My name is Claire bank,
and I am a registered architect with
ThenDesign Architecture. At TDA,
it's a very collaborative environment.
I think what really adds value to the
projects is the number of voices and
input. With an open studio, you just hear
what's going on in different projects,
and it's very easy to pull
anybody's opinion on something
that could really help
to shape and influence a design in a
way that you wouldn't have necessarily
thought of otherwise.
As far as sort of what we
bring to a school district,
who's trying to shape the
educational spaces for their future,
we go through a lot of engagement with
their staff and with their administration
and with their students,
that all let us know types of
projects they're working on types of
vision that they have for
their education in the future.
So we're seeing less of a
desire for really traditional
educational spaces with like corridor
and double loaded classrooms on either
side and more and more different scaled
spaces for different types of groups to
meet and to do education in
kind of a transforming way.
So schools already are really
ingrained in their community and I
think have always served as a
hub for their community in some
form. With each school that we do,
we're seeing more community
aspects woven into it.
And even with the pandemic
closing schools down,
I think people started to realize just
how much of a hub those schools are.
In the future,
I could see more community influence
and more community use of the
schools that would help to
shape some of the spaces.
Watching my parents as I grew up
and their involvement in education,
you really could pull different lessons
about how schools function and the
importance of schools from each one.
My dad being more of the
administrative side of things.
My mom on the other hand
was a second grade teacher.
And she is, I'd say the softer
heart of the two [laughter].
And there you see more just kind of
the social functions that schools can
serve and the level of care that
she would bring to those students.
From watching both of them,
I could get a really great kind of
well-rounded idea of how much schools
do for their communities and with that,
as far as architecture's relationship,
they need, they need the right facilities.
I know that educators are always creative
with whatever facilities they have,
but the more we can help them to have the
facilities that support what they want
to do the better.
