Total Recall
Nov 1, 2007 12:00 PM
For 25 years, American School & University has been publishing a special issue dedicated to the best in education design.
Although design has changed dramatically over the years, you will find that the jury criteria for award-winning projects has remained consistent. The first jury was looking for technical innovation, and 1986's jury mentioned the use of regional materials. In 1989, the jury wanted to see natural light incorporated into the designs; 1993's jury talked about security, among other things. The 2007 jury: sustainability, security, innovation.
The following pages are a retrospective of these 25 years of citation winners. In addition, we've reprinted biographies of William W. Caudill and Louis I. Kahn, for whom our main award winners are named.
Finally, we want to recognize the schools, architects and hard-working jurors that have helped make these issues true sourcebooks for education design.
William W. Caudill
Of all the giants in 20
William Wayne Caudill, FAIA, pioneer of “architecture by team” and champion of humanistic design, was both a formidable figure in the architectural profession and a frank, humorous, sensitive man. After he graduated from Oklahoma State University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), his career ranged from the “hard-nosed professional,” as he liked to say, to educator, author, researcher, lecturer and international traveler.
In 1946, he founded a small practice in Austin, Texas, that grew into an international corporation called CRS Sirrine, a Houston-based design and construction firm with more than 3,000 employees. It was “the house Caudill built.” [The company was sold in 1994; HOK purchased the architectural side of the firm.]
At the root of Caudill's vision was the philosophy that architecture was for everyone, not a select few, and that people should be engaged in the design of their own buildings. He wrote, “Buildings are never fully successful unless the users love their buildings.” He believed in an inclusive rather than exclusive approach and thus conceived the “problem seeking/problem solving” method of programming and designing buildings that involved users as well as client decisionmakers. He was a skilled designer of many award-winning buildings; yet his expertise was in conceptualizing new solutions based on the fulfillment of human needs.
A prairie populist by nature and a native of Hobart, Okla., Caudill received recognition at the age of 26, in 1941, when he wrote Space for Teaching, the first of 12 books and 80 articles on functional, low- cost, energy-efficient school design. The book intrigued educators and architects, and became a force in revolutionizing schoolhouses in America. Caudill's career as an authority on school architecture was launched — and he had yet to design his first school building!
When he did design a school — in Blackwell, Okla., in 1948 — it was acclaimed in Collier's magazine for its many innovations as “The Little Red Schoolhouse Goes Modern.” It turned out that Space for Teaching not only put a fledgling firm on the map and into business, but it also gave CRS a specialty, one it developed for the next 20 years in 26 states and eight foreign countries with elementary schools, junior and senior high schools, and universities.
Caudill conducted research studies (1946-1949) on natural ventilation and natural lighting of school buildings at the Texas Engineering Experiment Station at Texas A&M University, where he taught for six years, summing up his research in his book Toward Better School Design (1953). He believed in research as the basis for new solutions to problems in school design.
He continued to probe new solutions in modern schools. Organizations and publications such as Life magazine in 1954, The School Executive in 1957, and Educational Facilities in 1959 commissioned him to design or research prototype facilities for the school of the future. American School and University contracted his firm to write a series of research reports based on problems encountered in planning and designing school buildings (1953-1959). The legendary journalist, Edward R. Murrow, interviewed Caudill in 1955 on his TV show, “See It Now,” on advances in school design.
Caudill became a Fellow of AIA, received honorary degrees, served on the boards of CRS, Herman Miller, Inc., and AIA, and learned just before his death of his induction into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, the first architect so honored.
Bill Caudill urged us beyond pure form or function to the true beauty of people using and appreciating their buildings. To him that was the real architectural experience, the kind — like his wisdom and the spirit of his legacy — that will endure. — Randle Pollock, reprinted from the first AS&U Architectural Portfolio, 1983
