Schools that Breathe

Studio Education in the Pandemic

Sara Jensen Carr Michael Murphy
Northeastern University MASS Design Group

Ana McIntosh John Ochsendorf

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Massachusetts Institute of Technology

in the United States for most of the

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically exposed twentieth century. However, faced
with the novel coronavirus, which as
the vulnerabilities of the American public school of this writing still does not have an
system. The architecture of educational buildings approved vaccine for children under
12, ensuring ventilation in schools
themselves became the flashpoint in discussions has become a topic of interest and
about equity, support for teachers, and student urgency. Although outdoor exposure
and fresh air were features once
health. In a recent graduate architecture studio central to an entire movement of
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, school design, it has largely been
engineered out of our schools and
students considered the proposition of the other institutional buildings in the
pandemic-resilient school by proposing retrofits interest of indoor climate control
rather than air exchanges sufficient
to increase fresh air ventilation to existing school to control the airborne virus. In
buildings and add outdoor classrooms. This a recent article for Technology |
Architecture + Design, architect Michael
seemingly straightforward exercise was a gateway Murphy argued:
to much larger issues, such as the intersections
We have made systems “smarter”
between air ventilation and educational inequality, but buildings “dumber,” and
as the studio responded to unfolding evidence and our post-pandemic building
stock lacks adaptability to crisis
a global emergency in real time. conditions, exacerbated by
our blind reliance on technol-
ogy. That new normal—that
Keywords: health and education, were these two questions posed as the air around us can infect,
architecture, government/public being in conflict with each other? harm, and kill us—is not new.
The commonality of these two—at Buildings were once thought
Introduction times contrasting—positions is of as part of a health system,
In the United States, public schools a fundamental right, though: the however imprecise. Before
became a primary battleground of right to breathe, and by extension, mechanical systems, the
the COVID-19 pandemic. Amidst the right to spaces that allow us design of airflow shaped walls,
the uncertainty of emerging and to breathe safely. In this way, the floorplates, and envelopes.2
changing evidence on transmis- pandemic reveals an underlying
sion pathways, many were forced truth; that our health is inextricably In our Fall 2020 studio
to confront a complicated knot of linked to the physical architecture at Massachusetts Institute of
priorities and questions focused of buildings. The SARS-CoV-2 virus, Technology, we were interested in
on the basic rights of the citizenry. which causes the COVID-19 illness, engaging the question of what the
What is the right of our children is airborne, similar to how illnesses pandemic-resilient school could be
to in-person education? What is such as tuberculosis and measles in both the technological and social
the right of our teachers to a safe spread.1 Due to vaccines, those latter realms, and how health is provisioned
workplace? Why, in this crisis, diseases have been largely eradicated through architecture not just in the

60
Figure 1. Fresh air classroom at rest hour, Public School #51, Manhattan, New York, 1911. Image courtesy of
Goldsberry Collection, Library of Congress.
acute or individual sense, but in the
larger community. To consider the
gradient of design challenges that
the public school offers, we brought
our respective expertise as a practic-
ing architect specializing in both
health care and institutional spaces
(Murphy), a structural engineer and
building technologist (Ochsendorf),
and an architect/landscape architect
specializing in health and built
environment relationships (Carr).
Engaging a global emergency at the
local scale in real time presented
its own pedagogical and ethical
challenges. On-the-ground investi-
gation and relationships with key
community partners was just the
foundations of the analytical portion
of the studio. However, the willing-
ness of our students to tackle an
unconventional studio brief that
shifted in response to changing
evidence and local politics resulted
in a series of rich proposals that
reimagine the public school and
its programs as an institution
that is porous and integrated with
their contexts, resilient to future
pandemics and a changing climate.
By first locating the public school
historically, socially, and locally, we
Carr et al.
asked students to engage with the
full complexities of what appeared
on its surface to be a technical
exercise, and to confront the role
of architecture in health outcomes
from the scale of the individual to
the community, which will become
increasingly crucial knowledge for
designers in the face of the present
and future pandemics.
Historical Context: The Fresh Air
Movement in Schools
In the early twentieth century,
ventilation and outdoor classrooms
were physical and programmatic
features of many schools, with
roots in historical pandemics.
Fresh air and exposure to sunlight
were found to be curative for both
children and adults during both
the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic
and the waves of tuberculosis that
hit Europe and the United States
in the early part of the twentieth
century. Even so, throughout this
crisis the societal responsibility to
provide an education to ailing or
at-risk children prevailed. In 1894
the Floating Hospital for Children
(the entity now known as Tufts
Children’s Hospital) employed boats
JAE 76:1
Figure 2. Pupil in open-air school, Providence,
Rhode Island, January 1912. Image courtesy
George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of
Congress.
as outdoor classrooms in Boston
Harbor, as salt air was thought to be
especially beneficial.3 The immediacy
of the epidemics required these
kinds of ad hoc interventions; a
1911 photo from Manhattan’s Public
School 51 simply shows windows
of the traditional schoolhouse
wide open, with children lying on
cots and wrapped in thick layers
of blankets, and “Fresh Air Class”
written on the blackboard (Figure 1).
In time, though, fresh air exposure
became central to entire pedagogi-
cal movements, as exhibited by the
Open-Air Schools that originated in
Europe in 1904, which provided both
instruction and medical supervision
for ailing children.4
The first known example of the
Open-Air School in the United States
was the Providence School in Rhode
Island, opened 1908, although the
classrooms were reserved for children
in either the early stages of tubercu-
losis or considered most vulnerable
to it. These at-risk students, many of
whom lived in the city’s tenements,
were largely selected by physicians
and child health advocates Dr.
Mary S. Packard and Dr. Ellen
61
Stone, along with a team of nurses.
The classrooms were located on
the second floor of an empty brick
building which was renovated with
floor-to-ceiling windows on either
side to let in natural daylight and
to increase ventilation. Students
sat inside wearable blankets with
heated soapstones under their feet
and were provided with hot meals
(Figure 2). Although a small stove
helped provide some warmth,
the room was within ten degrees
Fahrenheit of the outdoor tempera-
ture. At the end of the year, students
who had been exposed to tubercu-
losis had not gotten sick and in fact
their health had improved over the
year.5 The success of the Providence
School approach soon spread to other Figure 3. Corona Avenue School outdoor classrooms, Bell, California, 1935, Richard Neutra. Image
schools, and by 1918, another 130 courtesy Security Pacific National Bank Collection, Los Angeles Public Library.
American cities had followed suit.
Even after the severity of the
tuberculosis epidemic waned,
the altruistic origins of design
and operation of early fresh air
classrooms would in later decades
be co-opted by wealthier, suburban
school districts seeking to marry the
benefits of environmental exposure
with experimental pedagogies
and architecture. The Corona
Avenue Elementary School in Bell,
California, designed by Richard
Neutra and the Crow Island School
in Winnetka, Illinois, designed by
Lawrence Perkins, are canonical
examples of this intersection.
At Corona Avenue, built in 1935,
Neutra took lessons from his work
designing schools in Puerto Rico and
featured hinged doors that opened
completely to the outdoors and Figure 4. Crow Island Elementary school, Winnetka, IL, 1940, Eero Saarinen. Image courtesy Historic
strategic openings that allowed for Architecture and Landscape Image Collection, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archive, The
Art Institute of Chicago.
continuous ventilation6 (Figure 3).
The Crow Island School, completed
in 1940, prioritized ample natural hundreds of thousands of schoolchil- was a shift from the highly localized
lighting, warm wood, and brick dren attended school in condemned model of neighborhood schools to
(Figure 4), with rooms that opened or temporary buildings. However, bigger, steel framed buildings that
up to semi-private gardens nestled this crisis in physical infrastruc- could expand educational offerings
between individual classrooms, ture led the federal government to and serve larger student populations.
as can be seen in the site plan enormously increase its investment Another massive investment in public
(Figure 5). The progressivism in public schools via the Public schools would follow in the 1960s
exemplified by these schools was not Works Administration between 1933 and early 1970s, mostly in suburban
representative of the wider landscape and 1939. Neutra’s Corona Avenue districts.7 By this time, after the
of school architecture, though. In addition was heavily funded under advent of antibiotics and vaccines,
fact, during the Great Depression, this program, but another effect and given the subsequent reliance

