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Edible Schoolyard Kitchen Classroom Berkeley, CA 2001 The Kitchen Classroom is the space in which students at a public middle school gather to cook and eat the produce they have grown in their one-acre school garden. The classroom was conceived as the “hearth” of the school, evoking a sense of home in the context of an urban institution. The classroom was designed as a forum for the theater of everyday life, a space that responds to the psychic as well as physical needs of children. Materials were selected to gain character with heavy use and wear. Ecological woods and reclaimed materials speak to the history and ecology of the site. The design is intended to deconstruct the public/private realms, introducing archetypes of home in a large urban school. The Edible Schoolyard, founded by renowned chef Alice Waters, is hailed as a national educational model, incorporating gardening and cooking in the curriculum at a public school. The space, which is adjacent to the garden, is utilized by over 900 students over the course of the year, with approximately 30 people working in the space during a single class. Wowhaus utilized ecologically-sound wood characteristic of the bioregion and reclaimed materials from the school’s old cafeteria: at least 50% of the materials used in the furnishings were reclaimed from the old school cafeteria that was being demolished. These materials would normally be sent to the landfill. Doors, drawers, and hardware are all recycled; old growth fir wooden panels in the furniture were milled from demolished shelving. The rest of the wood used in the project consisted of ecologically harvested timber procured from local mills. Photographer: David Duncan Livingston |