DESIGNING FOR MOVEMENT
A much-discussed topic in school planning is how circulation is managed during student drop-off and pick-up as these are the peak times for movement into and around campus. Depending on the urban context, vehicular traffic gets layered into these discussions. Are students coming by bus? Are they dropped off by their parents? Is there enough queuing space for the cars? While these questions are all part of the circulation puzzle that needs to be solved, they do not describe the critical role of circulation within learning environments themselves. Peak-time traffic brings a challenge of volume, but it does not reflect the intricacy of movement patterns that occur during the school day. As illustrated in the pedestrian flow study in Figure 1, arrival time shows a simple, linear pattern of getting students from the point of entry to their learning spaces quickly and safely. By contrast, movement patterns during the school day—when students move between different classrooms, labs, commons, dining halls, athletic facilities, and outdoor spaces—appear as a much more complex network of circulation lines with clear nodes of denser activity.
The experience of movement through the school plays an important role in the quality of the learning environment. Movement is integral to students’ spatial perception, and its careful choreography is, therefore, critical in fostering social interactions, encouraging explorations, and allowing for moments of drift.
In the late 1950s, the Situationist International, a movement formed by artists and political theorists, advocated for the concept of dérive (drifting) as a way to wander through cities unencumbered by the bias of movements governed by our daily routines. Theorized by Guy Debord, dérive through the urban environment is informed by “pyschogeographic” attractors. As Debord explained,
[psychogeography] attempted to combine subjective and objective modes of study. On the one hand it recognized that the self cannot be divorced from the urban environment; on the other hand, it had to pertain to more than just the psyche of the individual if it was to be useful in the collective rethinking of the city.
Dérive was not simply a past time activity of strolling, but it was a “playful, constructive behavior” characterized with spontaneity and chance.
The Situationist theory of dérive was manifested in the work of the Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys (frequently referred to only by his first name) and his utopian city The New Babylon. Constant’s city came to life in collages, large-scale models, and photo montages that included images of the models, superimposed with drawings and paintings. The fluidity of the spaces that interconnected at multiple levels, utilizing transformable structures, created spatial complexity for new experiences. This fascinating utopian city celebrated the labyrinthine movements of drifting, designed to foster creativity of the individual as well as the communal interactions of society.