62 Schools that Breathe

 examples of schools across the
country where schools met more
formal needs by serving as polling
stations, food distribution centers,
or disaster-preparedness hubs,
offering microgrid power supply
and/or shelter beds in case of an
emergency. In archival research
done for one of the existing schools
in the Cambridge school district,
our immediate context, we found
a plan from 1929 showing that the
Fletcher-Maynard Academy, one
of the schools under study, had
even offered public showers on the
basement floor level, speaking to the
importance of schools at this time for
promoting community amenities and
public health on a more expansive
level. Long-term planning, creative
financing, and architectural flexibil-
ity in the design and use of school
Figure 5. Crow Island Elementary school, Winnetka, IL, 1940, Eero Saarinen. Image courtesy Historic facilities are crucial in supporting
Architecture and Landscape Image Collection, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archive, The civic programming for the health of
Art Institute of Chicago.
the wider community.

on air conditioning in schools, the
curative nature of open-air schools
became less of a priority.
Schools as Community Centers
With the historical precedents in
mind, we first asked our students to
consider the evolution of the public
school as both a physical and social
space. During the early twentieth
century, leaders within architec-
ture and urbanism recognized
the school as central to the health
and vitality of the neighborhood.
Famed educational reformer John
Dewey emphasized the importance
of natural light and fresh air for
learning alongside hands-on instruc-
tion in cooking, gardening, and shop
work alongside more traditional
academic subjects.8 In Chicago,
Dwight Perkins developed standards
for schools that, in addition to
providing educational spaces for
students, also included auditori-
ums, school libraries, vocational
classrooms, vegetable gardens, and
playgrounds for the use of the greater
community.9 Sociologist, urban
planner, and educator Clarence Perry
describes a similar role for the school
in his theory of the Neighborhood
Unit, where the school is centrally
located for better walkability and
provides facilities for neighborhood
meetings and activities, and play.10
Although the role of the
physical school in many American
neighborhoods has largely been
decentralized, students in our
studio explored contemporary
precedents where schools success-
fully adopted strategies for serving
those beyond the student population.
For example, shared schoolyard
policies implemented in many
towns and cities have participating
schools offer outdoor space for the
community to play in on weekends
and off-hours. The San Francisco
Shared Schoolyard Project (SSYP)
also provides additional program-
ming and site monitors to support
the health of nearby residents in
the city’s most impacted areas.11 In
addition to providing play spaces
through partnerships like shared
schoolyards, schools can also serve
as locations for informal events such
as community athletics, events,
markets, or festivals. Students in
this studio explored contemporary
Physical Infrastructures, Health, and
Equity
We also examined how the physical
space of buildings influences
learning outcomes, and by extension
educational equity. There are
various studies that support how
the physical environment of the
classroom impacts students’ learning
and test scores. The World Green
Building Council describes how
healthy schools should consider four
features including indoor air quality
and ventilation, lighting, noise and
acoustics, and thermal comfort.
Improving each of these conditions
has direct implications for students’
well-being and performance.12 A
1999 study performed on behalf
of the California Board for Energy
Efficiency which analyzed test results
data from over 21,000 students
in three counties, found that
students with the most daylight-
ing in their classrooms significantly
outperformed those students with
less.13 Another study demonstrated
the importance of thermal comfort,
where sixth grade students from 334
schools were tested in mathemat-
ics over one month. Those who did

