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Masters Campus Master Plan
page one of three
notes for Program Statement, Schematic Site Development Plan, and Phase I Concept
 
This phase of planning and design has several objectives: To establish a Program and schematic layout of the end-sate of the Campus of Masters Academy and College. This will include the addition of offices, a research facility and navCenter which supports the day to day activities of the school and develops means to communicate, teach and support, globally, the learning methods employed at Masters. This plan will articulate how the facilities can be designed and built in phases over several years. In addition, this work will develop in more detail a concept for a Phase I addition to expand student learning areas to allow the population of the school to reach its mandated level.
 
 
a change in venue...
The 2004 DesignShop and subsequent evolving conditions altered the original intent to build a new campus outside of Calgary and instead develop the existing one. This decision has many implications which will be explored in the Program Statement.
 
Developing the existing facilities over an extended period of time, in urban environment, affords “a timeless way of building” which is both intentional and emergent integrating, by the time of completion, over 75 years of buildings in a constantly changing urban, social landscape. This design-build-use process facilitates the invention and testing of many architectural solutions which meet specific local conditions yet provide wide applicability to anticipated future and global conditions.
 
Accomplishing this quality of architecture in timely and affordable phases of work, requires a process as innovative as the architecture itself. It requires forming a small multi-disciplinary design-build team who can stay on the project, providing creative continuity, for many years. This kind of environment cannot be made by commercial and profane means.
 
 
 
keeping the vision intact...
Employing, altering and adding to the existing buildings on this significantly smaller and more constricted landscape in no way implies that the vision of this environment for learning will in any way be compromised.
 
The experience of Masters and MG Taylor in developing educational and collaborative design processes, building and operating environments which facilitate these processes while expressing their essence, is the accumulation of decades of work. It is a Program intent that the Masters Campus become a full expression of the possibilities emanating from this past work as well as a practical example of what can be achieved ultimately all over the world.
 
The vision of this synthesis of learning, design and collaboration to provide Profound Learning as a life-long process of a viable 21st Century life, has to be expressed in every aspect of the environment, spiritual, mental, emotional, physical. The art of this architecture is the embedding of these qualities, in every thought and act, forming the experience of this place.
 
 
click on the drawings and pictures below to go to supporting documents
 
The original 2004 navCenter concept, while not in the 2011 Program, represents many key ideas essential to the success of the Program: education, research and co-design venues functioning as distinct yet integrated process components of the total campus function while making unique spaces for each related mental modality.
The masthead of this piece illustrating the 3d Model, with annotations, of the Trees is a meshing of Masters icon with a perspective of the trees. The vertical spaces, circular forms and spaces within spaces are the direct expression of Masters intent and method of education. The space to learn and work in must match the boy’s dream.
The Collaboration Center was designed and built in 2004. This document outlines the Program for the center, including the economics of the enterprise, and states the Center’s Mission of building and facilitating a ValueWeb that conducts a three phase program from building to campus to taking the learning global. This is the case today.
The Collaboration Center opened in September of 2004 with a DesignShop® tasked with Creating the School of the Future... Now. However, the day before, the first users were a team of Masters students designing a program for National geographic. This piece covers the last few days of construction through the DesignShop.
 
The first expression of the Master Campus vision assumed building on an open 40 acre prairie site with a view of the mountains. Multiple circumstances and some Mission critical reasons evolved to the task at hand which is to rebuild and add to the existing suburban site. The challenge is to do this without any compromise of that vision.
These Models illustrate the scope of learning modalities the Campus has to provide for students, teachers, faculty, researchers, parents and external ValueWeb members of both the “example of one” and the global enterprise. Each of the four graphics link to an aspect of the capacities which have to be embedded in the environment.
By virtue of its Mission the Masters Campus will become a “public building” and an icon of a movement to reform education globally. Buildings of this kind stand for a generality as well as serve a specific function and constituency. As such, their design, building and use is of a different order than most buildings. Here are four successful examples.
All educators are futurists by fact - they deliver their “product” a generation later. The FutureViews offers examples of individuals and organizations from the past and present who have contributed to the making of a healthy, free, sustainable and humane future. Can we imagine and build a future other than today cubed?
 

 
 
a program statement...
A Program Statement, when complete, creates the problem for the work which is to be built. There is a vision of the outcome. Existing and probable future conditions are understood. The unknowns and blocks which stand between the conditions and the vision are modeled and mapped. A design strategy to dissolve them has been formulated. A project management method has been articulated which can guide the ongoing design/build/use process through the necessary iterations to completion. These factors constitute a problem. Problems are good. They manufacture random conditions and desires into an integrated, yet emergent, process of creativity. This is how NASA went to the Moon. This is how Masters will build the environment which will facilitate and house its dream. This is the There we will bring to Here, one step at a time, everyday.
 
