A New School for Thought

Not since the civic optimism of mid-century Modernism has the design of public schools been an area of architectural experimentation in this country. So the Long Beach International Elementary School, which opened for classes last Monday, offers hope to those who still insist that school buildings should be celebrated civic landmarks.

Designed by the Santa Monica-based Morphosis with Thomas Blurock Architects, the 1,000-student public school between 7th and 8th streets on Locust Avenue in Long Beach offers an alternative to the typically banal one-story Southern California schools, with their low, sprawling structures, blacktop playgrounds and ubiquitous rows of trailers. In its place, these architects have created a dense urban oasis whose layered communal spaces evoke the active exchange of ideas that make up the cultural life of a healthy city. And what better place for architectural experimentation than a school--where curiosity, ideally, should be relentlessly fed and nurtured?

The school’s design is, in part, the result of an unusual financial strategy. Built at a cost of $14 million, it stands on a 2 1/2-acre lot rather than the five acres more typical of an average urban elementary school in the area. The money saved on the purchase of the land--roughly $5 million--was reinvested in the school’s design. Because of this, the architects were able to experiment more freely with the building’s forms and the architectural program, which had to be reworked to fit the compressed urban site.

Founded in 1974, Morphosis is best known for designs whose contorted geometries and muscular structures can at times evoke surreal, mechanical organisms. Along with architects such as Eric Owen Moss and Frank Israel, Morphosis espoused an architectural language that came to define “L.A. architecture” during the ‘80s--one that evoked social fragmentation and cultural friction. But these architects’ opportunities were mostly limited to designing elaborate houses for wealthy--albeit experimentally inclined--clients.

In recent years, however, the public’s increasing acceptance of contemporary architectural forms and a healthier economy have allowed L.A. architects to design more ambitious public works. Morphosis, in particular, has benefited from this open climate. The firm is now completing two additional schools in the Greater Los Angeles area: Pomona’s $21-million Diamond Ranch High School--a 72-acre complex that sits on a bucolic hilltop site overlooking a suburban landscape--and the Science Center School at Exposition Park, still in early planning stages but scheduled for completion in late 2001.

Of these, the Long Beach International School is the most urban. The school is located in a block near the city’s downtown in a mixed residential and commercial, low-income neighborhood. Local school officials, nervous about crime, insisted on creating a “secure environment” in what is considered a tough neighborhood. The architects designed a perimeter block structure around an enclosed courtyard, placing the playground on the roof, out of reach of the neighborhood below.

The question here is how to avoid creating an architecture of urban paranoia. How to make a fortress that is not a fortress. Morphosis’ design succeeds at retaining an idealistic spirit, a cautious openness to its context. Large, prism-like windows, for example, puncture the building’s shell, with carefully controlled views into some of the lower classrooms. But the facade’s most striking element is a 24-foot-high, corrugated metal screen that wraps around two sides of the structure at roof level, enclosing a playground above. In the light, the shimmering metal screens have an almost gossamer-like quality. Silhouettes of screeching children dart around behind it, balls clang randomly against its metal frame. It puts play on a pedestal, but it can also be seen as a symbolic means of exposing the complex ethnic and social mix of contemporary Southern California.

The courtyard best represents that communal intent. A series of broad steps leading down from the covered entryway serves as seating for outdoor school assemblies. A massive grand stair--with the outdoor cafeteria tucked underneath--leads up from the courtyard to the rooftop playground. Opposite, three levels of outdoor corridors overlook the courtyard from behind an enormous wire-mesh screen, while rows of simple fluorescent lights draw the eye into the more private interior worlds of the classrooms. Above, the immense flat plane of the schoolyard evokes the vast floating deck of an aircraft carrier, where students momentarily reconnect to the urban landscape beyond. The idea is to dissolve the boundaries between inside and out, between isolated study and social friction--to peel away the protective skin that separates us.

That emphasis on the playful chaos of cultural and intellectual exchange is set against the more tranquil aura of the internal spaces. In the library--the project’s most powerful architectural space--the ceiling swoops down like a giant white belly. Twin concrete columns, a thick beam running between them, support the structure above and add to the sense of weight, while the arc of that ceiling cuts up through the roof, allowing light to spill down through twin clerestories. (On the roof, the structure forms a small arena.) The tension--between the intense weight of the forms and the ephemeral quality of the light--is beautifully balanced.

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In general, government bureaucracies make bad architectural clients. And even here, the architects were forced to make compromises. In Morphosis’ original design, the building’s screen facade unfolded over the rooftop gymnasium before twisting down to connect to a potato chip-like wall that flanks the grand courtyard stair. Now, it stops abruptly halfway, covering only the roof’s mechanical systems. And in many of the classrooms, the belly-shaped ceilings, which funneled the light into the loft-like spaces, were eliminated.

But the strength of the design can be measured by how well it survives these losses. By aggressively reconfiguring the school’s program, and inventively solving the questions this reconfiguration raises, the architects have created a new urban prototype, one closely linked to its ethnic context and the future of the city.

During the 1950s, Modernists like Richard Neutra perfected the prototypal L.A. suburban school, apparent in buildings such as his 1961 Palos Verdes High School, whose arcaded walkways and low structures are all gently embedded in the landscape. Morphosis’ design turns that idea on its head. Nature here is still part of the formula, but it is now distorted by its urban environment. Morphosis, in effect, seeks to embrace the realities of urban grit, of urban congestion. Their design engages the postindustrial realities that make up the contemporary city.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles, a city where children now regularly attend school in makeshift trailers parked behind chain-link fences, is about to invest $1.8 billion to build 51 new schools over the next decade. What better time to turn to new prototypes for the contemporary school? Prototypes, such as this one, that seek to make sense of our shifting social and cultural realities rather than to reinforce worn-out cliches? Architecture can send a message: Education is about expanding the range of intellectual and emotional possibilities. It can even include a sense of humor. That is hard fact, not hopeful idealism.*