A History And Evaluation Of The School Construction Systems Development Project 1961 1967

Schoolhousing presents a theoretical and practical portrayal of how, when, and why public school districts build new schools. Based on extensive data analysis and a comprehensive review of the literature, the book specifies school district reorganization and subsequent steps necessary to implement plans. The book discusses and considers how school districts relate to state agencies on regulatory, fiscal, and support bases. It also addresses questions important to school district officials, principals, architects, contractors, and others engaged in projects which require long-term management. The work is unique in that both organizational points of view and individual roles are presented.

This book questions flexibility as a design approach by providing a longitudinal analysis of an innovative architectural experiment called the School Construction Systems Development (SCSD) project. The SCSD pioneered the use of performance specifications to create an open, prefabricated, and integrated system of building components that provided four modes of flexibility. Educational facilities throughout California used the SCSD system and it spawned a variety of similar projects throughout North America. This book traces the development and subsequent use of the system over 50 years through archival research, personal observations, re-photography, re-surveying, plan evaluations, interviews, and an advertisement analysis. These new findings provide useful insights for architects, educators, historic preservationists, and others about the affordances of spatial flexibility, the difficulties associated with technological transfer, the impact of unstable market conditions, the importance of user input during the planning process, and the need for long-term social relations to sustain architectural experiments.

First published in 1973, this two-volume set summarises and structures the contributions by researchers at the Fourth International EDRA Conference, held in April 1973. The second volume focuses on the symposia and invited papers, which were theory orientated. The symposia comprehensively assessed the status of contemporary knowledge as well as potential future directions in the respective fields contributing to environmental design research. This volume also provides summaries of the workshops, which explored problem solving processes and offered methodological applications to environmental analysis and other topics of concern. This book will be of interest to students of architecture and design.