Design-Build Pitch: 1UP Agincourt Collegiate Institute (Winner)

hi we're one court for this year we decided to revamp the Courtyard at ACI the courtyard is a unique Green Space located at the center of our school it has Greenery two sets of wooden Ventures a wooden platform and many unusable features the main challenges within this space are safety uncomfortable seating and unmaintained Greenery there were many attempts of revamping this Courtyard last year however has not been used regularly for over a decade located at the heart of our school it does not bring our community together as of right now how might we create a safe and welcoming Courtyard that will unite our community to effectively repurpose this space we gauged what students and staff think through surveys out of the 53 students the majority see themselves hanging out eating lunch or studying in the courtyard 41% of these students wanted to add picnic benches with new insights on what is in demand and Survey results our chapter brainstormed who would use the space what exists and necessary additions most of the existing items are obstacles or hindrances what we need more of is seaing practical Greenery and safety additions we recognize how this could become a multi-purpose space through Persona brainstorming an example of a Persona that we created is Bob who comes to school early and reads in the courtyard for some fresh air through our site analysis an overwhelming number of issues surfaced thus our Mentor R suggested a phasing concept we use this phase in concept to summarize the key changes that we need to make phase one is about safety and access as those factors are our first priority the second phase focuses on upgrading existing elements for example The Greenery the third phase focuses on inexpensive editions and the Final Phase focuses on expensive additions so with our phasing Concept in mind we started brainstorming some ideas we wanted to tackle one idea effers but realized many of these Concepts were vital to a reamp so with the help of our Mentor ra and a landscape AR Tech gr we came up with our proposed solution a combined plan here's what our plan looks like so to start we plan to only allow access to the courtyard on certain days during lunchtime as the most accessible entrance is connected to a club room moving on to our design for phase one we want to add Planters on the concrete Ledges with low maintenance seed on Plants the idea is for the community to add more Planters every year and this will PR prevent climbing on The Ledges moving on to phase or sorry we also want to add a barrier in front of the exposed electrical box and to increase accessibility we want to add um level Pathways with dir or mulsh and we're also looking into adding ramps moving on to phase two we want to reallocate the existing benches on the unsafe Upp upper level to the lower level to create an outdoor classroom for what to tackle the concerns with Greenery uh one of our general members took the initiative to research what kind of plants are best used to upgrade the Hill into a garden moving on to phase three and four we want to implement more areas with seating one area will include a uh an area for with a picnic B table for um shelter with the umbrella and another area includes benches between the nooks of the walls so this is what our minimal viable product looks like it includes seaing Greenery and uh is in a relatively safe and accessible location okay so then what is our goal in cor stand among other schools for having a central Green Space within this building however due to the lack of funding and attention um this initiative may fail to continue in the future for with extensive support for this project our school will realize the potential of this space and Foster Greater Community involment therefore we aim to host workshops with other organizations such as an indigenous gardening company called mini to make environmental care and learning enjoyable the additional $1,000 allows us to afford more tools of gardening seaing and maintenance expenses that allow the cyard to sustain himself in the future so that we can host more schoolwide events so with all these plans what are some uh challenges that our chapter has overcome or foresee in the future well at the start of the Year our oneup was not a verified vendor of our school board tdsv so it delayed a lot of school meetings and we lost time this generates safety concerns with our new administrator and it's difficult to access the space after Relentless emailing we were finally able to host a a site launch in like 3 months we still struggle to come up with concepts for our design uh but we were able to do that with the help of our mentors to increase the de demand in the space we started to advertise more and encourage students and the community and admins to take action so we're even even though we are still struggling with all these issues and safety and access we hope that with the support from oneup and our and the judges we're able to overcome these issues and Achieve our goals thank you for listening this is where you can contact us with um looking at this and I thank you for thinking about accessibility before I even had to ask but have you looked at what other schools have done to rejuvenate their Courtyard and of any of the other schools with their that Center Courtyard design been able to in the last little while renovate their um [Music] renovate so I guess the main question is is there any model you can actually follow that another school has done um so thank you for noticing our detail to accessibility our our Mentor ra suggested it but um we weren't really able to find any schools with like a courtyard in the center of their school so it was difficult to kind of have like to research that part but um I've personally visited other schools before Markville Markville actually actually and they have a lot of seating so we kind of yeah so we have a slide for that um in this slide you can see that before this hallway is like empty but now they added like more tables and benches and more people are able to use that hallway to eat and like um and do their homework