be monitored by the teacher outside the classroom, but they can still see what you're doing right out there. Whether it's practicing the presentation you're about to give to the class or working on a group activity just to stretch out the space that you need your classroom might not be sufficient for people are using all the tables for laying out larger art projects or something that might not work out.
Skyler: And the noise is throwing everybody off. If you've got six different groups that are all working on the same project, but in their own respective group and they're talking, and it's almost impossible to hear over and...
David: Exactly. So, this gives the maximum flexibility here. Or even if you're a highly specialized AP class, whether it's AP literature, you might only have four or five students taking that class. You can then use one of the smaller classrooms for that purpose in lieu of using an entire classroom that could see 25 for it. Well, that's not a classroom that's underutilized at that point. You're using a small room for that purpose, and you still get your typical classrooms are available for whatever other teaching is needed at that point that would require a full classroom.
Skyler: Larger space, yeah. Absolutely.
David: So, the north side of this plan, we have all of those truly specialized classrooms where it's the science classrooms, so biology, general sciences, physics, chemistry. There's the fashion lab. And then on the main level, we have the art classroom, CTE woods, and then the culinary arts. The culinary arts is a little bit hidden in this one, just with how much stuff appeared on the walls from kitchen equipment.
Skyler: Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense.
David: But when you're in this school, if you're in the core of this building, you can see lots of what's going on, and it's more of a hide and seek or a peekaboo kind of method, whereas you walk through it, you can see lots of what people are doing throughout the day. And the goal is to try and bring a lot of those hands-on activities close to the core and the center of the building as we possibly could, which is why we fit our core area there to try and excite people to engage them. Because those are the most exciting classes you can have is you're working through something in the shop, or you're using math and the shop classroom to calculate the dimensions of your bench that you're creating. And then you go into the shop through that to create even that visibility into the classroom and then into that shop area to try and incite people about wanting to take those classes in the future.
Skyler: Absolutely. Yeah, that visual grab, which as someone in marketing know pretty well the concept behind that. Yeah, that's really exciting. Kind of wish they had a culinary back when I went to high school that would've been awesome.
David: I would've did in my high school, but I didn't actually know where it was because you couldn't see into the room-
Skyler: Because you couldn't see into the room. It's the perfect example here. Get students excited about what, like you said, what they could get into, whether that be next year or the next couple of years or whatever the case. I mean, I know I would 100%, if not be distracted from whatever class I'm headed to be pretty excited about the possibility of going into something like that and having that visual to get me excited about it.
David: And this is more of, this is a truly combined concept where everything else we've talked about is at least broken up by grade level a little bit. And I think in high school it lends itself to this a lot more, but everything is more of a homogenized learning environment where you're interacting with different grade level peers at the same time. And it's not just everyone within your grade. It's everyone within the school-
Skyler: Within the school, absolutely.
David: ... at the same time. So, on the edges of this school are more of the... We centered everything around the core here, like I talked about with the learning on display towards the centered towards the hands-on things. So, more of the specialized learning things such as the music and band room are off to the side. But we did try and put some of those things just in little different tertiary areas or to provide at the edges of this building a little more of the privacy that's wanted as well. Even in creating the special education suite and PLC, we took visibility in mind too to provide some public areas and then some private areas for those students and those teachers as well. So, the SPED pod itself, there is some visibility into a core commons area, so you can see students working on things within that area.
And then there's more privatized behind that provide more of that enclosed space for education where more privacy is needed or more focus is needed by the occupants of that to focus on their studies. But they can still at least benefit from a similar learning environment to what they could get in the rest of the school, because they might only be there for math class where they're struggling with math, or if you're going to that area for just help on your science or science class where you might only need classwork help in one area of study, but the goal is to try and make that a familiar area and a welcoming area to all students that are participating in that. And then the PLC is a new concept where it's the learning center for teachers, essentially. So, instead of having their office in their classroom, it's a centralized teacher's office. And in this school, the classes are immersive and they kind of flex around the teachers also. You don't have a dedicated classroom, or not all of them have dedicated classroom, unless you're a science teacher or the shop teacher, et cetera.
Skyler: Right. Where you have those specialized spaces.
David: But some of the non-specialized areas too, you get that desking spot there. But we provided a lounge outside of that and some other classrooms where I have a free period, and so does, Skyler.
Skyler: Sure.
David: Well, hey, we need to go meet with our teacher to talk about this project we're working on, and it's his office hours. Well, we're not going to his classroom because that class is being used by Spanish class now instead of literature class. Well, we can go and meet at the PLC and there's meeting rooms here and there's privacy there. So, the teachers are working, they can work in their office area behind that wall, but students can still meet them at the PLC and go. There's a little lobby outside that just to use as an office hour or a meeting hour project, work with them, or even if they're getting an individual instruction on AP physics, that space can be used for that as well.
Skyler: Right. And does that also, that's the sort of teacher spaces, does that also offer that kind of open visibility concept?
David: Yep.