The Program for the Masters Campus requires the integration of many usually considered to be different types of organizations, both in kind and their scope within each kind, as well a an unusually broad Mission. In addition, accomplishing this Mission will require the formation of and stewarding of a global ValueWeb.® This ValueWeb will be composed of private enterprises, governments, NGOs, foundations, loose networks, individuals and many combinations of these. The capability to be the systems integrator of the distributed enterprise is a major functional requirement of the capability to be built. In addition, this campus houses a school - grades first through hi-school. This in itself in unusual in today’s world. While each of these enterprises are independent and unique entities each with their stakeholders, each governed by the in-place rules of this time, the goal is that they be capable of functioning as an integrated 21st Century organism.
 
The setting of this Campus is at the mean of an urban-suburban area with in the city limits of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The development pattern of this region has been that of suburban sprawl typical of the last 50 years of the 20th Century. Industrial resource exploitation has been a major factor in the economy and impact on the ecology of the region. A high level of wealth, as defined in our era, has been accumulated and the area exhibits all of the variety and diversity typical of its kind. This social, economic, ecological configuration is not sustainable. A new world, both local and global is emerging out of the creative energy and vector of the last centuries. This cusp, this moment in time, is of major import to the Mission of Masters and the development of this Campus.
 
 
 
The MG Taylor Creating the Problem Model distinguishes between the conditions, which are usually taken for the problem, and the real problem-to-be-solved which is created in the process of dealing with conditions in a way which advances you toward your vision. Click on the graphic above for more. Creating the right problem is the first iteration of seven cycles of work which achieves the vision.
 

The development of the Masters Campus with process in three major Phases. Phase I, will be competed as immediately as is possible. It will be the addition of educational focused spaces - no longer “classrooms” - which are necessary to accommodate students as they progress through their grades. This is not a major project, two to three class room areas by traditional measure. The opportunity here is to prototype the new learning space and to build an example of what the end-state Campus will be like. If time and money constraints are such that this proves impossible, rather than compromise the future plan, a temporary, movable - yet fully supportive of Masters vision and process - environment will be developed and subsequently moved and reused in support of the enterprise. Phase II, which will be an ongoing project for a number of years, will build a second floor over the existing first floor buildings. This will support the full development of the “school of the future” concept and redevelopment of the existing areas, resulting in learning spaces and labs of a much greater variety and capability to support the full range of learning and creative modalities than is possible today.

 
Phase II will overlap and blend into Phase III which is the development of facilities which support the school and also the transfer, via the Masters global ValueWeb, all that is being learned and developed at Masters. This will include research labs, a major navCenter, infrastructure such as additional parking, a transformed landscape and new energy systems, and a unique one-of-a-kind multimedia theatre-conferencing space which will be the Hub of the Campus as well as the growing global enterprise.
 
 
 
 
link coming
design, build, use
synthesis
link coming
Nasa and Swimming Pool process methods
A Future by Design Not Default has been my thesis since 1974. The idea reached the World Economic Forum in 2006. This paper was written in response to a WEF leader about themes for the 2007 Davos. In the context of the Masters project, the question remains: how prepared are we to face the change we are ourselves are causing?
Embedding the 22 Habits of the Creative Process into the environment of learning and collaboration is a key aspect of the Taylor Method. This is separate from, and more important than, teaching the habits in any conventional way. We all have our habits for design, work and creativity. The questions are if they are the best and work with groups.
   
 

 
 
architecture and Earth...
The Masters Campus sits on, by the modern way of thinking, an insignificant parcel of land. It is a prairie now gone covered by a few buildings and a “landscape” of neither nature nor intent. In fact, there is no such thing as an insignificant piece of the Earth of which we have become a careless steward. It only seems so when erroneous concepts of ownership, money and materialism - all useful tools in themselves - interfere with a more religious view, to connect back, about the sacredness of life. Authentic Architecture builds for all life and all time while providing environment for focused, creative, life growing and sustaining human enterprise.
 
The concepts “global” and “globalization” are under deep suspicion and disarray for a number of philosophical, religious, political and economic reasons. When one looks at what is being done in the name of globalization this resistance seems justified. However, the fact remains, that in our increasingly interconnected world, virtually every act of every person does have almost immediate global impact and consequence. The fact that societies’ attempt to deal with this new reality has been determined by methods and means from a dying paradigm is too often not seen as the genesis of many of these problems, which we have created, and now face. Instead, we blame whatever belief system, corporate action, government policy which we happen to disagree with at the moment. While there may be merit in any of these criticisms, it is the system which generates the unwanted results, despite all attempts to change the circumstances, which should be getting our attention. The fundamental choice is between being distracted by warring factions while, continuing to fiddle as the world burns, or to engage in mutual learning and collaborative design and replace centuries of predigest. For this to happen, a place must be created where it can happen.
 