so that's where we got the idea of adding like a table does that answer your question yes okay thank you thank you for your presentation um I just have I maybe have a couple questions my first question was um you go to the school so you used the space quite a bit but how do you observe oh you don't it's been closed so it's not regularly used okay maybe I didn't catch that so the the space is unused right now yes okay okay so I'll go to my other question is it is the land still owned then by the TDSB uh yeah it is it's a part of our school just like nich closed okay so is the when you talk to people about the plan and the phasing did you talk to like teachers and administrators and the principal and things like that sorry could you repeat the question when you when you were kind of coming up with this plan and you were it seems like you did a lot of um engagement with surveys and and workshops and things did you involve the like teachers or Administration or principal yeah we definitely did speak to our principal a lot about this because he um I mean he's in close TI with the TDS and he's very um strict about uh certain things that we can do because there's a lot of danger that um comes with trying to revamp this Courtyard um we also we spoke to a lot of students that um I mean it's been close for a long time and a lot of people really want to go to the Courtyard but um yeah so they they all want us to revamp it um the teachers as well they would really like to um see the courtyard open again and they they really helped us with our phasing process as well Mr Cross um our uh supervisor and another teacher named Mr Pito um they're also like architecture teachers and um so they helped out with like the uh yeah the teacher survey we had that survey for students and uh teachers as well so yeah just just to add on to her point we weren't able to add the teacher survey because there wasn't enough time but um as Mega said we did have a teacher survey and um a lot of staff were interested in revamping the space because they told us that apparently like a decade ago they a decade ago they had like bands and like live singers or something in that space so they really wanted to like open it up but we kind of struggled with talking to our principal about it because he's relatively new to our school I hope that answers your question yeah no I did it WR out a lot of Clarity I think I uh might have missed something there and then I'm sure the teachers would love the idea of the Outdoor Classroom especially okay thank you um actually to follow up on a couple of things um I guess it wasn't clear to me on why it's not open and what makes it dangerous and you started talking about a ban 10 years ago can you tell me a little bit more about how this space is current unsafe yeah so there's a lot of uneven surfaces like when we had that site visit I accidentally rolled my ankle and one of like the holes cuz it was on a hill um there's all like there's a lot of branches like everywhere so like that's also like a safety hazard cuz people can also trip on it U just to add there's also um an exposed electrical box I'm not sure if you saw um but we actually surveyed our teachers to find out why the courtyard was wasn't open for over a decade cuz the space is actually very beautiful and they didn't know a lot of like the teachers were saying oh like just nobody really uses it like it's kind of messy and like people are just aren't interested in using it and don't know about the space um I kind of just guessed that people just um didn't want to do the upkeep for the place and just uh didn't want to hire people to make sure that the grass was like cut and that type of thing um yeah um I have a couple more questions um one thing is I really like your premise of Designing this space to build community in your school um and I wonder what kind of thought that you and that you have put in to make lots of different people feel included in the space and feel like uh you know what kind of thought did you think about how how you could build community through this space and to make lots and diverse people feel safe included and um can enjoy the space yeah I um me and the entire club we all thought that um many uh different like clubs and societies um in our school could use the space for certain meetings or events um there there's this spirit week that we have a every couple months called a holiday Hall Market which we thought would be good outside um the Eco Council loves to just like go out and garden um so we thought that this place would be the perfect space for them to also help out with that um and also just like uh in on normal days just the seating in general people can um sit on there's an image of like Square okay um there's like a like a sorry there's like a chair um in the Middle where a lot of people can gather around and just sit together and I feel like just sitting in the in a near vicinity at the beginning of the year a lot of people tend to say hey like what's your grade um what are your classes that type of thing it's just um so also through our student surveys we like survey the entire school and um our teacher helped us with that so uh a lot of like different students who are interested in sports and things like that um kind of added their ideas which is u a lot of different students wanted just a place to like hang out during spare or like lunch um and we kind of noticed that a lot of people were going to the calf or like the library but it might not be the best place um if they want like fresh air or to talk like L um and if I can ask just a few follow-up questions um I think I missed it CU you're going pretty quick running out of time okay I was just because I'm I'm not sure if I understood what was the solution cuz uh like what was the design solution and what was the funing strategy but I think maybe you could just flash that last image of the the design that you came up with we we actually have a but I'm not sure if like we're supposed to show it after or right now and then I gave it to one of the oneup we'll be able to show it to the judges okay great thanks guys good job thank you okay thank you