Looking Ahead / Outdoor Learning

COVID-19 has accelerated the dialogue about leveraging outdoor learning environments for school districts in California. Carducci Associates, with our extensive DSA approved landscape experience, has been assisting clients to strategize and implement solutions quickly and easily to create safer spaces for the upcoming year, and also to envision the potential for maximizing outdoor learning (post-pandemic). California’s temperate and mild climate often provides ideal conditions for outdoor-education activities for much of the year. In light of the recent pandemic, which requires physical distancing and increased air-circulation to lessen the chance of transmission among students, the outdoor classroom has become an optimal setting and option to accommodate – and allow for a greater number of– students returning in the fall.

UTILIZING THE OUTDOORS AS AN ASSET:

Outdoor spaces offer an economical way to alleviate the spatial constraints of the pandemic on indoor classrooms while also providing: hands-on learning, fresh air, and opportunities for children to connect with the natural environment. Below are some of the lessons we have learned from educators and designers who have already brainstormed and navigated this process. Following these lessons are additional resources to guide community members to understand the strategies shared and also to re-imagine how to see these constraints as growth opportunities for the future of education in California.

LESSONS LEARNED:

1. Understand that enhancing the connection to nature improves student/faculty health and well-being

2. Engaging school grounds and local parks as outdoor classrooms to expand the capacity for students

3. Creating Cohorts to discuss (weekly) research

4. Provide flexibility and choice: Consider a variety of seating in varied layouts

5. Understand whether strategy/implementation is a short-term transition or a long-term investment

6. Take initiative, pilot, evaluate, implement

7. Engage students in the problem-solving process

8. Develop a phased approach to reopening

9. Create an outdoor, bookable meeting-space system (e.g. Stanchion off an area for reserved meetings on campus and provide signage that can be updated with the current user(s) name and duration of use)

10. Discern “higher-usage” areas on campus and provide supplemental outdoor structures to accommodate these densities

11. Improve micro-climate or consider climatic variables to lengthen (maximize) the usage of outdoor spaces in the shoulder seasons (e.g. equip shade structures with heating, cooling or lighting, provide windbreaks, consider acoustics and how to reduce noise to other outdoor classrooms, consider sun movement, temporary and/or permanent DSA-PC approved shade sails, sun umbrellas, etc.)

12. Address infrastructural needs: potential utilities and accessibility needs that will need to be considered when people congregate in different places on campus/school grounds (Wi-Fi, emergency systems, blue lights-visibility accessibility, power charging, increased hand washing stations, etc.)

13. Consider developing zones, especially on larger school campuses, that prioritize access to different user groups (students, faculty, visitors, other community members, etc.)

14. Develop toolkits and resources to educate the school community (provide adequate signage in a variety of sizes, distribute outdoor space guidelines for the diverse types of public spaces on campus, etc.)

15. Consider low-cost, temporary materials to create outdoor classroom spaces

16. Organize outdoor pop-up activities to support student life and foster community (outdoor games, dining, art, etc.)

17. Consider having areas and spaces for both formal (classes, seminars) and informal/casual activities (clubs)

18. Security is paramount, consider ways to restrict access to grounds to ensure safety

19. Consider funding from CARES ACT for educational work and American Association of Dermatology grants for shade

20. For equity make outdoor learning a priority and online learning a back up

RESOURCES:

1) National COVID 19 Outdoor Learning Initiative: Essential Assets for School District COVID-19 Response

2) The Outdoor Classroom Project: Characteristics of the outdoor classroom and information regarding the physical, cognitive, psychological benefits of outdoor learning

3) COVID-19 Planning Considerations: Guidance for School Reentry

4) Planning Outdoor Infrastructure at your School (Free Downloadable Resources)

5) San Francisco Children & Nature: a San Francisco collaborative dedicated to ensuring all youth growing up in the city have the same opportunities to PLAY, LEARN and GROW in NATURE.

