Improving portable classrooms

About a year ago, a Portland State University professor was prompted by the Portland Public School System to envision what the “school of the future” might be like. Since that time, Sergio Palleroni and a team of architecture students and faculty have worked to redesign the aesthetic and functionality of mobile classrooms.

But Palleroni, associate professor of architecture, realized that this would not be a simple task.

“As we were working in the schools, we realized the problem was bigger than simply [designing a school of the future],” Palleroni said.

According to Palleroni, it has been over 50 years since PPS has had a public funding initiative to build school buildings. With lack of funding for bond measures and the public unwilling to pay more taxes, schools have had to look elsewhere to find extra space for students.

“It’s not just New Orleans or Haiti that are in trouble, it’s our own communities that are suffering,” Palleroni said.

PPS has been addressing the problems, but underfunding is evident in schools throughout the U.S. Many are dealing with the issues in a similar fashion.

“All over the country, people are ordering mobile classrooms,” Palleroni said.

Instead of building new buildings, schools are buying portable classrooms, which are the equivalent of mobile-style manufactured homes, adjusted to fit the needs of a classroom.

“Schools are buying portable classrooms because they don’t have to raise bonds for them. They can pay for them out of operational and management expenses from the school. However, there is an extraordinary expense [to buy a portable classroom]. They cost an average of $250,000–350,000 for a lousy little classroom,” Palleroni said.

At this point, BaSiC Initiative stepped in. According to its website, it is a community of faculty and students from Portland State University and University of Texas at Austin, who design and build structures, in order to create more economic and ecological spaces.

On April 8–9 of 2010, BaSiC Initiative, architects, manufacturers of the portable classrooms and PPS gathered at a symposium aimed at transforming these portable classrooms into more economical, modular spaces.

“There are over 200,000 of these classrooms all over the United States. If you do the math, that is billions and billions of dollars of investment in poor buildings that are going to be obsolete the moment they hit the ground,” Palleroni said.

Palleroni reports that the portable classrooms are not great environments for students, either.

“They don’t have good light. They don’t have good ventilation. They are not going to last,” he said.

At the symposium, Palleroni realized that the manufacturing companies were interested in creating more suitable portables.

“[We got] everyone to sit around the table [at the symposium] and work together to design the portables…We created all sorts of options,” Palleroni said.

Since the symposium, students at PSU have taken over the project.

“Each of the ideas that emerged from that [April] meeting are now being [worked by students to] make them into better designs. Our hope is that we are going to take these ideas and influence the way in which these classrooms are made in the future,” Palleroni said.

The department of architecture offers the courses involved with PPS and the BaSiC Initiative project.

Professor Margarette Leite, assistant professor of architecture, has been involved in running Design Studios at PSU that deal with portable classroom designs.

Palleroni is teaching a similar studio course, as well as two capstone courses relating to the portables.

Students have been designing portable classrooms based on ideas that came out of the first design session in April. The architecture courses are designed to expand and improve the ideas proposed at the symposium.

One of the biggest problems designers have faced is creating a “truly” portable classroom. Right now, sites tend to get polluted with abandoned portable trailers that are no longer in use. They remain where they are because they are not as easily moved as the name suggests. 

Palleroni hopes to make the new portables in such a way that when a classroom is no longer needed, the trailer can easily be removed.

Palleroni reports that, at the end of the semester, students will have prepared many different portable classroom options. At this point, Palleroni expects to meet with the portable manufacturers and get the designs into circulation.

“We hope to have a whole bunch of different ideas of how we can make better classrooms, how to improve the ones that are already in place, and also how [to make] them truly portable,” Palleroni said. 

So far, the students seem to be making progress.

“It’s just gaining incredible momentum. We’re actually hoping to build experimental super green classrooms that will break new ground of what [a portable classroom] can be,” Palleroni said.

Green portables are not the only development Palleroni has seen in the project. Lately, engineers and economic professors have become involved in the project, as well as other faculty members.

 “We are trying to split the problem up…as part of the research agenda. We’re breaking it down into a series of problems that the school districts normally don’t have the funding to deal with. We’re going to start figuring out how to make this a reality,” Palleroni said.

Palleroni has high hopes for the designs. He is confident that they will produce superior, more affordable classrooms.

“It’s not just a school exercise. We are trying to overturn the system,” Palleroni said.