Make cool your school is an activity in which high school students are involved in an architectural project of their own educational centres, accompanied by architecture students and professors from the Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena (UPCT). In five years, more than 800 students and 50 centres have designed spaces for the topics: ‘better together’, ‘working together’, ‘think in/is change’, ‘new spaces 4 new learning’ and ‘old spaces/new normality’.
Regional
Spain
Región de Murcia (Spain)
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organization, in partnership with other organisations
Name of the organisation(s): Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena Type of organisation: Other public institution First name of representative: Fernando Miguel Last name of representative: García Martín Gender: Male Nationality: Spain Function: Subdirector de Estudiantes, Empresa, Comunicación y Cultura of the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura (UPCT) Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Calle Real, 3 Town: Cartagena (Murcia) Postal code: 30201 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34 627 79 16 73 E-mail:fernando.garcia@upct.es Website:http://www.olimpiadasarquitectura.upct.es/
Make cool your school! (MCYS!) is an initiative proposed by the Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena (UPCT) during the last five years that has immersed high school students in the realization of an architectural project. Our aim is that these students have the experience of transforming and improve the built environments.
The students are invited to work in their own educational centres: assessing their situation, selecting priority actions, and preparing a proposal for the transformation of a space.
In high school students, MCYS! promotes awareness for their habitat, encourages creativity and supports sustainable visions. In addition, it becomes a general reflection on the state of educational centres and their future, based on the vision of their essential users, the students.
The students elaborate the proposals for four months, in teams tutored by their teachers and mentored by professors and students from the UPCT. In the final part of the activity, a competition phase is introduced, in which the selected proposals are exposed by their authors at the UPCT to a jury that decides the winning teams. This day is an act of celebration of architecture and education that has the presence of architects of recognized prestige and in which architectural contents are alternate with the presentations of the finalist teams.
In the five editions of MCYS!, more than 870 students from 45 educational centres in the Region of Murcia have participated. They created more than 140 proposals that reflect the vision of the students on the possibilities of updating their high schools (not only the classrooms, but any of their spaces). Participants have been asked to think and create places of coexistence, for teamwork, to think about climate change, adapted to new teaching methodologies or to the future after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Education
High-schools
Architecture
University
Educational centres
At MCYS! sustainability is integrated into different levels of the initiative:
1. In the design of the initiative. The participating teams are oriented to elaborate proposals to adapt or transform the existing spaces of their high schools. This approach makes it possible to focus the activity on the recycling potential of architectures, with their recovery and rehabilitation. In addition, this allows the design scale to be appropriate to the knowledge of the students, seeking that they can make proposals that reach a sufficient level of maturity so that they consider what the necessary materials are, how the construction will be carried out, etc.
2. In the evaluation criteria of the proposals. Sustainability is one of the parameters considered in the evaluation of the proposals during the competition phase of the initiative. The teams know in advance that the sustainability and viability of their proposals will be assessed by the jury on the final day. This fact promotes the use of sustainable solutions in the proposals of the participants. In the editions held, the proposals received have contemplated the use of recycled materials, energy efficiency, the use of vegetation with bioclimatic criteria, etc.
3. In the topics of each edition. In the 2020 edition, the topic on which the participants were invited to work was 'THINK IN/IS CHANGE'. In the current context where the consequences of climate change on our planet are more than evident, it is necessary to think about changing our daily behaviour. This edition of MCYS! asked the participants to adapt spaces in their own educational centres to generate a place to meet, to encourage dialogue and, above all, to think about the changes that should take place in the high school to be a little kinder to our planet.
MCYS! immerses high school students in an architectural design experience. This has proven to have a transforming power.
1. Participants become aware of the importance of their built spaces making proposals about them. This encourages a critical vision of the quality of their educational centres, but also a proactive attitude when designing proposals for their adaptation. This way MCYS! allows participants to explore the ability of architecture to transform spaces.
2. Making proposals about their own educational centres reaches a high-level commitment of the participants. In previous editions, high school students have reflected and debated for hours with their classmates on architecture and the possibilities of their centres. In this process, they have analysed how they use their spaces and detected dysfunctions that had not been perceived by themselves until then, being able to propose actions to improve the quality of the spaces.
3. Giving students the opportunity to propose what their schools could be like has made them active agents. Many of the participating teams have taken their work to the rest of the school, surveying their peers, incorporating them into design decisions, etc.
MCYS! incorporates inclusion into different levels of the initiative:
1. In the design of the initiative. Students carry out their analyses and proposals in teams, so they incorporate the perspectives of the entire team into the design, integrating different needs. In addition, the competition phase allows the participants to meet the realities of other educational centres.
