Placemaking is the way all of us as human beings transform the places in which we find ourselves into the places in which we live. It includes building and tearing buildings down, cultivating the land and planting gardens, cleaning the kitchen and rearranging the office, making neighborhoods and mowing laws, taking over buildings and understanding cities. . . . In other words, place making is not just about the relationship of people to their places; it also creates relationships among people in places (Schneekloth and Shibley, 1995, p. 1).

In response to a surge in the school-age population combined with the need to upgrade outdated facilities, thousands of new K-12 schools will be constructed over the next decade and even more will be renovated. In discussing how to reinvigorate the nation's educational infrastructure, school facility planners, educators, and government officials alike agree that new buildings must serve an array of community needs, while also engaging the participation of prospective users. Sometimes referred to as "customer-designed schools," such community-responsive approaches aim to be maximally responsive to the voters who will ultimately pay for new facilities through school construction bonds (Hammond and Schwandner, 1998). Community-responsive schools address the growing skepticism among the populace about the effectiveness of public sector projects by actively involving local constituents in the planning and design process, and by providing them with direct benefits such as day-care centers, adult education classes, and higher education programs.

While far more enlightened than the post World War II wave of school construction, most community-responsive approaches fall short of taking advantage of school design processes to reconceive the nature of education. Although it is widely accepted that good facilities promote learning, school buildings and grounds are typically viewed as so much "brick and mortar"--a product that must be produced quickly and cost effectively rather than an ongoing process of place making. Yet many educators have intuitively recognized children's natural fascination with their surroundings and have used those surroundings as the subject matter for creative intervention and an integrated approach to learning (Davis et. al, 1997; Sutton, 1996). Because they tap a variety of skills and ways of knowing, environmental design activities can be especially effective among reluctant learners. At the same time, there is evidence that the appropriation (claiming and changing) of space is a vital component of childhood (Marcus, 1997), one that can increase the sense of ownership and even safety. For example, a study by Astor, Meyer, and Behre (1999) revealed that violent events tend to occur in the un-owned territories of schools.

There are also benefits to university students and faculty, as well as professionals in the planning and design disciplines. Many persons who are not in the fields of education have been almost euphoric in describing the personal rewards of working in the classroom with children. Anecdotal evidence suggests that children's planning and design activities inspire a level of creativity on the part of adult facilitators that they do not normally experience in the university or workplace.

Sites of Learning in Tukwila is an attempt to create more effective modes of learning by using school buildings and grounds as an opportunity for the continuous process community building through place making. This project is the outcome of a year-long partnership between the Tukwila School District and CEEDS (Center for Environment, Education, and Design Studies) at the University of Washington. Although the school construction process was well underway when the partnership began, we hoped to involve children as active and environmentally aware citizens in their schools and communities, while using university expertise to promote opportunities for both formal and informal learning throughout the city's outdoor environment.

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This report describes the Sites of Learning partnership, its players, their goals, and the programming and design activities they undertook during the 1999-2000 academic year. In particular it focuses on the outcomes of a design workshop--referred to as a "charrette"--in which university students and faculty collaborated with Tukwila's school children to produce concepts for improving the city's outdoor learning environment. It speculates about the next stage of the partnership and concludes with a model for school-university partnerships that utilizes school design as a catalyst for school transformation.