Skyler: Okay, perfect. Because I'm just imagining myself in the example that you gave like, "Oh, we got to go meet with that teacher to talk to them about whatever." And I'm like, "Oh, they're not in that classroom. Where are they?" And you kind of look around. You can see them-
David: That's a very good point. If you're looking for someone in the school, you're not interrupting classes looking for them. You can go around, you can quite easily see, "Oh, well, they're not in there." We'll keep hunting for them after that. And in this case, they might be in the PLC and even here you can see into that office for who might be there, or we're walk in, and someone can see you right away. There's no real hiding in the score, it's more of an open environment as well. So, with the size, the scale of this building though in the super pod, I think one of the goals that we had is at least try to align some of the interior glazing with exterior glazing to try and bring more of the outside feel inside. This is a classroom where we had floor to ceiling windows.
Skyler: Oh, wow.
David: So, when we were doing windows in this one, they were big windows, but there's not very many in the building. So, they're very intentionally put where they can also be seen from the corridors. You get some of that daylighting experience inside, especially with our beefed-up middle of the building. The goal is to try and get some elements of natural light in there where you could see through some windows, it might be one or two windows to see through inside the building to then see some natural light or some green outside the building.
Skyler: Okay. Yeah. Let in that natural feel and then such to, which is conducive to the learning environment to...
David: Yep.
Skyler: We had talked about this a little bit before, but overall health of students to some extent. So, mental health for sure. Yeah, absolutely.
David: Yep. Or it's deferring... You don't feel like you're in a prison, then-
Skyler: Exactly.
David: ... you see outside, so...
Skyler: Yes, exactly.
David: Brian said, you get that feeling of openness and you're not truly confined in that space.
Skyler: Yes, absolutely.
David: One last thing I wanted to touch on was just visibility. So, one thing that we're at least taking into account too, we talked a lot about visibility within the school, obviously security, going back to security again.
Skyler: Yes.
David: And we're trying to be more intentional about what can be seen as you're looking through the school as well, whether that's providing extra shades to be drawn on interior facing windows, if there is an active shooter scenario, or what surface treatments are put on the class. So, people in the public, from the outside of the building cannot see in to see students working on things. The Hartley School example, they have a window covering that doesn't let anyone to see in. It's just a printed graphic, but students can still see out.
Skyler: Oh, yeah, yeah. I've seen this.
David: It's printed just on one side, and it looks they have their school mascot on it. When you look out, it looks like there's a fruit on the window, but otherwise you can't tell. It's really cool.
Skyler: Yeah. Science.
David: I still don't know how it works. I watched presentation on it. I still don't really get that one. But with the MOC Elementary School, we did something similar to that, but a little bit different where there's a tint and more of a mirror finish on the window. And that you can still see in a little bit, but it's a lot harder to really figure out what's going on the inside of that building. So, if you were to dim the lights or draw the shades down, it would be almost impossible to see what's going on inside that building. Just under the actual tint on the glass itself. And when you're on the inside of that building, it's noticeable there's a little bit of a tint on it. You're sitting in your car, but looking out-
Skyler: You can still see out.
David: ... it's you get... Yep, you can still see out. You gain all the benefits of being able to see out into nature, and you still get some of the light that comes in through that glass, but it's the visibility of the tint on the outside that doesn't let you see in as a potential invader to that school.
Skyler: Yeah, absolutely. And like we said, it all comes back to just ways that we can integrate, and it's amazing how we have these kind of ways to integrate that safety with that access to, like you said, seeing outside that benefit to the learning experience while still being safe.
David: Yep.
Skyler: It's kind of mind-blowing.
David: It is. And we talked about layers of security. There's layers of visibility, and there's almost a series of onions, if you will.
Skyler: Yeah, series of onions.
David: School design, but...
Skyler: So many layers. That's fair. That's fair. Well, right on. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here and for giving us this rundown on this concept that you don't... We're not designing prisons. We're designing schools.
David: Correct.
Skyler: Unless you are designing a prison, in which case, there you go. But schools don't have to be the traditional box with hallways and doors that don't let you see anything-
David: The cells and bells or-
Skyler: The cells and bells.
David: ... corridors and classrooms model, which sounds less frightening than cell and bells, but...
Skyler: Corridors and classrooms sounds like a tabletop role playing game, honestly.
David: I'll take your experience to that one.
Skyler: Whatever the case. Thank you again, David Brockshus for being here and for giving us this amazing rundown on security and school and school design and the way that all of that kind of comes together, but not in a prison-esque way, or it doesn't have to be.
David: Yep. Thank you for having me, Skyler.
Skyler: Yeah, absolutely. If you would like to see a little bit of the designs that we discussed or see some pictures from the buildings that we've designed, that we discussed today, you can check out our website at cmbaarchitects.com, head on over to our K-12 section with our projects there, and you can kind of get a view of some of the amazing projects that we've worked on, some of the amazing projects you've worked on, specifically David. And of course, be sure to check out the rest of our website. But of course, you can also listen to this podcast wherever you're listening to it. Of course, other places include Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, and just about everywhere else that you can find podcasts in general. And of course, be sure to follow us on social media. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Once again, thank you, David for being on this has been Laying the Foundation. I'm Skyler. We'll see you guys all next time.