2. In the evaluation criteria of the proposals. The accessibility and economic viability of the proposals (in centres that, in general, have limited financial resources) are parameters that are considered in the evaluation of the proposals during the competition phase of the activity. The criteria are known by the teams at the beginning of the proposal, so that they can work on them throughout the design phae.
3. In the topics of each edition. The first two editions of MCYS! were focused on adapting teaching spaces to new models of society. The topics 'better together!' and 'working together' were proposed in order to the participants explore specifically the coexistence spaces and the places for teamwork in their high-schools. These spaces are key to improving the learning experience, to facilitate interactions, to be flexible in the face of a variety of needs, to boost creativity...
The MCYS initiative! it is aimed at pre-university students, trying to put them at the centre of the debate and the design of educational spaces.
-All the educational centres of the Region of Murcia have been called to participate in this initiative. Each centre could propose the participation of teams of students from 15 to 18 years of age, supervised by a teacher. To the call responded: teams promoted by teachers, but also by the students themselves; teams made up of two students, but also by a whole class.
-Together, these participants have developed more than 140 proposals for adaptation and transformation of their 43 educational centres during the five annual editions carried out to date (to which should be added the more than 180 registered so far for the sixth edition).
-From the Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, a group of 10 professors has also been involved. And, from the second edition, a group of architecture students was also integrated into the team that monitored the participants.
-In the final day, educational authorities and renowned architects have also participated, who have been able to see the vision and proposals of high school students about their centres.
One of the most relevant impacts of MCYS! it is the transfer of the vision of high-school students to the rest of the agents involved.
-In the MCYS initiative! more than 870 students from 45 educational centres have already participated. Together they have made more than 140 proposals for adaptation and transformation of their educational centres.
-In addition, 55 high school teachers have tutored the students in their centres, making students and teachers thinking and designing together about educational spaces.
-They have also been part of MCYS! 10 architecture students from the UPCT, as part of the team that have help the participants in the design of their proposals. These architecture students have changed their role from student to tutor, also facing the challenge of explaining architectural concepts to pre-university students.
-The finalist proposals exposed in the final day have been observed by 8 architects of recognized prestige from the Region of Murcia and teachers from the UPCT, putting them in contact with the reality of the high schools This experience has also been had by the local authorities attending the final day.
-In the future, the objective is to take these proposals to broader or more distant levels: (1) putting students in contact with the regional educational leaders, (2) extending MCYS! at a national level
This activity has been designed from the ‘Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Cartagena’. Although one of the main objectives was to raise awareness about architecture, it has been understood that the participants can have approaches from different disciplines. Thus, during the implementation of the initiative, representatives of various disciplines have been contacted:
-The education. Being the field of work the high-schools, education has been the main field of knowledge involved. The high-schools teachers act as tutors for the participating teams, guiding them on questions of teaching methodologies during the preparation of their proposals. This has opened a space for dialogue on teaching between students and teachers.
-The architecture. From the UPCT both architects and architecture students have been involved in this initiative. These have accompanied the participants in the realization of their proposals. Thus, the architects have listened to the opinion of teachers and students on the state and needs of their centres. At the same time, they have advised them on proposals for improvement.
-In addition, high school students have been given a central and active role. Invited to make proposals for the transformation of their educational centres in relation to specific themes of each edition, the participants have had to integrate their experience, the teaching vision of their teachers and their exploration of architecture.
-Other disciplines. It has been detected that the academic background of the teachers has also been of great importance in the development of proposals and the incorporation of visions from other disciplines.
In summary, the proposal alters the usual roles of the different agents. It has been detected that this has generated synergistic dynamics by creating spaces for conversation that are different from the usual ones. Architects, teachers, and students have dialogued several times during the preparation of the proposals.
The innovative character of the initiative is found mainly in:
- The commitment to creativity. The topics proposed to the students has focused on the design of educational spaces. Although the ability to technically solve the proposals is valued, the main objective is that the participants: carry out an analysis of the relationship of the spaces with the teaching activities; and become able to propose architectural solutions that improve that relationship. This places students in a very new creative exercise for them. In this case, learning occurs with the design of the proposal.
- The co-design of the spaces. The participants in this initiative are, at the same time, users of the centres and designers of the spaces. The elaboration of the proposals as a team supposes a co-design exercise carried out by the users themselves. In this way, the educational centres receive the vision that the students have about the possibilities of the spaces to be updated to current circumstances and scenarios.
- The alteration of the roles. As indicated, the agents involved in the activity changed their usual role in the relationship between teaching and architecture. The main innovation is for the students, who start to play an active role in the design of both the spaces and the training activities. Tutor teachers and architects put their experience at the service of developing student proposals, giving up their usual role as designers of teaching activity or spaces.