In the Masters environment - the circumstances which surround an organism - everyone present (not just the young student) is a learner and everyone present (not just the administration) has to participate in its governance. This is necessary - to be the world that our intent is to learn about and to create. This is the essence of authenticity and true experiment. To make such an environment is to practice authentic architecture.
 
 
 
“to lead out...”
By identifying the principles of the Profound Learner and developing the pedagogical means to facilitate the development of the habits and character of the lifetime learner, Masters has already made a significant contribution to education and society. Masters Academy and College is a living lab and example of the efficacy of their method. It is “an example of one.” The education of the student in a specific time and place is the primary task. The goal is to develop a method which has broad applicability across all cultures and to work with, learn from and facilitate the larger global system of education. To lead out that which leads out.
 
This task and goal, together, determine the Program for the Masters Campus. This program will require that many functions be brought together, as an integrated system, that do not usually live and work as one in one location and which are also connected to a global ValueWeb® of practitioners, users and supporters. This venue which merges active education, research, collaborative design, conferencing and reflective experiences, with all of the stakeholders representing the global circumstance and practice of a new education system, is totally unique. What is intended here has never been done before. The resulting campus design cannot be merely the “adding up” of all these elements. And, the Campus has to be be a neutral space which supports, demonstrates and expresses the process of true education. It must, in every way, demonstrate its own thesis. What the student learns - what we all learn as both student of life and an actor with life - is what experience teaches. That which is authentic is that which represents what in fact it is. Our values, dreams, aspirations, once formulated and witnessed, are as much an aspect of our experience as a waterfall or trip to the mall. It is Humanity who has bifurcated spirit and matter, not our Universe.
 
The icon of Masters is the dreaming boy, at a pedestal base with paper airplane in hand, and the reality, souring off the top of the pedestal, of his dream of flight. In our time, this boy can stand for all Humanity as well as his billions of peers seeking education. Grounded in reality, achieving flight, making one’s vision come true, launched from the pedestal of 10,000 years of accumulated knowledge. In this, is theme material to be developed.
 
 
click on the drawings and pictures below to go to supporting documents
 
Masters Profound Learning system has demonstrated the ability to radically advance the learning cycle, create an individualized student plan, track actual learning and retention, create learning communities, and provide an on line networked publication and entrepreneurial environment.
Master Academy and Collage is a school in its own right, a lab for the development of new educational methods, an example of one of a revitalized educational environment. The mission includes the ability to bring to the world what has been learned and tested at Masters. This is an extension of the core mission and requires a transformation of it.
Authentic Architecture is a fact/experienced-based design, fabricate, build, use practice which integrates physical place, arrangement of utilities, work and living flows with specifically (per project requirements) recreated work and living processes, and considers Earth as a single Human built artifact.
A three part dialog, with architectural students from India about Authentic Architecture and its practice in the modern world. By inference, this is an interesting view into their world of education. It also is notable to think carefully about the questions they asked , why were they asked? I found them extremely relevant.
 

video on “the architecture of education” is being redone

 
 
adaptive environments...
There are several domains of adaptively which have to be considered in the making of the Masters Campus. These are at different scales, of different kinds and in different time frames.
 
A general schema of phasing is necessary to evolve the campus from the present to its end-state. Conceptually, the design must focus on the end-state and work backwards to the present. In actuality, the work will progress is phases and sub-phases. The Master Plan, and the architectural grammar which has emerged from it, is not static. The wall, partitions and furniture components within the buildings have to be flexible in their arrange-ability in order to remain requisite with changing needs over time. The actual configuration of the major building elements themselves will also evolve one building cycle to another in response to the external environment and on campus and network patterns of use. This is the the modern practice of Alexander’s “timeless way of building.” This does not mean that the final result will appear fragmented. The Master Plan and the expression of the grammar will provide a conceptual Armature from which the built Armature will evolve. This is true organic architecture.
 
A decade or two in today’s world of change is like centuries in the past. The future cannot be predicted yet buildings last a long time. Therefore they must be conceived in layers of integrated yet separated systems and sub-systems so that those things which change rapidly can be accommodated with out undue loss of time and money nor disruption or compromise to structures which do not need to change. The building in of this emergent property is both practical and reflective of the nature of the modern world. It is a fact-based expression of successful living strategies.
 
