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What Others are saying about Concordia
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Short Quotes
“...Bingler’s design process emphasizes participant involvement, linking the built environment with the curriculum and incorporating existing resources as much as possible. ”
Museum News
“To build consensus for a new design, Mr. Bingler brings together at least 100 people – teachers, students, parents and community members – in a nine-month planning process he likens to a barn-raising.”
The Wall Street Journal
“Bingler says it is best to accommodate everyone's opinion in meetings and work through to a consensus. Concordia had conducted similar community-planning processes during the design of public schools in Hayward and Stockton, California, areas where there was not the same land pressure. After working with the Cauenga demonstration, Bingler and others concluded, "This system can work anywhere."’
National Neighborhood Coalition
“This approach is a 21st-century planner's dream. It incorporates all the principles of the much-touted "new urbanism." Create neighborhoods that encourage personal contact and discourage driving by keeping homes, businesses and public institutions in close proximity.
This process forced town and school officials to set aside their old rivalries. They meet regularly and integrate their budgets, unheard of in many communities.”
USA Today
“ ...One point worth sharing, Bingler says, is that no one person can solve a community’s problem. 'It’s not going to be the mayor or some rich guy,' he says. 'The solution to building better,' he says, 'is to let the community decide what they want.' He gives a brief lesson in democracy: 'If you ask people what they want and give it to them, they’re more likely to work to get it, than if you tell them what they need... '
New Orleans CityBusiness
“ What is unusual about Bingler’s planning process is the scope of the discussion, the participation of such a broad range of people, and the level of detail the community members become involved in. ”
Probe
“ 'The ultimate product that I bring is an informed series of choices, not the answers,' Bingler says."
"This may sound out of character for a member of a profession accustomed to delivering solutions, but after a few moments of conversation with this passionate soul, it’s clear that Bingler is more than willing to bend the idea of what an architect does in order to achieve this vision. In fact, it is the driving force of his career."
Metropolis
“...And as the importance of smaller schools is catching on, so is the notion of the school as a community center - an idea lost in the era of massive busing and huge consolidated schools...'The thing that promotes livable communities is the small neighborhood schools,’ says Steven Bingler of Concordia Architects in New Orleans. ‘Parents can take their kids to school and participate in their education, which research shows is a key to student success.’ ”
Newsweek
LONGER QUOTES:
“...Now, architects have a very important role in all of this in the design of new schools. Like you I believe that a new school should be at the center of a community, and that the process of designing a new school can bring a community together in many important ways.
"As the U.S. Secretary of Education I had the opportunity to visit with architects and in 1998 we hosted the National Symposium on School Design. Steven Bingler, a noted architect from New Orleans, acted as our consultant in developing the symposium. Out of that symposium came a set of ideas that are starting to make a difference in school design. Let me share a few of them with you.
I. Involve the Community in the design of new schools
One of the most important ideas that came out of the symposium is that all the stakeholders need to be involved in the design of a new school. I believe that getting everyone involved in a community – from students to teachers to local community leaders and seniors citizen – ultimately enhances the design of a school. This idea of real and in depth community engagement is very important.
I am on the Board of Directors of the KnowledgeWorks Foundation in Ohio. The state of Ohio will spend close to $23 billion in the next decade rebuilding all of its schools. It is a massive construction effort. One of the most important things the Foundation has done is to give dozens of communities the upfront planning money to involve as many citizens as possible in the designing the new schools.
Getting people in a community involved in the planning process is an important opportunity for a community to step back and plan its economic future. Let’s remember that the issue isn’t just building the building – the issue is what do our young people need to learn inside that building to be ready for the coming times.
There is no point in spending millions of dollars to build a brand new gleaming high school if it winds up housing an outdated academic program that prepares young people for jobs and opportunities that no longer exist...”
Former Secretary of Education
Richard Riley
Addressing the South Carolina
American Institute of Architects
"...Bingler’s design process emphasizes participant involvement, linking the built environment with the curriculum and incorporating existing resources as much as possible. He devised a master plan for campus development. Building on the museum’s existing facilities – a cafeteria, rest rooms, auditorium, pool – allowed planners to envision a 400-student high school for a fraction of the cost."