The MCYS initiative! It can be replicated in other contexts where there is an opportunity for the involvement of the different participating agents. According to our experience, it is required:
-A working group associated with architecture that promotes the activity.
-An organization that economically helps the organization of the initiative and the prizes for the competitive phase (although we have seen that economic motivation is not decisive, it has been detected that the competitive phase arouses interest).
-A pre-university education environment in which teachers and students have time to dedicate to the initiative and flexibility to make their teaching curricula compatible with this initiative.
Under these or similar conditions, the initiative could adapt the methodology and procedures for promotion, management, monitoring and coordination adopted in MCYS! to the new context. In this adaptation:
-The topic proposed could be adapted to the reality of each territorial environment.
-The work of monitoring and tutoring the proposals of the participants should be adapted to the levels of the students.
1. Principles. Immerse participants in an architectural design experience about their own educational centres.
2. Objectives. Achieve a direct impact on the way in which high schools perceive, value and manage their spaces, through: the diagnosis of the architectural situation, the exploration of the possibilities of improvement and, even, the direct improvement by applying the proposals.
3. Call and participants. The initiative is carried out thanks to the help received by the Fundación Séneca - Agencia de Ciencia y Tecnología de la Región de Murcia (http://www.fseneca.es). A call is made to the high schools for the registration of teams from 3 to 8 students between 15 and 18 years old (there may be teams of students of different levels).
4. Topic. Each edition of the initiative proposes a topic related to their centres and the activities that are carried out in them.
5. Duration. Participants develop their analysis and proposal for twelve to fifteen weeks.
6. Phases. In the first phase, the participants must carry out a critical analysis of the spaces of their institutes, which will be reflected in a document within plans, photographs, drawings, models, etc. In the second phase, the participants must prepare proposals for transformation and/or improvement of the opportunity spaces, reflecting it in a final technical document. The third phase is the presentation of their proposals to a jury of architects at the UPCT.
7. Participants support. Q&A day for tutors, providing references materials and preparing reports on the analysis and pre-proposal documents of the participants.
8. Final day (the competitive phase). The proposals are presented by the authors for 6-8 minutes. This day is designed as a festive event with a professional actor who introduce architectural contents.
9. Evaluation. Graphic representation, originality, scope, sustainability and efficiency, flexibility, level of development, viability and the overall result are considered.
MCYS! proposes to face global problems from the topics raised in the different editions:
1. Some editions have focused on the adaptation of centres to recycle their spaces to the new teaching methodologies. Thus, it has been proposed that students explore how spaces for teamwork should be (Working together!) or how to adapt spaces to new methodologies (New spaces 4 new learning).
2. The third edition was dedicated specifically to exploring how spaces to think about the necessary changes in the face of climate change should be (Think in/is change). In this way, the design of these spaces was intended to be a manifesto.
3. Other editions have proposed themes relating teaching spaces with social changes. They have explored how spaces for coexistence should be in an increasingly diverse society (Better together!) or how to adapt to the new normality derived from the covid crisis (Old spaces / New normality).
These global challenges are resolved on a very local scale, such as the educational centres of the participants. Thus, students are invited to be active in solving these challenges and to be aware of the steps they can take in their daily lives to improve these issues.
The MCYS initiative! is a set of activities that orbit mainly around the Architecture Olympics of the Region of Murcia.
-The Architecture Olympics of the Region of Murcia – Make Cool Your School! They are held with a grant financed by the Consejería de Empresa, Empleo, Universidades y Portavocía, through the S Fundación Séneca-Agencia de Ciencia y Tecnología de la Región de Murcia (http://www.fseneca.es). Five editions have been held with an average of 175 participants (including two of them organized with restrictions due to covid-19). 45 educational centres have been involved in them, of which, as a sign of the quality of the initiative, many have repeated in several editions.
The sixth edition is called for this year 2023. With the participation call already open, the number of participants has already get the previous editions.
-Five summary publications of the different editions have been produced. They reflect the proposals of the finalist teams of each edition, as well as various contents that try to record everything that happened around this experience.
-The initiative has obtained several distinctions and awards. It has been a Special Prize for Innovation and Dissemination of Architecture at the XX Architecture Awards of the Region of Murcia 2019 (https://premiosarquitecturarm.carm.es/9), it has been a finalist in the call for the selection of exhibition contents of the Pavilion of Spain at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia 2021 and has also been a finalist in the Publications category at the XII Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (https://bienaliberoamericana.org/proyectos/).
-The initiative has been the subject of several communications at conferences on teaching innovation.
-Also, the MCYS experience! have been disclosed in other open forums as the meeting 'Where will the children play? the game spaces that come', or the V Energy Engineering Meeting of the Mare Nostrum Campus.
