ANNIE COON
Literacy is vital to success in our increasingly digital and information-rich world. Yet 54% of adult Americans lack literacy proficiency according to the U.S. Department of Education. Literacy a multifaceted process that goes beyond technical skills to include proficiency in a complex set of understandings, attitudes, expectations, and behaviors related to the written language.
Play has been identified by researchers and theorists as a way to gain and develop literacy skills in children. Incorporating play into literacy curriculum mobilizes imagination, emotion, and cognition and results in increased emergent literacy-related skills.
This thesis seeks to support and instigate emergent literacy in the community using playful architecture as a medium for learning. The project’s design solution is a community center that houses a public library, preschool, and adult literacy center on an existing park in Hayward, CA.
In the heart of the East Bay, Hayward is a large suburban city of 163,000 that has a large immigrant population, in which almost 60% of the population speaks a language other than English at home. The site is an existing community park located parallel to BART train tracks in a single-family residential neighborhood. This park exists as a narrow leftover piece of land and is not used much by the community. This proposal seeks to activate this park with playful interventions through the community amenities of a preschool, adult literacy center, and library which support the literacy of the community, for young and old.
This proposal is a place where stories are created. An interactive façade activates the street and draws the playful instincts in kids and adults alike to inhabit the structure which acts as a scaffold for people to create their own narrative. From the youngster at preschool, to the teen playing basketball, to the grandpa learning English at the literacy center, to the parents biking through the park on their way to work, the community creates a collective narrative as they inhabit the structure in their own way. It is a community hub where the pedestrian and bike path funnel people through the neighborhood and builds knowledge as kids and adults interact with their environment. Play is integrated into the building, with playful volumes hanging on the scaffold that are reached by a maze of exterior walkways and varied-level platforms high up in the trees. Connectivity and fluidity between the programs provide profound learning experiences as community members interact with each other.