 
 
the issue of scale...
Scale for different age groups: The age spread of the students ranges from small children to almost full adulthood. The full scope from full support and supervisory requirements to autonomy is represented. These developmental stages require a broad range of architectural and furniture scales and also understanding that different ages respond differently to space as well as the use of space. They engage with each other in small and large groupings differently. In this program, there will be times when the full age range of students will be co mingled and engaged together and also with full adults, from outside the school, other than their teachers. This must be accomplished without compromise to the intrinsic requirements determined by age and size and doing so without the patronization so common in architecture today.
 
Scale in terms of the size and scope of the enterprise: Part of this study is to determine and resolve two factors in regards the size and scale of the finished Masters campus. One is how big does the Phase III build out have to be in order to accomplish Masters Mission. The second is how much development can the site sustain without having a negative impact on the surrounding community. The final design has to reconcile these factors without compromise to either.
 
Scale in relationship to site and surrounds: The Campus is faced on two sides by a housing sub-division, on one side by a freeway and the fourth by a large military museum. Primarily, the Campus has to be shielded from the highway and the Museum and the subdivision from the Campus. These are issues of traffic, sound, sight lines and impact as well as dominance, subordination, inclusion and exclusion.
 
 
 
 
link coming
flexible environment
systems
 
A fundamental aspect of the the MGT System and Method is the making of Strong Memory. This is accomplished by engaging in a mind-like network architecture, multiple agents of various kinds in a way which creates an unique experience which is then held in living mind, by being connected to specific existing memories and states of like kind, making a new memory.
Every building we build today is but a room in a vast connected mega-structure. Earth is becoming a human artifact wired together with an organic-human infrastructure synthesis. The masters Campus is not stand alone project is part of a swiftly clanging global organism. This is not a metaphor, it is a dynamic living state of being.
All environments have to be embedded knowledge augmentation systems - environment of learning and collaborative design especially so. This goes beyond merely installing computers and multimedia technologies. It requires build in, seamless, non-invasive protocols and a natural, human-machine interface designed to do it.
 

 

 
 
theme...
The theme of a work is the dominate integrating principle which binds all of the elements into a whole. The theme is the most simple, eloquent telling of the entire story. Once established, the theme can be stated in many variations even being counter point to itself.
The dreaming boy souring on a paper airplane is the icon for masters Academy and College. It is a symbol of the Profound Learner. It represents the unlimited potential the school wants every student to be able to conceive and achieve. Education “leads out” from the dream to the capacity to reach that which was dreamed. A dream realized is the creative act.
 
 
 
language...
By denotation, connotation and social adaptation-feedback-emergence, every material shape, volume and form, color, texture, icon and gesture - and assemblages of these - speak in a language of their own just as music does. This is how much of Pattern Language works. This is how great buildings instruct and inspire.
 
In the video above, the experiences I described of public buildings, the traditional corporate board room, CEO’s office and the “closing room” in a sales environment, are negative examples of architectural language use, and in my mind unethical. This is no different than knowledge becoming dogma in the class room by force of a teacher who has ceased exploring knowledge and life - or, the “artful” use of graphical, musical and the language employed to motivate the public in support a war which is truly unjustified. Art has power and can be used for good, or, as “technique” only, for destructive purposes.
 
Every language has a grammar. Grammatical rules make a language coherent. When we speak of an architectural idiom, this is actually a very specific grammar that has been accepted by a community or culture as not only solving a specific set of building problems but also representing the values held in common by that community.
 
 
 
 
The Bay Area Studio Project illustrates a Program Statement including a lifecycle cost analysis, integration of transportation, site sensitive construction methods and the incorporation of personal history, enterprise mission, regional location, in the development of theme and building grammar. The work is taken to the schematic level.
All media is multimedia not only electronic made and delivered. Most tools which have been created in the last 10,000 years are still used as are all forms of media from ink stick, pencil, chalk, carved materials, paint and pixels. Mixed media is most provocative allowing a chunked synthesis which can transform perception.
Abscapes™ is a meshing of graphics, art and symbols to simultaneously speak denotatively and connotatively in order to show the exoteric and esoteric nature of an idea-thing by overlaying levels of abstraction, scales of time and size, vantage points and kinds of media to reveal both universal and specific time and place patterns.
The MGT Modeling Language is a body of “chunked” word-symbols which denote processes related to human learning, creativity, small team and large group processes, the making of strong memory, and the facilitation of all these as an interactive agent-based network architecture which which functions from brain scale to global ValueWebs.
a matrix of Masters Campus Program criteria:
the physical environment
the process environment
the tooling environment
the landscape
The Campus site is a prairie gone with little to replace it. The housing around the Campus is planted in developer beautifying style - nice yet fundamentally sterile. There are serious access, traffic and parking problems. The school feels crowded on its site even before any additions.
provide both a restored and augmented landscape which reclaims the site and brings the buildings back into itself, is food producing, protecting, an act of Nature and provider of great beauty
 
integrating 3 generations of building
The existing buildings were built in the 50s (the one story portion) and the late 90s (the two story portion). They are of traditional layout and lack architectural distinction. The layout of spaces trap their respective grade levels, lack flexibility, do not distinguish their part nor integrate the whole.
provide an integrating architectural language which integrates the whole while respecting the parts, expresses the past, present and future as a continuity and aspiration.
 
