Studio reviews are a common occurrence in the Center Space of Knowlton Hall. Less common is elementary school students presenting their design plans and models to Knowlton faculty and students. Pinned up for display were imaginative playgrounds replete with zip lines, slides, and trampolines that 150 third, fourth, and fifth graders envisioned for their home school, Siebert Elementary. 

The field trip to the Knowlton was a collaborative offshoot of the STEAMM Rising program, a collaboration between Ohio State faculty and the Columbus City Schools. The STEAMM (science, technology, engineering, art, mathematics, and medicine) program helps to foster campus-community partnerships to establish educational and career pathways in these and allied disciplines.

Plans for the collaboration began last summer when Jake Boswell, an associate professor of landscape architecture, and Michelle O’Sullivan, an art educator at Siebert, started working on a shared curricula initiative. On the third day of the autumn semester, Boswell, along with co-instructors of the senior landscape studio Karla Trott and Tameka Baba, took 36 Knowlton students to Siebert Elementary in German Village for a tour of the school and to take measurements of the playground. The studio then conducted a weeklong charrette to produce designs for a new playground. 

Following the charrette, Boswell returned to Siebert to introduce the elementary students to landscape architecture and to help them begin their own designs for a new playground. “I was able to showcase landscape architecture as an art and at the same time demonstrate how applied math is also a part of our design work. The elementary students had just been learning about fractions, so we put those fractions to use drawing their playground to scale.”  

To assist the Siebert students in conceptualizing their designs, six Knowlton School seniors went to the elementary school to present the playground plans and models created during the first-week charrette. The fact that Siebert is comprised of three-quarters of Spanish-speaking students prompted senior Diego Hernandez to present his project in English, and then repeat it in Spanish.  

“The children got very excited,” said Boswell. “It was probably one of the most endearing things I have ever seen as an educator. The Siebert students just came alive. You could just see their lights turn on, as if in their minds they were saying—Somebody that looks like me can become a landscape architect.”

The Siebert students continued to work on their playground designs during art classes, drawing on recent lessons in collage and model making. Once their plans were complete, the students came to Knowlton to display their work. 

Boswell was impressed with the poise of the students and their ability to explain their design concepts—a major feature of studio reviews, Knowlton’s curriculum, and professional landscape architecture. “One of the things that Michelle [O’Sullivan] stressed with her students is that art is not just a thing that you do on a piece of paper, it is also learning how to talk about your creative process and how to be confident in expressing your ideas.”

Boswell added that he found the students’ concepts often went beyond simple and normative design elements. “You would expect to hear, ‘My playground is going to have a set of swings,’ or ‘My playground is going to have a soccer field.’ But in many cases, the students took really interesting spins on these activities. We saw slides that terminated into ball pits, for example. And there were some interesting zip line ideas, as well.” 

Following their presentations, the students were divided by their grades to visit other parts of the Ohio State campus. The third graders, who were completing a unit on animals at Siebert, visited Waterman Farm. Fifth graders visited the Arne Slettebak Planetarium to complement their study of space in science class. The fourth graders, who were studying technology, stayed at Knowlton Hall and toured the M/I Homes Foundation Materials/Fabrication Laboratory with Mike Baumberger, where they learned about the 5-axis CNC router, 3D printers, and Zünd Digital Cutter and how Knowlton students and faculty use these tools to explore a project and eventually translate a project from imagination to reality. 

Boswell hopes to build on the success of this collaborative partnership and create more opportunities to introduce young students to the potential of landscape architecture to define their spaces.