Museum News
"The Factory Model: Bingler observes that nearly half of U.S. schools now in use were built in the ‘50s and ‘60s when the 'international style' of architecture was in demand. 'The international style,' Bingler explains, 'reflects a fascination with factories. And some of these 1950s schools are indistinguishable from factories.'
"Bingler calls the factory model a restrictive ideological shell. 'We need to molt that shell that we have created,' insists Bingler. 'The idea of the school as a factory is a relatively new concept. Traditionally, critical thinking and skills have been learned in workshops through apprenticeships and mentorships. I think our best designs for education bring us back to that age-old, reliable method.
Assoc. for Supervision and Curriculum Development
“Designing the Learning Environment"
[RANDY FIELDING] HOW DO YOU ENSURE GOOD COMMUNICATION BETWEEN GROUPS IN DIVERSE COMMUNITIES? [STEVEN BINGLER] We try to promote clear lines of communication between groups. One way to do this is to look for similarities rather than differences. In Hayward, California, we spent 18 months facilitating a master planning process with a community that includes 88 different ethnic populations. In the school system they teach to 43 different languages and dialects. It was the students on the steering committee who first acknowledged that the community's diversity was something that needed to be celebrated rather than criticized...
School Construction News
ANDERTON: Bingler tells his audience communities can create more vibrant schools using the public spaces they already have. He points to the school he designed in the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit. Students use the museum's artifacts to study everything from literature to physics. Bingler says that approach can be repeated anywhere. .....Steven Bingler is one of a growing number of architects looking for ways to bring education into communities. Around the country, schools are being built with space for senior citizens programs, amateur theater and even wedding receptions...
MS. LINDA WARDEN (Chairwoman, Littleton NH School Board): A connected community that values education cradle to grave. That's what we are hoping for.
NPR Morning Edition
...One point worth sharing, Bingler says, is that no one person can solve a community’s problem. “It’s not going to be the mayor or some rich guy,” he says. The solution to building better, he says, is to let the community decide what they want. He gives a brief lesson in democracy: “If you ask people what they want and give it to them, they’re more likely to work to get it, than if you tell them what they need...
New Orleans CityBusiness
The Louisiana Superdome looks like a giant concrete mushroom that has somehow sprouted in the middle of New Orleans. Home to the Saints and the site of five Super Bowls, the dome, like most sports stadiums, merely take up space-in this case, a great deal of space- when it’s not being used for football games or the occasional Celine Dion concert. So when architect Steven Bingler, whose 43rd floor office overlooks much of the Crescent City, gazes down at the massive arena, he sees…potential. “Why not put a school in the Superdome?” he asks, quite seriously. “Do you know how many kids could be turned on by a really innovative sports and fitness curriculum that could be developed there?”
He points to another building below. “That’s City Hall,” he says. “Why not put a school there? How about in a zoo? Or a farm? We’ve got some empty space right here in this building. I like to ask, Where is a place that is not good for school?
Bingler is a leading proponent of taking education out of school buildings-and a chief critic of the factory model, which has long influenced the way schools are designed. According to Bingler, most new school buildings-even the ones with high-tech media centers and movable walls-are simply modified versions of the schools built in the early part of the century.
“What I keep hearing educators talk about is connections-about connecting learning to real-life experiences.” “Yet the schools we’re building now-and we’re spending $15 billion a year building and fixing schools-create an atmosphere that’s just the opposite of that. They exclude the community. In most cases, the community can’t get in, and students can’t get out. And that isolation is augmented and supported by the facility.”
“His idea is to bring people together who usually don’t talk to each other but have the same interests,” says superintendent Sam Sentelle of Putnam County, West Virginia.
“Steve’s a visionary and bomb thrower,” says Steve Hamp, president of the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village. “He’s considerably ahead of where most of us are in thinking about schools and education.”
Bingler is on the cutting edge of school design, but many of his ideas can be traced to an architect born in the 18th century: Thomas Jefferson.
Teacher Magazine
“City Hall is a great place for a school,” Bingler said. “Why not? Why are we building an auditorium in a school? How often are the council chambers used? This is a management problem, not a facilities problem. We have more square footage than we could ever use if we only managed it right. And children would get a more compelling education.”