Carr et al. JAE 76:1 63

Figure 6. Left: Daylighting analysis demonstrating locations where spaces achieve recommended daylight autonomy levels of 300 lux for more than fifty
percent of occupied hours. Right: Radiation analysis to determine PV potential of the surfaces of the school roof and facade. Images by Ginevra D’Agostino, Ana
McIntosh, Carol-Anne Rodrigues and Lynced Torres.
not experience uncomfortably warm
indoor temperatures were reported
as having four percent higher test
scores than those who experienced
high temperatures daily.14 Sullivan
and Li also found that even views of
green landscapes from the classroom
improved attention and therefore
test performance, as viewing or being
in green spaces has shown to improve
recovery from stress and fatigue.15
These studies are just a few of many
that demonstrate the importance of
a student’s physical environment as
an important factor in mental health
and performance, in addition to
ensuring their comfort and health.
The physical environment of schools
has real effects on equity and the
socioeconomic mobility of students,
particularly in the United States,
where funding and reform has been
increasingly tied to standardized
test scores, in part due to the legacy
of the 2001 No Child Left Behind
Act. The architectural quality of
American classroom environments
is often reflective of the wealth of
the neighborhoods where they are
built. In the United States, public
schools receive funding roughly
broken into the following sources:
federal funding (eight percent), state
funding (forty-seven percent), and
local district funding (forty-five
percent).16 Local tax revenue funds
a large majority of capital construc-
tion projects, meaning a district’s
ability to pay for renovation or new
64 Schools that Breathe
construction of school facilities is
tied to the wealth of the communi-
ty.17 This means that schools in
high-poverty areas with low property
values are often underfunded, which
further perpetuates inequality
when the physical infrastructure of
schools cannot assure the safety and
health of the students, teachers, and
staff and cannot foster productive
learning environments.
Field of Inquiry
With the historical and social
context of public schools in mind, we
chose to locate our field of inquiry
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the
city where MIT is located as well.
Cambridge Public Schools (CPS)
serves nearly 7,000 children, with just
over half of them in pre-K through
fifth grade.18 Preliminary discussions
with the chief operating officer of
the school district indicated that
there was a need to evaluate six
particular elementary schools as
well as for a master plan that would
indicate necessary upgrades and
maintenance. School buildings
that have not been renovated for
more than 25 years are particularly
problematic for the school district,
with substandard building envelopes
and lack of access to fresh air and
outdoor learning spaces. It is also
worth noting that while the median
household income of Cambridge is
twenty-eight percent higher than the
state median, the budget for capital
improvements remains limited. As
noted by our CPS contacts and a city
official, new buildings tend to get
more funding over maintenance or
upgrades for older school buildings,
which is typical of many American
school districts. Even before delving
into the physical conditions of each
building, students found that each
school held a particular importance
within the CPS ecosystem; for
example, only some schools hosted
afterschool programs, certain
Cambridge schools had signifi-
cantly larger student populations of
English learners or students in free
lunch programs compared to the
other schools in the district, and
others were specifically designated
as schools for children with disabili-
ties. These findings across the
school system were synthesized in
data visualizations to understand
pedagogical and social priorities
when focusing on individual design
interventions.
In designing the scope of the
studio assignment, we decided that
students would ultimately propose
retrofits to existing schools to
increase fresh air ventilation and
design outdoor classrooms for each
school. The real-world parameters of
this studio required us as faculty to
consider the ethical and pedagogical
challenges of a studio engaging with
an urgent and contentious problem
in real time. We all subscribed to the
notion that architecture should be

