Schoolyards Schoolyards

The Schoolyard group commented on the standardisation of school typologies in Moscow with 34 suggestions of what can happen with, or in a schoolyard.

How can the large schoolyards that surround the schools in Moscow and that are situated in the middle of apartment blocks be opened up to the neighborhood? A school in Mitino serves as case study. The first days were used to make a proper analysis of the situation in Moscow. Fact: put together all schoolyards of the 1727 schools in Moscow and you have 23 Gorky Parks. The schoolyards are fenced and each program within the schoolyards got its own fence as well. The outside space is only accessible to the children and the teachers, meaning that the residents cannot use the space between the apartment buildings. Most of the people living around the case study schoolyard leave home early for work and return late. Group Schoolyards want to blur the boundaries of the schoolyard to make the large, most of the time unused space, public and to create possibilities for the residents of the apartment blocks to relate to each other and form a community.

> Fernando Daher Alvarenga > José Carlos Fernández Martínez > Ruth Lanting > Tatyana Lomeiko > Jonathan Schofield > Lisa Tiedje > Greta Tiedje

Due to to the Soviet urban planning regulations, school yards in Russian cities are gated plots, fenced off from the neighborhood. The plots are substantial, calculated 20m2 per child, with the average school for 1000 children it easily amounts to several hectares. On one hand they are unusable for the inhabitants of the area, but on the other they often secure free green space. How can this territory allow for double use? How could the use change during the day? After-school hours and on the weekends? During holidays, if one considers that summer holidays in Russia last for 3 months? How can the area be combined with the courtyards of the adjacent houses? How can one deal with the security issue? How the lack of private school space would influence the school building? Or could it become the area of preservation? We suggest a school in Mitino as a case study.