Architecture | Academic | 2021

This project connects the space for a child to the desert through researching indigenous knowledge systems, namely the Ak-Chin O’odham Native tribe, and regional materiality.

The program proposal follows the reggio emilia pedagogy which emphasizes project-based learning through arts and craft as well as the environment functioning as the third teacher. The post WWII meth- odology was developed in Italy and incorporated central piazzas and programmatically overlapping spaces wherein children can interact and play.

This school takes these notions put forth by the pedagogy and trans- lates it into a sonoran peerspective, specifically through a found object: the jumping cholla cactus. Decoding the structural makeup of this skeleton helped understand and define liminal spaces in the site.