entry, exit, interface
There is no Entry in the Pattern Language sense. Logistically, getting on and off the property, in and out of the buildings, and supplying the facility, is not efficient. Adding buildings and functions will further stress a poor situation unless these conditions are resolved by the new design.
provide multiple in/out paths, on three recursion levels: Campus, building, and functional zones, which can configured to facilitate traffic per daily requirements with seamless amenity
 
security and transparency of zones
Two, often thought to be opposite, states are necessary, simultaneously, if the mission of the enterprise is to be realized as an operating environment, 24/7/365, on this campus. Security is a must as is the sense and reality of a transparent, open system of movement and mental freedom.
provide a seamless “state 1, state 2. state 3... n” opening and closing of zones and their resources so that all securinty-exclusion and interaction-inclusion requiements are met
 
the variety of spaces
The composition of and the number and variety of the kinds of spaces provided on this campus is a key “difference that makes a difference” in terms of how the reality of the Masters Mission is experienced, practiced and communicated to the world. The spaces have to be in their future form.
provide a physical, mental, spiritual - emersion - work and play - environment as a high fidelity, evolving example-of-one, of the expected and ideal social, technical, economic future experience
 
governance of the campus
Governance is a broader concepts then government, management or ownership which are some of, yet not all of, the tools of proper governance. Too often top down policy replaces multiple layers of self governing capability creating brittle, non adaptive, organizations.
provide a system of daily Campus management which is performed by the students, under school administration supervision, which provides real world experience in resource management
 
student participation
The student is preparing for a world in which their fundamental relationship to society, living beings, technology and the environment will be radically different from today. This shift is starting now. Yet, the student is deeply embedded in the old paradigm and its ways. So are the teachers.
provide a practical, flexible environment which is always fully “finished,” functional and morphing by simulating new physical places, working and learning protocols, and tool kits.
 
valueweb architecture
Problems , according to Einstein cannot be solved on the level they are created. That which impacts education today is global in scope. Education in turn impacts the world. A modern enterprise has to be both local and global in viewpoints and ability to act. The “skin” of the enterprise must be broad.
provide the environment, from physical to spiritual, which harmonizes the global-local agendas, creates a place in the world which works, demonstrates alternatives and functions on its own
 
integration of processes
The school and the research, navCenter, global ValueWeb enterprises are not separate although their organizational structures may involve different ownership and enterprise forms (non-profit, for profit, etc.). Each entity informs and augments the other making a functional synergy.
provide the physical spaces and process protocols which protect the integrity of each individual, and their various organizational groupings, while providing cross functional work areas
 
design and prototyping based learning
A major requirement of the 21st Century will be the ability to design, work collaboratively, respond to rapid change and accelerating complexity, to develop ideas and markets quickly, employ many kinds of technology, create and work in many kinds of organizations and cultures.
provide an evolving environment of design, prototyping an use which is, everywhere in scope and everyday in duration by student-teachers making/ using their learning/work environment.
 
technology-technique
Technology has come to mean the narrow application of modern tools and mostly computer applications. A hammer is technology and so is a compacted earth irrigation ditch. appropriate technology uses the best tool for the job out of a 10,000 year old tool box.
provide an appropriate mix of tools, craft and industrial, each selected for its true net productivity and complementary human interface for both education and graceful living
 
staying on the technology curve
Technology is now the big driver of human social evolution and soon will become so for human mental and physical augmentation. This will have both negative and positive consequences. Humanity has to understand and learn to creatively engage with this process.
provide an environment and process for systematic prototyping and experiment with new technologies by designing with ethical, whole minded, partners from technology and science
 
technology-sensual balance
The use of technology in modern times has replaced physical work-craft, often producing far less effective results, while severing work’s intimacy with Nature and planet cycles. This demeans work and robs humanity of critical physical-cerebral-social experience.
provide the means to bring physicality back into the function of everyday life by making learning and the operation of the campus an exercise which uses all tools from the hoe to the computer
 
remote presence and collaboration
Transportation now is forming a new configuration including a mix of physical and virtual modes. This trend will accelerate. New and old forms will be combined and used in novel ways. How one “attends” school and work will change as will traditional schedules.
provide a mixed mode physical-virtual system for student, teacher, administrator, researcher and VW members which employs the Campus in a here/remote 24/7/365 experience.
 
