The East Village Montessori School
Fall 2019
ARC 307
Instructor: Terrance Goode
New York, NY
This project takes the form of designing an environment for the East Village Montes- sori School in New York City. The school will include children from kindergarten to grade eight. A Montessori school is an ideal topic for examining aspects of bio-poli- tics that are concerned with the control and organization of human bodies and time. Bio-political criticism typically examines these logics as means to a strategy of social control and repression; however, Montessori pedagogy inverts this logic to encourage learners to make their own choices about where, in what bodily position, when, with whom, and for how long they choose to engage a particular learning topic.
The East Village Montessori School focuses on creating a visual interaction for chil- dren, allowing them to supervise and learn from each other. Six evenly shaped two- floor-high classrooms are interlocking, enabling students to see others’ activities in another classroom. The view varies as the user moves along the louver system, so the “wall” can be seen as transparent, translucent, and opaque.