6) Emergency Schoolyard Design Volunteers: a new program dedicated to match schools and districts with volunteer design teams to help plan and lay out outdoor classrooms. Click here to sign up for design assistance. Designers click here to sign up to assist schools.

7) Fast Company: “Inside the Quest to Reopen Schools—by Moving Classes Outside”

8)The Atlantic: “Why Can’t We Have Class Outside? It might be the answer to America’s school-reopening problem”

9) PBS Newshour Weekend: “A California Collective Makes the Case for Outdoor Learning” (video)

10) Adapting College and University Campus Outdoor Spaces in Response to COVID-19 (ASLA Professional Practice Webinar) (video)

John Hinkel Park / Grand Opening

When the beautiful historic clubhouse of John Hinkel Park burned down in 2015, neighbors and Berkeley city staff came together to discuss the future of the park and its users. Built in 1918, the redwood clubhouse structure served its purpose for 73 years, officially closing its doors in 1991 due to the estimated $1-2 million-dollar repair costs to restore it to habitability. After the 2015 fire, the city (Berkeley) was able to receive insurance money, which planted the seed of innovation. At the same time, this allowed John Hinkel Park – like a Phoenix – “to rise from the ashes,” and reinvigorate the experience of the park that embodies the cultural and architectural history of Berkeley at the turn of the 20th century.

Toward the end of 2015, Carducci Associates and diverse stakeholders – including city staff, Council Members, and invested neighbors – collaborated to envision a new chapter for John Hinkel Park. Over five years, after multiple community meetings and the approval of the Landmark Commission, the community decided to replace the clubhouse with enhanced site access, ADA improvements, unique site furnishings and a picnic terrace that would maintain the park’s natural aesthetic while celebrating the past that John Hinkel himself gave to the neighborhood.

Carducci Associates leveraged the park’s history through the use of salvaged materials from the clubhouse, such as wood and stone, and designed custom features that highlight the park’s past for present and future users. Some of these features include rock walls, rock and wood benches, and picnic tables topped with 100-year-old salvaged redwood to preserve the memory of the clubhouse’s original location. If one were to examine the picnic tables, one can see the chars and scars of the blaze that paved the way for the park’s renewal.

Finally, after years of waiting, Carducci Associates is honored and excited to say that John Hinkel Park can once again serve as a space where neighbors and friends can gather to make new memories. After the Ribbon Cutting Ceremony (July 31, 2020), visitors practiced social distancing while enjoying the renewed park. There were plenty of smiles that even face coverings could not mask.

Thank you to the City of Berkeley, the Landmark Commission, and the John Hinkel Park community for entrusting this special project to Carducci Associates. May John Hinkel Park continue to flourish in all of its cultural and natural beauty.

In the News: Don Biddle Community Park & Fallon Sports Park / Landscape Architecture Magazine's April 2019 Issue

We’re delighted to have our work on the aesthetics and function of sports parks featured in the April issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine.

“Clash of the Terrains,” written by contributing editor Timothy Schuler, details an ongoing project of Carducci Associates’ to balance the performative and technical standards of athletic fields with ecologically sensitive and place-making planting design. The high contrast between a sense of order and a sense of wildness has been a common thread in our park projects in Dublin, California—notably Fallon Sports Park and the forthcoming Don Biddle Park.

In celebration of World Landscape Architecture month, the April issue of LAM is free in digital format to all. The issue is available here; or click here to jump straight to the article.

Innovation Project Winner for the Silicon Valley Structures Awards / Cupertino High School Science Complex

One year ahead of schedule and $3 million under budget, Cupertino High School’s new science complex received the 2018 Silicon Valley Structures Award for its Innovation Project category. The Fremont Union High School District worked with our team to bring new facilities, including outdoor classrooms, to the school’s growing STEM curriculum and enrollment.

Silicon Valley Business Journal explains the factors that led to these successes in the following article, originally published here.