role of the “hub”
Every effective environment has a center. In a learning-working environment this place is the place of maximum integration of the soul and product of the enterprise - both local and virtual. It is the 24/7/365 happening - the “mind of the organization.”
provide the enterprise “prime radiant” of the which physically, intellectually, and spiritually brings together and “sends out” the experience, work product and meaning of the venture
 
 
This matrix is a high level scan of critical program issues which stem both from the conditions surrounding Masters and the application of Masters vision to the everyday life and work of the enterprise. As the program and schematic design development process proceeds, many such matrixes will be required to inform the design-build process. Proper use of the Matrix process is to state a condition and/or objective and then an algorithm which can be applied in the iterative design-execution process to satisfy it. In doing so, great care is necessary to avoid soul-body dichotomies, single solution traps, and “now is forever” blinders which limit both design, the resulting built reality and its ability to be balanced and flexible.
 
 
Another caveat is required here: There is a great deal mentioned in these Program Notes about the state of the world and the future requirements for educated citizens. All of this is true. However, this is not the purpose of education - it is a consequence. The purpose of education is to facilitate the learning and preparation of each individual - for a life which they will define and create. If educated they will be prepared to do so. The perceptions and purposes of this generation are not those of our youth. If they are to be truly free they will define these for themselves. To impose is to indulge in propaganda not education. If we want to secure a future for humanity, we best educate and leave the next generation free to invent, live and recreate what has come before.
 
 
 
Phase I Option-a builds the second level of the SE corner of the existing one story Academy wing including portions of the first floor space. This provides a robust example of the Phase II architecture, the second of three overlapping, evolving stages of continuous Campus development and space for expansion and future staging.
Phase I Option-b - The Bridge Building - is the Phase III Hospitality Center outfitted as learning spaces until sufficient Phase II work is completed, at which point, the interior of the Bridge Building will be converted to its long term use. The bridge building is designed in such a way that it will ultimately be connected to all other Phase II and III work.
Phase I Option-c - The Steel Cube building - is designed to be built in front of the NE corner of the one story Academy building to provide the largest cubic space possible at the lowest time and cost possible. This structure can remain where it is and be progressively modified as Phase II and III structures are built around, into and over it.
Phase I Option-d employs the Snowflake configuration to provide temporary facilities for the growing primary school population while the expansion of the permanent Campus can be planned, financed and built. At a certain point in Phases II, or III, Snowflake will be moved to the SE corner of the athletic field to serve sports and gardening functions.
 

The Masters Campus Module Grid and Phasing Plan diagrams which parts of the property are modified, remodeled and added to over time. In actuality, there are many different ways the phases can be executed and even overlap one another. However, what each phase is, and is designed to accomplish, remains the same through out the entire process.

The Program of Masters can be accomplished by a range od scales. Below a certain critical mass, the functions necessary to the Program will not be robust enough to work in a significant way. Beyond, a certain scale of development, the property becomes too developed and this sets the reasonable outer limit of the project. These considerations, along with economics and other externals will define the ultimate scope of the project.

 
 

These six books form a unique set to read together, synoptically, as is outlined below. They range in publication date from 1942 to 1993. Most were published in the 1980s. Each is a classic of its field and represent, for the authors, years of labor - in the case of Guy Merchie 17 years. Click on the book covers to get more information about the books and authors.

A Pattern Language Lists, diagrams and describes some 250 plus patterns that have been common to successful architecture as far back as we have record of it. The scope of these patterns is from a cityscape to niche within a room. If you build and have every one of the patters represented you are not guaranteed a great building although you will most likely have a comfortable one. If you build and have few of these patterns it is for sure you will have an ugly and unsuccessful one. The patterns have to be thought through and recreated each time. Otherwise they become rote, dead, not authentic. The patterns are a true guide. They have been practiced over centuries. It can be observed that they attract and satisfy people from all cultures from all over the world. Most of them are ignored in these “modern” times. This is an aspect of both why buildings have become a commodity and then why the patterns are ignored. Our buildings are rarely lived in and worked in now. They are occupied. Architecture has lost much of its sacred sense-ability. On Growth and Form reveals the immense creativity and proliferation of shapes, forms and textures produced by Nature. The important message is these often fantastic solutions are the direct consequence of “engineering” as the creature responds to the interaction between what is is about and the “pressures” of its environment - an environment which in turn is altered by the response of millions of species. Our human built habitats are in principle no different - we just yet have not yet learned to do it as well. This is the true meaning of “organic” architecture and “biomimicry.”A spider can produce web building material that is 20 times stronger than steel per weight, is on demand at room temperature, makes a structure which stands up to the elements extraordinarily well, performs the function of feeding the spider and storing its food at minimum effort, and it biodegradable. Let us not be arrogant about our engineering capability. And, let us set our ambitions a little higher.

