February 13, 2019
When MPA faculty and staff learned of the extraordinary changes that Together, We Dream: The Campaign For MPA was bringing to our school, ideas started circulating about how student voice could be incorporated into the process. With the exact concepts yet to be entirely defined, Ms. Koen, Makerspace coordinator, decided to incorporate the design of our new library into one of her classes: seventh grade students were going to take on the task of turning our shared library dreams into a reality.
The students began by strategically choosing members of the community to interview about what would be most important for them to see in the new library spaces, and how those visions would impact the school in a positive way. Students from all three divisions were interviewed, as well as Ms. Lage, librarian, Ms. Petrich, library assistant, faculty, staff, and parents. The class also had the opportunity to hear from Ms. Steingraeber’s husband, who is a professional architect, and the actual contractors who are working on the new campus spaces.
Once they collected their interview results, the students took the ideas they heard from community members and grouped them into sections based on concepts and themes: the categories emerged as flexibility, collaboration, whimsicalness, and nature.
In small groups, students were assigned an area of the library on which to focus. The space was divided into two groups for the Lower School reading room, two for the Middle School technology space, two for the Upper School group study, and two for the entrance of the library. The diversity of the spaces ensured that their designs would include different perspectives, all while focusing in on the varying desires they heard from their community. Together, they worked these dreams into a reality, from a skeletal blueprint plan to a structural prototype made from found materials and 3D-printed objects.
The last step was to finally pitch their designs to some of the same people they originally interviewed. With a slideshow presentation, their constructed models, and a mood board, the students confidently portrayed the new space–both in aesthetics and utility.
The seventh graders were told that this new library was part of MPA’s five year plan, but were pleasantly surprised to learn at the end of the project that their new library would be coming sooner than they thought.
