Studio SALA+D Architecture + Design News: school design and martin otterbeck

Photo courtesy of NINA RUUD

Kids are inherently creative; never having been told yet what is acceptable or not. In my school district, there are plans to build a new high school. Sadly, it seems that the concept to "demolish and build new" is more on the horizon than "renovation."

As a green architectural activist, I cannot support the idea to tear down and build a new school that is roughly 50 years old. In fact, the oldest portion of this school dates to 1956 with several additions from the 1960's - 1980's. We cannot afford to rebuild a new high school every 50 years.

In an article I wrote several years ago entitled, "Cradle-to-cradle; A study in Durability and Adaptability" for the Green Building Institute, I became acquainted with Walter R. Stahel who worked with chemist Michael Braungart to coin the important sustainability terms, "cradle-to-cradle" and "cradle-to-grave."

Stahel said emphatically to me in our interview that the greenest thing we can do is to avoid waste. We need to be thinking more about reusing and reducing waste. What better platform in which to illustrate this lesson than with school children?

While musing over this issue with our district desiring to build a new high school, I stumbled upon a project designed by artist Martin Otterbeck of Norway who built himself a new home out of a old, abandoned oil tank in Skrova, Norway. He was able to look at the oil tank and to envision what it could become. This is a genius skill that is often a signature trait of the well-trained architect.

Just because we cannot always envision what it would be like to build a home inside an oil tank does not mean that it cannot be done. Just because we see a school building in disrepair does not mean that we cannot renovate and rebuild the building up from its bones.

In using our creativity and innovation more than our pocketbook, the end results are often more stunning and appropriate for those that dwell therein. Otterbeck loves his home because he can go up on the top of the structure and get a 360-degree view of the island he loves to vacation.

An architecture professor once said to me, "Stephanie, remember the little old lady that built her home in a shoe?" I was thinking, then at the time a student in architecture school, of my barbie doll homes I would create as a child. Barbie's bed was always in one of my shoes.

Yet, now as a professional, I think of a high school building that can become one of the best school buildings in our entire state as long as a group of genius minds get behind the planning process.