open-air school

Columbia GSAPP Adv V | Fall 2020
Studio Critic: Nahyun Hwang

Marginalized communities often bear the burden of pollution inequity, using air pollution as a means of privileging certain spaces over others. Located in the South Bronx, the project looks to parks as a way to reclaim polluted air for health education and asthma prevention in Mott Haven’s public schools.

Informed by historical research on weaponized air and open air schools, the proposal is an open air health campus, located on the park, engaging breathing programs specifically targeting asthma. The campus is organized through combining educational and play spaces with restorative breathing environments, each which engage air through specific relationships with the human body, materiality, and movement. The center will partner with neighboring schools as an extension of their school buildings and curriculums. The hope is, with this partnership, care for children in schools will extend to focus on the air, physical and mental health of the student as a product of the environment in which they live in and breath.