a service profession but noted the
potential pitfalls of wading into this
particularly charged arena. In a 1977
article for this journal, Herbert Gans
wrote, “Traditionally, architects
have wanted to improve society
through better building, whether
or not this actually improved
society in a way that society
wanted to be improved.”19 While
ideally undertaking the question of
pandemic-resilient schools would
involve close observation and
interviews with teachers, students,
and even parents, we did not want to
place further stress on any of these
user groups, but still felt the goal of
analyzing and designing for “schools
that breathe” could be done under
the restrictions of the pandemic
while offering opportunities for
the students to think innovatively
about spatial opportunities and the
social role of school buildings. The
chief operating officer and facilities
director of Cambridge Public
Schools, who were dealing with
the ventilation issue and physical
infrastructure of the buildings most
Carr et al.
directly, acted as points of contact
for the school district and virtually
visited the studio throughout the
semester, providing valuable insight
for the most pressing challenges for
each of the six schools analyzed.
With their input, we made plans to
produce a final book of recommenda-
tions and ideas to be given to CPS’s
school committee, summarizing
and synthesizing work from each
student’s final project.
Site Analysis
In the first half of the semester,
students performed in-depth
technical and demographic analyses
of the six schools that had been
identified by the district as those
that would benefit most from
physical improvements as well as
innovative design thought. Students
were given existing floor plans as a
starting point, but also consulted
original plans as was possible, dating
to as early as 1903, found at the
Massachusetts State Archive. While
some students were still remote and/
or overseas due to the pandemic,
JAE 76:1
Figure 7. Ventilation analysis using
COVID-19 Indoor Safety Guidelines
app to determine safe occupancy for
existing school spaces. Image by Ana
Arenas and Carol-Anne Rodrigues.
local students documented and
analyzed the existing conditions
of the six schools and worked in
groups to identify design priorities.
Using additional measurements,
on-site observations, and drone
photography, students developed
detailed elevation drawings, 3D
models, materials studies, and
site plans. They conducted wind,
radiation, daylighting, and ventila-
tion analyses using climate modeling
programs such as DIVA-for-Rhino,
Ladybug Tools, and ClimateStudio
to determine the impact of climatic
conditions on the existing site
(Figure 6). In the absence of being
able to physically measure air
exchange (and at this time, clear
guidelines for ventilation), students
calculated occupancy, use, and time
spent in each room using a digital
application in development to find
priority areas for intervention.20
Students also identified spaces
that were potentially problematic
in pandemic events due to lack of
exterior ventilation or crowding, i.e.,
bathrooms, pinch points at entrances
65
Figure 8. On-site midterm review student presentations accommodating both in-person and remote participants. Photographs by Jonathon Brearley.
and exits, cafeterias, and gyms.
Students conducted a technical
analysis of the Cambridgeport
School (Figure 7). This is an example
of the analysis and design process
undertaken for each school building,
as similar issues were discovered
across the school district.
The original plans for
Cambridgeport demonstrated that
the building was outfitted to provide
natural ventilation and plenty of
daylighting into the classroom
spaces. The original classrooms
were placed on the corners of the
buildings with large fenestrations,
which maximized the possibil-
ity for cross-ventilation and ample
daylighting. Although the addition
constructed in the 1990s doubled the
size of the building, its implementa-
tion negated many of the passive
design strategies included to support
healthy learning spaces. In addition
to closing off all windows on the
north facade of the building, the
addition itself contained continu-
ous solid walls with few windows,
almost none of which were operable,
favoring a sealed envelope dependent
upon mechanical systems. Additional
“upgrades” to the historic building,
such as air conditioning units placed
in open windows, make it impossi-
ble to take advantage of natural
66 Schools that Breathe
ventilation during warmer months
and create large thermal breaks in
the facade in winter.
In small groups, students
performed the existing technical
and demographic analyses and
made initial design recommenda-
tions. These recommendations
were organized by scale, ranging
from “small” interventions such
as fenestration modifications to
“medium” proposals utilizing
adjacent spaces for outdoor learning
and “large” interventions such as
reimagining the building core to
allow for passive ventilation in more
classrooms. We held a midterm
presentation on-site in Cambridge
to a panel of critics, including
parents from the school district. We
produced a physical book of all the
students’ analyses and initial design
recommendations that was given to
each participant to reference during
the review and we walked to three
of our six sites. All the elementary
schools were still remote at this time,
and student groups presented outside
in baseball fields, parking lots across
the street from sites, and in adjacent
playgrounds (Figure 8). All jurors and
students, both in-person and remote,
were dialed into a Zoom call via their
cell phones and tablets, filmed live
by the teaching assistant. Though all
physical attendees were masked for
the review in October 2020, students,
faculty, and critics alike were
energized by an in-person meeting,
prior to which all participants were
asked to receive a negative coronavi-
rus test result. Seeing and walking
around the schools in person allowed
the students to speak to their
recommendations with increased
specificity and for critics to similarly
share their feedback while making
direct references to the buildings
and allowed everyone to experience
the particularities of each site. In
all, the in-person midterm review
energized the studio for the final
stretch of design work, and it was the
only point in the semester when the
majority of the studio came together
in person.
Proposals and Emergent Themes
In the last part of the semester,
each student selected one of the
six schools for interventions. They
were given a simple directive for
design: to propose renovations to the
existing envelope of the building to
improve fresh air ventilation and find
opportunities on the school grounds
for outdoor classrooms, which
naturally opened up other modes of
inquiry about the larger responsibili-
ties of the school building itself, as
Figure 9. Elevation drawing showing opening of the school building to extend school program into the street and to engage community programming. Image by
Lynced Torres and Ana McIntosh.
well as designs that served multiple
purposes towards them. Consistent
themes in all the students’ proposals
were decreased energy consumption,
porosity to the outdoors and the wider
community, and pedagogical propositions.
As mentioned in the
Cambridgeport School example
above, the technical analyses in the
first part of the semester showed that
the envelopes of many of the schools,
especially those built after the
1930s, were much more dependent
on HVAC systems for climate
control and were therefore more
impenetrable. Renovation proposals
for schools offered a range of small
and large-scale solutions to maximize
natural ventilation and daylight-
ing as a response to the technical
analyses conducted by the students.
For example, in their proposal for
the Kennedy Longfellow school,
students emphasized the importance
of small changes, such as replacing
the single-pane inoperable windows
with double-pane operable ones for
better insulation in the winter and
the opportunity for natural ventila-
tion during warmer months. More
significant interventions included
the reconfiguration of programming
in the west wing of the building to
make room for a central courtyard,
where airflow from the windows
could create a cooling stack effect,
and where a breakdown of massing
provided for increased daylighting in
the classroom spaces. Not only did
suggestions such as these contribute
to healthier learning spaces, but they
also decreased energy dependence
and overall carbon emissions.
Carr et al.
Introducing porosity to the
building envelope in many cases
led to porosity in engaging the
community as well. A first-stage
group proposal for the Fletcher-
Maynard Academy opened the facade
of the building during school hours
with full height garage doors. The
doors opened to Windsor Street,
where vehicle traffic was redirected,
allowing the street itself to serve as
much-needed outdoor classroom
and community event space. This
one intervention provided better
daylighting and ventilation to the
school’s basement and first floor
and at the same time utilized an
architectural gesture to rethink the
relationship of the school site to
both the street and the surround-
ing neighborhood (Figure 9).
Finding opportunities for outdoor
classrooms in highly urban sites
forced students to think about
other underutilized spaces in and
adjacent to each building. In several
cases, rooftops were repurposed
as classroom and activity spaces,
opening the buildings vertically as
well as horizontally. In one student’s
proposal for Cambridgeport,
gymnasium functions were moved to
the roof, alleviating occupancy in an
identified problem area (Figure 10).
In another proposal for the Amigos
School, a student proposed a rooftop
garden and adjacent classrooms
with swiveling wall panels that could
completely open to the outdoors,
much in the spirit of Neutra’s Corona
Avenue school (Figure 11).
Lastly, just as the architecture
of the open-air schools was inspired
JAE 76:1
by new pedagogical approaches, an
inverse relationship occurred in our
studio, where interventions that
began in the physical architecture
naturally led to students thinking
about the possibility for educational
innovations as well. All six schools
under consideration in this studio
have partnerships with CitySprouts,
a local non-profit organization that
partners with public school districts
to provide science learning opportu-
nities through hands-on gardening.
The executive director and educators
from CitySprouts virtually visited
our classroom in one session to talk
about their mission and day to day,
and several students accounted for
expanded gardening and distribution
space in their interventions, as well
as making portions of the grounds
publicly accessible for increased
community engagement. For this
particular climate, it would of course
have been most beneficial to interact
with the district’s teachers, but given
the volatile political climate and
stresses they were under, we chose
to concentrate on our findings from
secondary research on pedagogical
approaches instead.
Another student project for
the Baldwin School focused on
ecopsychology, where the relation-
ship between the psyche and the
natural environment became primary
drivers for design and the school
grounds itself became a teaching tool
for students. On one side of the site,
a rain garden with bioswales provides
for rainwater management and
environmental learning (Figure 12).
A proposed rainwater harvesting
67
Figure 10. Section perspective through Cambridgeport showing gymnasium functions moved to the roof. Image by Carol-Anne Rodrigues.