The Seven Mysteries of Life is a tour though philosophy and science from the vantage points of seven different principles or aspects of life which, even as we lean more, still awake a sense of mystery and open ended ness. This is a good book to read from time to time when awareness grows stale and life becomes too familiar and consequently seems to shed its magic. We can kill our sense of life and abandon our sense of adventure by thinking we understand more than we do. This is a delusion, of course and Murchie reminds us, by his own example, that the more we discover the more mysterious it all gets and the more alive it all can be. Where learning ends, death steps in. The distractions of modern life lead us away from the kind of exploration and contemplation which this book calls for. Everything becomes familiar, profane and mundane and we drown in our exaggerated sense of our own knowing. Life become repetition instead of reinvention. The real purpose of education is to make our mind a good place to live in.

Bill Mollison is the father of Permaculture which is the art of creating self-sustaining eatable landscape. “A Designers’ Manual” is one of the best manuals about the design process which can be found in addition to being the how-to bible of Permaculture systems. Permaculture is the practice of economy-ecology integration on the level of the basic social units of home, shop and community. The actual practice of Permaculture varies from clime to clime and the circumstances of community to community. I cannot image why at this time, and given the circumstances of our economy, weather and food supplies, why any project would fail to apply Permaculture principles to the design and execution of the immediate landscape surrounding it. It is healthy, it is natural, it is the best way to reconnect with Nature and life and to take responsibility for that part of Earth which one stewards. We like to say we own our property but this is a misnomer. You cannot own life. The irony is that when we individually give up all engagement with the nurturing of our own food and landscape (in the name of efficiency!), we are attempting to make “our” own living landscape into a slave and in turn become one to a productions system we do not understand nor can effectively engage with. What are we doing when we do this? What are we teaching ourselves and our children when we do this?

The Power of Place is one of the first books to look at the many ways the physical environment effects human thinking and health. Until recently, the impact of environment on humans was generally treated merely as a matter of esthetics and individual taste - a preference with no great consequence. This is no longer the case although I think the relationship between environment and cognition is still understated. Research in recent years, has been extensive and supports a complex array of ways various aspects of the environment impact human thought and behavior. Gallagher’s thesis has been confirmed and extended.

R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz spent years measuring and decoding the Temple at Luxor. He drew a number of conclusions about the nature of ancient Egyptian society which remain today, decades later, radically at odds with mainstream Egyptology. His work is now gaining ground with a younger generation of researchers, recent findings and a growing consensus about the nature and capabilities of other ancient civilizations. The Temple at Luxor is a tutorial in stone of Egyptian philosophy and science presenting an integrated view of Universe/Man. Its symbolism is direct, not metaphorical. It presents open yet distributed pieces throughout the structure requiring the student to understand by experience, contemplation and personal effort. By moving through the Temple studying, remembering and conneting success is achieved.

 

The benefits we have achieved in the last three hundred years are many. However, I do not believe that any case can be made that the specific social, economic, ecological architecture of our present “Western” civilization can be sustained. We are at the end of an era and the paradigm which defined it. This is a good thing. Humanity has been in a similar place many times before and always found a way to a new era. There is copious evidence that the era to come can be the time of a great human success based on ideas, technologies, and a sense of ourselves that we are just beginning to realize. However, there is little evidence that we are preparing for this success in any way which can be deemed adequate. In fact, the better evaluation is that we are acting in a pathologically insane way. It is our “successes” - not “failures” - which are destroying us now. We have allowed our scientific and industrial progress and the way we have chosen to employ our economy to make everything a commodity doing our best to drive spirit out of our existance. The landscape we rape, our goods which we consume and throw away, the human lives we sacrifice in wars and ghettoes, the animals and plants we eat - all commodities. All things to use and discard at will.

What is interesting is that there are very few clearly “bad” people engaged in this process. The reality is that we have been seduced by our own glitter and given up control of ourselves to a system we do not understand nor truly take responsibility for. It is difficult to find such behavior on such a scale in our history as we know it - or, at least believe it to be. What all this says is that we are in a great time to be alive. We get to recreate an entire global civilization one act, one brick, one book, one child’s education, one adult’s renewal, one restoration for our planet, at a time.

