Chicago Public School

Chicago, USA

Picture © Marble Fairbanks

Architects: Marble Fairbanks

Location: Chicago, USA
Year: 2001

As with many urban areas, public schools in Chicago currently operate significantly above the desired capacity for the most effective learning resulting in overcrowded classrooms and large schools where many students have little or no individual attention. Because of capacity problems and extensive research that indicated better performance in smaller classroom environments, large cities began experimenting with strategies to break down the organization of schools to provide the optimum sizes for student achievement. These experiments resulted in various small school types including Alternative Schools; Charter Schools; Pilot Schools; and Mini-Schools, each having slightly different structures relative to funding, organization, and management approaches but all small in size. This project was based on an organization which would take an 800 student elementary school and provide 4 smaller schools within one building which would have some independence but still share common facilities and be under the jurisdiction of a single principal.