Figure 11. Plan of rooftop garden and adjacent classrooms with swiveling wall panels for indoor/outdoor classroom flexibility. Image by Katharine Kettner.

roof design collects water to service
faucets in a highly visible catchment
basin, where sustainable systems and
cycles can be observed. For one of
the larger schools studied, a complex
including both the Peabody and
the Rindge Avenue Upper School,
additions to the rooftop accommo-
date pedagogical programs that
engage children with questions
of food production and sustain-
ability. Spaces include a teaching
greenhouse, a cafeteria, outdoor
classrooms, and outdoor eating
space while serving as a multiseason
growing environment for community
gardeners as well (Figure 13).
The directive for outdoor
classrooms also required students
to think about the challenge of
nature-based learning in urban
areas. One of the schools analyzed
(Fletcher-Maynard), is a Title I
school; fifty-one percent of its
students come from economically
disadvantaged households, compared
to the district average of thirty-two
percent and the overall state average
of thirty-seven percent . In addition,
more than three-quarters of the
students at the school identify as part
of a minority population, similar to
the state average of seventy-seven
percent but higher compared to the
district average of forty-nine percent.
Approximately one-third of the
students have disabilities, a number
comparable to the state but higher
than the district average, which is

68 Schools that Breathe

 Figure 12. Cross-
section through rain
garden, where the
building becomes
a science and
environmental
teaching tool at the
Baldwin School. Image
by Ana Arenas.

Figure 13. Axonometric

view of Kennedy-
Longfellow School
showing how an
existing roof is
reprogrammed to
accommodate a
pedagogical focus on
food production and
sustainability. Image by
Ana Arenas, Jonathon
Brearley, Florence Ma,
and Nare Filiposyan.

just short of one-fourth.21 Fletcher-
Maynard’s current site is small, the
only outdoor play spaces located
on concrete and rubber surfaces
on one side of the site and on the
roof, making nature-based learning
more of a challenge. In response to
this condition, one student’s design
proposed an addition across the
street, which turned an underuti-
lized parking lot into a public pre-K
building with outdoor classroom
spaces and rain garden play area
ensconced away from the busy street
(Figure 14). The decision to program
this building for a public pre-K was in
response to the deep need for quality
child care and education sensitive to
the learning needs of children with
disabilities, particularly for those
families in the neighborhood who
cannot afford it.
Some projects synthesized all
three of these emergent themes
of energy resilience, porosity, and
pedagogy. One student’s approach
to a renovation proposal for
Cambridgeport foregrounded design
priorities including breathability as
well as the promotion of community
health and engagement (Figures
15 and 16). The historic building
is primarily preserved with a few
organizational changes and flexibil-
ity to create naturally ventilated
indoor/outdoor spaces on the ground
floor to support community life
and food-teaching programs. These
include an outdoor auditorium