What does this have to say about the making of a school and the proliferation of a global learning system? Everything. Every Thing. Every brick we place upon another brick. Every gesture we make by what is built, when and how it is built. Every symbol. Every impact we have on the larger system of which we are a small yet vital part. Every process we create to design, build, use this place which we have been given to bring alive. Everything we do is an instruction to ourselves, and to the children whom we nourish, that this is the nature of our world, this is the nature of life, this is the nature of Humanity. That this is the way it is now and this is what we will make out of it for our future. This is our vision of ourselves and our civilization. The world is large and there is little that each of us can fully understand and even less which we can control. Indeed - in deed - there is not a great deal we can control in regards to a few acres in Calgary. We do have “control” of ourselves, of our intent and our actions. We can with patience, dedication and the application of the art of design and the science of building, make a place like no other on Planet Earth. We can invest it with the magic of life. We can create an experience for parents, administrators, teachers, students, researchers and those who will come to see, learn and take the expereince back home, the discipline of Profound Learning. We can create an architecture, a structure, a process, and expression of the best we can dream, and practice each day, a bit more of a future, healthy, happy, peaceful, productive and spiritual humanity. We can be-come. What we do in Calgary is a practice and proof of concept of that future. It is an act of living art, of Authentic Architecture.

In this new world we are dreaming-making, it is necessary to slow down to speed up. The first steps are like the first expereinces of a baby - everything for the rest of a life-time is built upon this beginning. Education used to be tied closely to leisure. Somewhere along the way, education also became a commodity. It became a means to something beyond itself to be weighed, measured, stamped out like peas in a pod. It became hard to do - a task rather than a joyus mission and trust. It became mass production. It is not easy to break these habits as they are engrained into our culture. We also were educated to this paradigm. Just as the form and mass of a building or a piece of music, and the rhythm of the interplay of all its elements, convey meaning in the physical environment, so does the rhythm and pace of our social processes-structures. The fast drive thought an early morning traffic to school or work conveys meaning and this message can be good or bad for an individual depending on context and circumstances. It can be kinesthetic and exciting - the energy building preamble for a productive day - or it can be hectic, overwhelming, the symbol of a not free compelled life. What then does this say about the design of the entry process onto this Campus and into its various spaces? Is the entry process an overture of great expectation and a preparation to proceed, or merely a door with snow on one side and concrete the other? What does our aspiration say about the order of class activities and their relation to time of day, season and to each other? Are learning subjects and periods crafted in their timing and sequence like modules in a DesignShop,® sensitive to each student? Or, do we do math at 10 AM no matter what?

Is it possible to have a 21st Century curriculum which evolves with time and learning yet always containing the scale and scope of knowledge required to be a true 21st century citizen? Can each teacher, student, researcher, within this same framework, always be pursuing a personal study plan uniquely fit for them at a specific time in their development? Can everyone be a learner, guide, advocate, expert, learning from and teaching each other? Is it possible for every surface, every inch, of the campus - from the underground infrastructure, to landscape, planted roof terraces, specialty rooms of learning, design and performance areas and energy systems - be a human-nature collaboration to make a healthy place which also is a teaching instrument for the birth of a new humanity? Certainly.

To design is “to mark out.” The purpose of a Master Plan is not a rigid framework which will be done by lockstep, correct or not. It is to challenge a community with a task worth inventing. The Master Plan is a rigorously thoughtout doable, growth requiring aspiration.

 
Syntopical Reading
The idea of Syntopical Reading, as developed and practiced by Adler, is to read several books at once while engaging the authors in a dialog which asks them to address issues which may or not be directly treated in their individual book. In this exercise, the query is what do these books in combination have to tell us about the challenge of designing, building and using the Masters Campus?
By not following the many links from this page to other pages, the links on those pages to others; and, without reading these books, there is grave risk of context loss - thus, misunderstanding of the intent of these Notes.
 
Themes
Patterning, systems, respect for all life, the design of a thoughtful, life-supporting, sustainable human landscape, philosophy as a practice, are some of the themes which run through these works. Each is carefully researched yet it is a fact that little of this work can be considered mainstream in today’s intellectual, cultural and political environment. While agreement with these authors is not my goal, understanding them and grappling with their individual point-of-view, discoveries, designs, science and technology is. Understanding the synergy of their work as a whole is critical if the full potential of the Masters Campus is to be realized. Being able to enjoy the flavor of their minds and the art they bring to their work, to mine this treasure, and recreate it for one’s own purpose, is an exercise in the craft of learning and the art of design.
 
Relevance to Masters Campus
These books, if you accept all of their frameworks or not, chart many of the patterns which determine growth, health and integration among Universe, life and humanity. Many traditions have different words for these patterns, yet the patterns remain. Our understanding of them will change - let us hope that our reverence for them does not falter. The knowledge, now, is such that if we design with these patterns in mind we can turn the Masters Campus into a self sustaining garden. We can steward this one small piece of Earth. We can work with Nature - including our own. All of the great traditions, for thousands of years, have been saying essentially the same thing. To apply this wisdom at this time, the brink of a great transformation, is to resolve and integrate past, present and future.
 

 

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PROGRAM

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posted: November 2, 2010 • revised March 21, 2011 - 8:38 AM @ Nashville Studio