Meininger, who grew up in Germany but now lives in London, likes making things. So when he saw how much his young sons enjoyed the jungle gym and play forts at the local park, he made an indoor treehouse for them.
The original intent of pilotis was to create a sense of lightness that would allow circulation and light to flow beneath a structure, but contemporary requirements render thin columns insufficient for large-scale civic projects.
An in-depth analysis of the social cost of carbon, conducted during the competition phase, led the project team to propose an entirely new construction while remaining within budget. The existing school building lacked the capacity for sustainable transformation; its demolition would free up land and allow for a reimagined urban future.
In her book Hope in the Dark, writer and activist Rebecca Solnit observes that transformation starts in the margins. The book explores social movements throughout history, but the notion that mainstream beliefs grow from fringe ideas once thought to be outrageous is familiar to anyone who has watched change happen. Hope, she says, lives in the dark around the edges.
"It's just like a neverending game of musical chairs," Jensen says. Just when a teacher thinks they've perfected their seating chart, two neighboring students will have a fight, others won't stop talking or parents will email with their own seating preferences. "There's just so many things that you don't know on the surface that come to light really quickly once you put a kid next to another one," she says.