Carr et al. JAE 76:1 69


Figure 14. Plan drawing showing the new public pre-K building addition across from the Fletcher-Maynard
Academy site. Massing along the street enables quiet and safe outdoor classroom, play and rain garden
areas behind. Image by Ana McIntosh.
(Figure 15, bottom left) and
classrooms connected to a forestry
lab (Figure 15, top left). Replacing
underutilized hardscaping, this
proposal carves at the ground,
opening up the basement floor of
the historic building to receive light
and ventilation. Wooden tiered
seating interspersed with planters
are referred to as “growing steps,”
which act as an outdoor classroom
during school hours and informal
auditorium seating for community
events. The addition constructed
in the 1990s is demolished and
replaced with programs including
teaching kitchens, a food yard
expanding the partnership with
CitySprouts to facilitate hands-on
science education, multiseason
classrooms, and a public courtyard
and cafe. These are organized off a
single-loaded corridor and contain
foldable walls that can be opened
to provide natural ventilation or to
provide a physical connection to the
outdoors. The student also aimed
to connect to the school’s history
of providing natural ventilation by
inserting air stacks throughout the
building, which one reviewer noted
could conflict with cross-ventilation
strategies, but we also encouraged
exploring system redundancy due
70 Schools that Breathe
to the focus on passive strategies.
Solar panels on the roof support the
building on a day-to-day basis, but
also serve as a microgrid in case of
disaster. These energy features are
deliberately visible to the students
so they can learn about sustainable
systems (Figure 17).
Reflections
This project, and several others
in the studio, sought to reestab-
lish some of the effective design
strategies incorporated in
educational buildings in the
early twentieth century, such as
prioritizing natural daylighting
and ventilation. It also draws from
pedagogical approaches that center
on discovery and project-based
learning. The projects propose the
school building not only as a place
of learning for enrolled students,
but also as critical infrastructure
for the support of community life
and health. There were signifi-
cant limitations to the studio
fully engaging the depth of this
topic, chiefly being able to directly
engage with teachers and students
for the reasons mentioned above,
but also not being able to access
the interior of the building to get
detailed measures on airflow. The
final review, which included panels
of landscape architects, architects,
building scientists, city councilors,
and our contacts in CPS facilities,
was a rich conversation that
revealed that the transformative
solutions proposed by the students
were received favorably but also
often came directly into conflict
with the way American schools
have been conceived of, funded,
and built for over a century. The
physical and ideological porosity
of our reconceived schools to the
community brings up the security
concerns that have increasingly
influenced the most recent decades
of school design. The curricula
imagined by the students, as well
as what some critics noted was
perhaps an “unrealistic occupation
of the outdoors” would have to pass
muster with school committees and
teachers’ unions. Standards and
practices for acoustics, fireproofing,
and maintenance would all have to
be transformed alongside continu-
ous passive ventilation strategies.
However, this cuts to the core of
our particular problem. For so long,
architecture has designed for airflow
after an assumption of thermal
comfort, rather than prioritizing
healthful air first, and designing
for comfort within that baseline
condition. In a sense this extends
to larger planning practices as
well; there are of course schools in
environmental injustice communities
where due to years of racist policies
and federal disinvestment, more
exposure to outdoor environments
actually represents an increased
threat to health. How might our
urban landscapes as a whole be
transformed if the right to breathe
was a foundational ethos in the
shaping of neighborhoods and cities?
These factors notwithstanding,
we maintain that there is real value
in tackling ventilation and outdoor
classrooms as a whole building
strategy for schools. In June 2020,
the Government Accountability
Office estimated that fifty-four
percent of schools needed to
replace multiple key systems (e.g.,

10
GROWING STEPS
CONNECTED TO
FORESTRY LAB
11 BASEMENT + FIRST
FLOOR CLASSROOM / LAB
13 AUDITORIUM STEPS
14 PLANTER BEDS 12 AUDITORIUM /
SCREENING AREA
Figure 15. Plan drawing of student proposal for Cambridgeport School’s first floor and site plan to
accommodate food and sustainability-centered programming and community engagement along the
street. Image by Ginevra D’Agostino.
Figure 16. Perspective rendering of Cambridgeport School’s southeast corner auditorium steps and
theater play area. Image by Ginevra D’Agostino.
HVAC, roofing, lighting, structural
integrity); and in forty-one percent
of all schools at least one of those
systems is related to HVAC.22 The
intention of the studio was to think
about overall building design that
would in turn decrease reliance
on those mechanical systems in
favor of a comprehensive building
performance audit. In July 2021, New
York Representative Jamaal Bowman
introduced a proposal for the Green
New Deal for Schools, which would
provide $1.4 trillion in funding for
we found that one of the biggest
challenges was ensuring learning
outcomes and creative leeway for
7 PRIVATE FOOD YARD
6 TEACHING KITCHENS
students while still guiding them
towards pragmatic realities, an
5 MULTISEASON CLASS-
-ROOM
inherent risk in any studio that seeks
to engage with specific publics. As
Kenneth Frampton, Pierre Bourdieu,
and others have noted, architecture
is shaped by social, economic, and
technical forces outside the building
itself. Frampton in fact called
architecture “the least autonomous”
of all forms of cultural production,
asking us to realize the “contingent
nature of architecture as a practice.”
8 MULTISEASON CLASS- 4 OPEN KITCHEN AND
9 BUS STOP -ROOM CAFETERIA 1 CAFE OPEN TO PUBLIC
15 BIKE LANE 3 DROP OFF AREA
2 COURTYARD PLAY AREA
OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK
As he further elaborates, its position
in society has been progressively
5’ 15’ 30’ 50’
undermined as architecture is
increasingly privatized or centered
around cycles of consumption and
capitalism.24 This is rarely made
explicit in architectural pedagogy,
but it was important for us to lay
the groundwork for this realization
here. The strength of undertak-
ing the design of public schools
as a pedagogical tool is that the
examination of their past and present
reveals so much about their societal
context; proposals for their future
subsequently project hopes for the
future. In the absence of being able
to conduct traditional methods
of user engagement, we instead
asked students to respond to the
nested contexts of specific student
populations, the ecosystem of the
school district, state and federal
policies, educational theory, and even
the passage of time.
This methodology admittedly
idealized our goals for the studio—
public schools specifically for climate and indeed came up against political
resilience and decarbonization in realities. In writing the final report
schools.23 If the bill is passed, the for Cambridge Public Schools, we
types of multipurpose, adaptable wanted to communicate possibili-
interventions such as the ones ties while staying cognizant that
tested in our studio could address implementation would be difficult.
those goals as well as ensure greater However, given the controversies
pandemic resilience in the future for surrounding school reopenings, even
American schools. this seemingly straightforward goal
In 2020 and early 2021, many proved complicated. Tensions in
design educators grappled with Cambridge remained high among city
the tensions of running pandemic- councilors, parents, and the public
focused studios while still in the school district, and were further
midst of the pandemic. In our case, fueled by the resignation of the
Carr et al. JAE 76:1 71
Figure 17. Longitudinal
section of student
proposal for
Cambridgeport School
showing passive stack
ventilation strategies
and a rooftop solar array
that acts as a teaching
tool for children as well
as a microgrid for the
community in case of
emergency. Image by
Ginevra D’Agostino.
1 GROWING STEPS
CONNECTED TO
FORESTRY LAB
1 GROWING STEPS
CONNECTED TO
FORESTRY LAB
district’s superintendent in January
2021. Due to these sensitivities, the
studio outcomes have ultimately
stayed with the facilities department
to support decision-making in the
future. Despite strong precedent
examples of open-air classrooms in
cold climates, advocacy for open-air
learning environments have been
met with skepticism and dismissal by
educators, community members, and
scientists. It appeared that designing
for comfort first and airflow second
held the day, instead of making
spaces breathable and then solving
for comfort. As more evidence about
transmission pathways has emerged,
this latter design solution might offer
significant reprieve to our districts
and others throughout the nation.
However, the political bureaucracy
manifests and technocratic
hegemonies around climate control
will continue to provide barriers
to simple solutions to improve the
airflow and breathability of our
schools.
This also demonstrates that
the role of architecture in acute
health outcomes is a topic that
has been largely overlooked since
the turn of the century examples
we cite above. In the 1930s, germ
72 Schools that Breathe
2 ADDITIONAL CLASS- 3 SOLAR PANELS AS NEW
ROOM SPACE OR
SHARED SPACE
SHADING AND ENVELOPE
2 ADDITIONAL CLASS-
ROOM SPACE OR
3 SOLAR PANELS AS NEW
SHADING AND ENVELOPE
SHARED SPACE
theory gained wider acceptance
among the medical community and
wider public, severing many of the
intuitive environmental strategies
utilized in buildings and landscapes,
particularly those designed around
the delivery of fresh air and sunlight
more common in the earlier years
of miasma-centric thinking.25 Many
architectural speculations in the
wake of the pandemic, such as
residential sterilization rooms, UV
lights, or plexiglass dividers have
been highly fantastical and overly
reliant on the now-refuted fomite
theory of transmission.26 Instead, it
is the relatively recent acceptance
of airborne COVID-19 transmis-
sion, ironically initially rejected by
many in the medical community
as “outdated,”27 that drove many
of the most successful interven-
tions in children’s environments in
pandemics over a century ago, and
it should be embraced again not
only for its effectiveness in mitigat-
ing spread but for the other holistic
benefits outlined here. Since we ran
the studio, the CDC has issued more
straightforward guidance on ventila-
tion in school buildings, further
clarified by research from groups such
as the Healthy Buildings program
5 7 ROOFTOP EATING
EXPANDING EXISTING
VENTILATION SYSTEM AND PLAY
4 ACCESSIBLE WIND
TOWER 5 EXPANDING EXISTING
VENTILATION SYSTEM
7 ROOFTOP EATING
AND PLAY
10 GYMNASIUM
4 ACCESSIBLE WIND
TOWER
6 CLASSROOM SPACE 8 CAFETERIA
6 CLASSROOM SPACE 8 CAFETERIA
10 GYMNASIUM
9 LIBRARY
9 LIBRARY 11 CLASSROOM SPACE
11 CLASSROOM SPACE
12 CAFE’ OPEN TO PUBLIC
12 CAFE’ OPEN TO PUBLIC
5’ 15’ 30’
5’ 15’ 30’
at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of
Public Health.28 Designing “schools
that breathe” was a key exercise
that will have great relevance for
the future as well. Too rarely in the
studio do we recognize the extent to
which architecture reflects broader
sociopolitical contexts. As it did for
so many of our American institutions,
the pandemic almost instanta-
neously revealed the brokenness
of our public school system. Our
proposition for this studio was an
argument for maintenance, care, and
upgrades to the architecture of the
everyday. Teachers, students, and
the staff that populate our schools
are central to our society. They,
like all of us, deserve buildings that
deliver the basic rights of fresh air,
equitable education, and access to
the outdoors. As demonstrated in this
studio, it is up to us as architectural
educators to communicate how even
seemingly straightforward technical
exercises still encompass these social
complexities.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank all
members of this Fall 2020 studio
at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology: Ana Arenas, Jonathon