Schools need to return to being connected with their communities and with local businesses, said Bingler, who built a charter school within the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich., and is planning a school at the New Orleans Zoo.
Rather than trying to tough it out with scant resources, he said, it makes more sense for schools to join with large institutions in the community: hospitals, corporations and cities, all of which can offer not only financial backing but a wealth of resources and mentors to help students learn in a real-world context.
“My goal,” Bingler said, “is to develop schools that are more integrated with the real world. That’s what the kids want”.
Sun-Sentinel - Fort Lauderdale, FL
While the nation’s school construction needs are estimated to exceed $112 billion, architect Steven Bingler tells local officials that their most important resource is right under their noses: It’s the students.
Bingler, an architect and planner and principal at Concordia Architects in New Orleans is happy to share his and other heretical notions about the design of America’s schools. In the process, he’s persuading a growing number of communities to rethink many of their long-held assumptions about how to build schools – even as they work to reform education itself.
In the classrooms, “information architecture,” as Bingler calls some of the design elements, encourages students to engage with their surroundings. They can use transparent switch plates to calculate how much electricity they’re consuming and stage energy conservation contests with other classes. They can also customize their classroom walls, which Bingler designed, along with assistant from craftsmen at the Ford Motor Company.
“What Steven brings is an effort to integrate the space you need for the school into a total environment.” Says Bill Pretzer, the museum’s director of educational programs. “The teachers are already saying, “Our classroom is the whole museum. We have studios to hold classes, but we really have the entire space. We can permeate the walls.” Pretzer adds that the academy’s presence in the museum may make it the most visited public school in the world. “Steven’s stamp shows in the extent to which the school is integrated and resourceful rather than monumental,” Pretzer says.
“The process gets people thinking about their schools. They begin to ask, for instance, “Where can kids be educated, and by whom?” says Heidi Goodrich, a Project Zero Consultant.
Bingler encourages participants to buy into his idea that a learning environment should extend to parks, museums, public buildings – the entire community. He’s cobbled together a philosophy from an assortment of educational and civic movements. “The ultimate product that I bring is an informed series of choices, not the answers,” Bingler says.
This may sound out of character for a member of a profession accustomed to delivering solutions, but after a few moments of conversation with this passionate soul, it’s clear that Bingler is more than willing to bend the idea of what an architect does in order to achieve this vision. In fact, it is the driving force of his career.
Among his ideas he hopes to test is a software package he developed to catalogue a community’s resources. “The program will give you information about where to find lessons about geometry in the build environment, or the natural environment – not unlike what Thomas Jefferson did at the Uni versity of Virginia, except you had to go there to get it,” he explains. “In this case you might just pick up a video phone or dial in on the web.”
This is the kind of big picture thinking that gets Bingler juiced up. And then, not only is his energy palpable, but it becomes clear why so many have been willing to get on this bus, even though they don’t know exactly where it’s headed.
Metropolis
Bingler says that schools today are a model in disconnection, particularly when it comes to the community. “There’s a perception in education that learning is abstract,” he argues. “We’ve isolated learning so much from this rich context in which we live every day. We can’t help but end up teaching children information that isn’t relevant.”
In its design and planning, Concordia has made an effort to get students connected to the world outside the classroom.
Robert Horan has been superintendent of the White Mountain Schools Administrative Unit #35 in New Hampshire for the past eight years. During his tenure as superintendent, a number of the unit’s schools have been rebuilt using the traditional design approach. However, Horan is taking a different tack on the rebuilding of the Littleton high school.
“As a superintendent, this is the route to go. It’s better use of my time, and I’m not in the position of salesperson,” says Horan. “I get to work with the group and be creative. It frees us up not being locked into the traditional factory-model school.”
Office.com
“Thinking Outside the Box in School Design”
...What these projects have in common is Steven Bingler, a New Orleans architect who specializes in helping school districts come to a consensus on their vision for an innovative facility, or sometimes, even a broader consensus on their educational future.
What is unusual about Bingler’s planning process is the scope of the discussion, the participation of such a broad range of people, and the level of detail the community members become involved in. “Most school architects do a version of what Steven Bingler does,” said William Stevenson, an Arizona architect who is the chairman of the Architectural Institute of America’s education committee.
