Breathing Room | Studio+

This design/build studio was tailored to landscape architecture students interested in a fast-moving process of problem-solving, material exploration, fabrication and building techniques and social design through immediate improvements to a small site. The studio created an outdoor wellness space at Sayre High School built collaboratively by landscape architecture students with support from students and faculty in other disciplines, and at PennPraxis. As a team, we studied the effect of our Breathing Room space on mental health, using a focus group approach led by Penn’s Center for Public Health. We included teenagers in all aspects of data collection and analysis, strengthening the STEM curriculum and participatory planning processes for future improvements to the school environment. Landscape students’ design efforts and learning experience were supported by students and faculty in Weitzman’s Environmental Building Design program, who provided technical analysis of the existing condition and proposed design interventions, and City Planning program, who developed a plan to strengthen Sayre’s relationship to the community and collaborate with the Philadelphia Healthy Schools Initiative and other advocates to stimulate wider action to improve more schools and increase equity of school facilities city-wide.