Brearley, Ginevra D’Agostino,
Nare Filiposyan, Benjamin Hoyle,
Katharine Kettner, Florence
Ma, Ana McIntosh, Carol-Anne
Rodrigues, Evellyn Tan, and Lynced
Torres. Our teaching assistant,
Charlotte D’Acierno, provided
invaluable leadership and organiza-
tion throughout the semester. Most
of all, we would like to thank James
Maloney, Chief Operating Officer for
Cambridge Public Schools, for his
insight and support for the project.
Author Biographies
Sara Jensen Carr is an assistant
professor of architecture and the
program director for the Master
of Design in Sustainable Urban
Environments at Northeastern
University. Her work and research
on the connections between urban
landscape, human health, and social
equity has been recognized by the
Graham Foundation, the Mellon
Foundation, and the National
Science Foundation, and has been
published in Preventive Medicine, LA+
Journal, and Places, among others. Her
first book, The Topography of Wellness:
How Health and Disease Shaped the
American Landscape, was published by
University of Virginia Press in 2021.
Ana McIntosh is a 2021 M. Arch.
graduate from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and
received a Bachelor of Design from
University of Florida in 2018. She
has professional experience working
on sustainability strategies using
daylighting and energy optimiza-
tion tools. McIntosh was editor
of the student-run platform out
of frame during its inaugural year
and her academic interests lie in
exploring architectural agency at
the intersection of both social and
environmental concerns in search of
a more equitable future.
Michael Murphy, Int. FRIBA, is a
founding principal and executive
director of MASS Design Group,
a collective of architecture and
design advocates dedicated to
the construction of dignity. Since
Carr et al.
MASS’s beginnings, Murphy’s
portfolio documents work in over a
dozen countries and spans the areas
of health care, education, housing,
urban development, food systems,
Indigenous sovereignty, and the
public monument. His 2016 TED
talk has reached over a million views,
and he was awarded the Al Filipov
Medal for Peace and Justice in 2017.
John Ochsendorf is the Class of
1942 Professor of Architecture and
Engineering at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. His research
in architectural technology has
been supported by fellowships from
the MacArthur Foundation, the
American Academy in Rome, the
National Science Foundation, the
Graham Foundation for Advanced
Studies in the Fine Arts, the
Fulbright Program, the National
Endowment for the Humanities,
and others. Ochsendorf served as
director of the American Academy in
Rome from 2017 to 2020.
Notes
1 “Scientific Brief: SARS-CoV-2 Transmission,”
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
May 7, 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/
coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/
sars-cov-2-transmission.html.
2 Michael Murphy, “Breathing Is Spatial,”
Technology | Architecture + Design 4:2 (July 2,
2020): 131–34, https://doi.org/10.1080/247514
48.2020.1804749.
3 Paul Beaven, “A History of the Boston Floating
Hospital,” Pediatrics 19:4 Pt. 1 (1957): 629–38.
4 Anne-Marie Chatelet, “Breath of Fresh Air:
Open-Air Schools in Europe,” in Designing
Modern Childhoods: History, Space, and the Material
Culture of Children, eds. Marta Gutman and Ning
De Coninck-Smith, Rutgers Series in Childhood
Studies (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
Press, 2008), 107–27.
5 Richard A. Meckel, “Combating Tuberculosis
in Schoolchildren: Providence’s Open-Air
Schools,” Rhode Island History 53:96 (1995): 95.
6 Daniel A. Barber, Modern Architecture and
Climate: Design Before Air Conditioning (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2020), 114–15; Amy
F. Ogata, Designing the Creative Child: Playthings
and Places in Midcentury America (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2013),
105–15, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/24939;
Roy Kozlovsky, The Architectures of Childhood:
Children, Modern Architecture and Reconstruction
in Postwar England (London: Routledge, 2016),
94–95, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315612560.
7 Amy S. Weisser, “‘Little Red School House,
What Now?’ Two Centuries of American Public
School Architecture,” Journal of Planning History
5:3 (2006): 196–217.
8 Weisser, 207–9.
JAE 76:1
9 Alexandra Lange, The Design of Childhood (New
York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018), 141–42.
10 Clarence Perry, The Neighbourhood
Unit (1929; repr., London: Routledge/
Thoemmes, 1998), 25–44.
11 “Shared Schoolyard Program,” San Francisco
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12 “Green & Healthy Schools,” World Green
Building Council, accessed July 5, 2021. https://
www.worldgbc.org/better-places-people/green-
healthy-schools.
13 Lisa Heschong, “Daylighting in Schools: An
Investigation into the Relationship Between
Daylighting and Human Performance. Detailed
Report,” (1999).
14 Ulla Haverinen-Shaughnessy, Mari Turunen,
Jari Metsämuuronen, Jari Palonen, Tuula Putus,
Jarek Kurnitski, and Richard Shaughnessy,
“Sixth Grade Pupils’ Health and Performance
and Indoor Environmental Quality in Finnish
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article/view/17644.
15 Dongying Li and William C. Sullivan, “Impact
of Views to School Landscapes on Recovery
from Stress and Mental Fatigue,” Landscape and
Urban Planning 148 (2016): 149–58, https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2015.12.015.
16 “Public School Revenue Sources,” National
Center for Education Statistics, May
2021, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/
indicator_cma.asp.
17 “State of Our Schools: America’s K-12
Facilities,” 21st Century School Fund, National
Council on School Facilities and U.S. Green
Building Council, 2016, https://kapost-files-
prod.s3.amazonaws.com/published/56f02c3d6
26415b792000008/2016-state-of-our-schools-
report.pdf?kui=wo7vkgV0wW0LGSjxek0N5A.
18 “School and District Profiles: Cambridge
(00490000),” n.d., Massachusetts Department of
Elementary and Secondary Education, accessed
October 16, 2021, https://profiles.doe.mass.edu/
general/general.aspx?topNavID=1&leftNavId=1
00&orgcode=00490000&orgtypecode=5.
19 Herbert J. Gans, “Toward a Human Architecture:
A Sociologist’s View of the Profession,” Journal of
Architectural Education 31:2 (1977): 26–31.
20 Martin Z. Bazant and John W.M. Bush,
“A Guideline to Limit Indoor Airborne
Transmission of COVID-19,” PNAS: Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences 118:17 (2021):
1, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2018995118.
Application used for calculations found at
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21 “School and District Profiles: Cambridge
(00490000),” n.d., Massachusetts Department of
Elementary and Secondary Education, accessed
October 16, 2021, https://profiles.doe.mass.
edu/general/general.aspx?topNavID=1&left
NavId=100&orgcode=00490000&orgtypeco
de=5. Students identifying as mixed-race are not
included in the minority population calculation.
22 “K-12 EDUCATION: School Districts
Frequently Identified Multiple Building
Systems Needing Updates or Replacement,”
United States Government Accountability
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23 Diana Budds, “The Green New Deal for Public
Schools Goes Way Beyond Classrooms,” Curbed,
July 23, 2021.
73
24 Kenneth Frampton, “Reflections on the
Autonomy of Architecture: A Critique of
Contemporary Production,” in Out of Site: A Social
Criticism of Architecture, ed. D. Ghirardo (Seattle,
WA: Bay Press, 1991), 17–26.
25 Sara Jensen Carr, The Topography of Wellness:
How Health and Disease Shaped the American
Landscape (Charlottesville: University of Virginia
Press, 2021), 24.
26 Kyle Chayka, “How the Coronavirus
Will Reshape Architecture,” New Yorker,
June 17, 2020.
27 Megan Molteni, “The 60-Year-Old
Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill,”
Wired, May 13, 2021.
28 Emily Jones, Anna Young, et al. “Schools for
Health: Risk Reduction Strategies for Reopening
Schools,” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public
Health Healthy Buildings Program, June 2020,
https://schools.forhealth.org/wp-content/
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Reopening-Covid19-June2020.pdf.

74 Schools that Breathe