“But I think Steven takes it further than most do,” Stevenson continued. “He gets into more dialogue than most of our school board clients feel would be appropriate for their community. He created designs that are beyond what most people are doing.”
Says Willa Riley, “In larger cities, they have facilities we don’t have in a small area. We wanted the school to be an integral part of our community. It brought us together as a community.”
In Calhoun County, Assistant Superintendent Donald Pitts credit the extensive planning process with generating the community support needed to pass a bond issue that helped pay for some elements of the school design not covered by state grants. “The people involved in this process got to know what it takes to put together a school building,” said Pitts.
“The collaboration process was so powerful, it was the highlight of anything I’ve been involved in education,” Glassberg said.
PROBE
"When it comes to schools, architect Steven Bingler is more interested in hermit crabs.
...Mr. Bingler is one of a small vanguard of architects attempting to fit school buildings to the needs of children, rather than the other way around. They are translating many of the guiding principles of school reform into bricks and mortar. And they are devising innovative strategies for stretching resources at a time when budget-conscious school boards are caught between swelling enrollments and tight-fisted taxpayers.
Mr. Bingler’s New Orleans firm, Concordia, Inc. designs schools that look upon the entire community as an educational resource.
Architect Steven Bingler intentionally left design elements transparent. Light switches are covered in clear plastic, for example so kids can see the wiring. For teachers, the glass walls help overcome a professional hazard: isolation. “You can look over and see other teachers, and know that you’re part of a collaboration,” says Anne Jeannette Lasovage, a teaching intern.
To build consensus for a new design, Mr. Bingler brings together at least 100 people – teachers, students, parents and community members – in a nine-month planning process he likens to a barn-raising.
The Wall Street Journal
“Some of my colleagues think I’m nuts,” says New Orleans architect Steven Bingler, a chief proponent of taking education out of school buildings. “A museum can be a great school. A hospital can be a great school. A national park can be a great school.” If Bingler’s ideas catch on, in the future we may not build schools at all.
Newsweek
"For 12 years, he (Steven Bingler) has promoted the idea of building smaller schools that act as community hubs, serving students during the day and the public at night...Bingler said the approach would not only save money and avoid duplication of services, but help raise student test scores...The district is already putting that philosophy into action. In the Mid-Wilshire District, Bingler is working with residents who have identified potential locations for six 400-student schools to help relieve overcrowding at Cahuenga Elementary."
Daily News Los Angeles
(MARY HESS) THE NATION’S SCHOOLS DESPERATELY NEED UPDATING, BUT MANY DISTRICTS CAN’T AFFORD TO REDESIGN. DO THEY HAVE ALTERNATIVES? (Steven Bingler) “It’s time, says Bingler "to change our 20th century thinking about how to build schools”. He suggests putting schools in existing spaces, anything from an empty hospital wing to a museum.
“Teachers and students want to get out of the schools, to be connected to the real world, ” says Bingler, who has designed a high school inside the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. “The most important thing is student achievement. The right environment can really lift kids up to learn.”
“The nation can no longer afford to have buildings serve only one purpose”, adds Bingler. He’s currently developing a proposal that would help public schools in Washington, D.C., take advantage of “the world’s biggest school” – the Smithsonian Institution museum complex.
Schools, Bingler also believes, need to be built for and open to their surrounding communities. School buildings can double as multicultural arts centers. High school auditoriums can serve as community centers. And school gymnasiums can be turned, after hours, into public fitness centers.
Bingler can even imagine establishing a school inside a stadium. “It’s empty all week. You could just move into it,” he reasons, adding that he’s inspired by teachers interested in athletics-focused curricula.
NEA TODAY
"...The report, 'What If: New Schools, Better Neighborhoods,' reinforces a number of other recent efforts calling for far more coordinated planning of major new facilities in California......'What If,' written by Steven Bingler and funded by the Irvine Foundation, raises a set of issues and possibilities that put schools at the very center of that discussion. It rests on two major premises: that schools ought not just be places where children go from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., but should be community centers, open until late into the evening for meetings and recreation, and should include day care, arts centers, community health clinics and other social services; and that planning for community-centered schools should be part of smart-growth policies to create magnets for urban development and thus encourage new inner-city housing and employment opportunities, improved mobility and reduced suburban migration."
The Sacramento BEE