Villiers High School in Southall had 1300 students who were meant to spend every lunch time outside, in a 1750 square metre space with little to distract them except their cultural and personal differences. Violence flared regularly and the students themselves wanted to do something about it.
Villiers' students had already watched a designer at work when Clara Gaggero, a student in industrial design and engineering at the Royal College of Art, included them in the testing of her prototype digital playground.
They wanted to be involved in designing new facilities for their outside space and pitched to Ealing Council for £25,000 to fund a design and build project.
The school had already been approached by makers of playground equipment, who’d proposed putting in slides and swings, an idea none of the students liked. They wanted a space that was right for teenagers, and the school staff wanted to stop the regular fights and broken noses that occurred in the playground.
Gaggero, who had by now graduated from the RCA and set up her own design practice, says that the design process is a powerful tool for finding out what different sets of users need and for developing a solution that fits these needs.
‘After the design workshop with me in 2006, some of the pupils were so inspired by the experience of designing that they asked for funds to transform their ageing playground,’ says Gaggero. They commissioned her to run workshops, develop the design and manage the building and installation project, all for the tight £25,000 budget.
Despite a tight timescale and budget, Gaggero says she had to involve the students right from the start of the design process: it was the only way to get the right results. ‘They got the money for the job so they had to be involved.’
Gaggero started in March 2008 by observing how the students used the current playground and she talked to some of them to find out why they did what they did in the space. ‘If I look back to my high school it was a very different place,’ says Gaggero. ‘At Villiers I noticed that the students were not walking on the grass and I asked them why. They said it was because they did not want to get their shoes dirty. When I was at school the last thing I cared about was getting my shoes dirty but these kids maybe come from less well off families and may have to make their shoes last a long time.’
Next Gaggero ran brainstorming workshops with a group of 14 enthusiastic students, including those who’d won the funding: Akash, Rita and Fardowsa.
‘These gave me a big insight because when I gave them moodboards and asked them to select the most appealing pictures from a set of 150 images, then put key words beside them, many of the same pictures were chosen. This showed me they wanted somewhere that they felt comfortable on their own, but where they could hang out as a group. They also wanted an intriguing landscape.’
‘Then I gave them a camera and got them to take pictures of things they liked and did not like. I also gave them all a test to fill in, like in a magazine. They each had to do the test with five friends. It really revealed what they wanted.’
After gathering all the wants and needs information from the students Clara had just six days to generate three design concepts to present to the students and staff for their feedback. She created digital video walk-throughs of each space, supplied an aerial picture of how the space would look and showed the students how they could use each space.
Although each idea had its fans, one was chosen almost unanimously because it appealed to both groups of boys and girls and staff who needed it to be easy to monitor the students’ behaviour.
A platform for change
PLATFORM is a design that uses colourful concrete blocks to give students their own spaces to chat or climb. Gaggero found a concrete contractor who could manufacture and install the blocks, so now they are scattered around the space, some piled two or three high, others laid on their side and filled with grass to become informal benches. The variety, says Gaggero, allows a lot of different sorts of students to use them however they want to: ‘Tall piles might be used by the boys to smoke secretly. The piles on the grass are more girly and private.’
The piles of blocks are painted in bright shades of yellow, green and blue and are arranged in a spiral that leads in to the centre of the playground so it encourages the students to visit each other’s blocks, but there are ways for groups to feel they have their own space.
‘Before, when two rival groups were wandering in the playground, if they met then they would fight. But now they have their own spaces,’ says Gaggero and teachers from Villiers say the new playground has definitely reduced the amount of violence and aggression in the playground.
Robin Street, Villiers deputy Head Teacher says: ‘Before the area was put in what did happen a lot more often was large groups of students occasionally moving in large groups that could be quite intimidating. This has certainly happened a lot less often and this is clearly directly linked to the existence of this space.’
He says other benefits have emerged from the new space: ‘What has been particularly interesting is the number of students who are in the playground when before very few ever were in that particular space.’
Gaggero designed the layout so there would still be lots of open space and no hidden areas. Students could then feel ownership of their own parts, but staff could still easily see that the space is safely used.
Promoting natural surveillance is one of the key designing out crime techniques according to the Design Against Crime Research Centre at Central Saint Martins.
Encouraging ownership and pride in the new facilities was, Gaggero felt, vital to ensuring the students used and didn’t abuse the space. She designed in easy ways for the students to keep the space looking good, with features like rubbish bins shaped as basketball hoops that are hung at different heights throughout the space.
This doesn’t mean some issues haven’t occurred, but the perspective of teachers towards incidents of graffiti has changed along with the space. Street says: ‘The way it was designed also gave the students the pride to have their own area and this in many ways is the most positive element of the whole process. There has been little examples of graffiti which we certainly think is down to the feeling of ownership that a lot of the students feel they have over the area.’
While students are out in the playground at lunchtime they benefit not only from fresh air but also from engaging in activities like clambering up, over and into the concrete blocks, or up a £2,000 climbing wall which Gaggero incorporated into the scheme. As they are more active at lunchtimes, the students are becoming more attentive in afternoon classes says Gaggero.
And while keeping students more engaged at school may be a long term way to design out crime, the staff at Villiers say that involving the students in the design process has raised many of their aspirations, for themselves and their school.
Juliet Strand, Villiers Head Teacher, says: ‘The creation of Platform by Clara working with a group of Villiers students has been a fantastic success. At Villiers we are not only really keen on the “student voice” to create student ownership of and responsibility for their school, but also we see great value in students learning from professionals like Clara.’
The numbers say it all about the new playground: 30-40 students used it before. Now around 700 are out there at any time. And there have been no broken noses since.
Did it all end there?
Since Platform was installed Gaggero has been back to Villiers twice to design promotional and organisational material for a Peace Day event in October 2008, and create plans for a new sixth form centre.
While designing a space where new sixth form students could relax or study between classes Gaggero made sure the space and the students wouldn’t be vulnerable to crime. An outdoor feature is to be covered in an artist decorated netting material so if students take laptops outside they can’t throw them up and over the external wall to anyone on the other side.
Villiers High School by numbers
1,300 students
35 nationalities
1,750 square metres to refurbish
3 teachers
14 students
£15 budget per square metre for design and build
3 days to meet the students
6 days to generate 3 concepts
24 days to finalise and produce the chosen design
4.22 GB of files
12 days to build it
1,200 square metres
300 square metres of green paint
40 metres of climbing wall
35 custom made concrete benches
25 custom made concrete boxes
4 concrete moulds
1 crane
3 lorries
16 builders
Find out more about Clara Gaggero's design and build work at Villiers High School on her website