My middle school was a stupid place that looked like a prison on the outside, but on the inside, the classrooms had no back walls and were separated by accordion dividers. Occasionally, they would open up the dividers and show the whole three-classroom block a video on three of those carts all chained to one VCR.
The one I remember was on a fun day where we all got to watch Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which had just come out on video. They fast-forwarded through Napoleon’s, “Merde! Merde! Merde! Merde! Merde!” being translated as, “Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!” in the subtitles, but we could all see it and we were all like 13, so it was pretty funny.
Here is the school. It still exists. Batchelor Middle School in Bloomington, Indiana. I hear the inside has been renovated and there are now actual walls.
And I’m not exaggerating when I said it looks like a prison. It’s not the most comforting sight the first time you go.
My school’s bus, which was used only for sporting events and trips, was an actual prison bus. It still had restraint attachment points and the bars on the windows.
It was brilliant for psyching out the other football teams.
I went to a similar looking middle school, but each grade was in one giant room probably the size of a gym. No class had an actual wall unless it was on the edge. Probably 10-11 classes in each big room for the grade. The only dividers between classes were like rolling bulletin boards and maybe a metal cabinet or two. I couldn’t imagine having to teach in those conditions because it always was pretty noisy.
I also remember the school’s gym had a full locker room with showers but students weren’t allowed to use the showers and none of the bathrooms in the school had stall doors. And the stalls were those short ones were your head was higher than the top of the wall. It was super weird.
My elementary school was an old Timex watch factory. It was a “temporary” building that ended up lasting 13 years. The only windows in the building were in the office and kindergarten wing. Last I checked, which was over a decade ago, the building had been turned into a firefighter training course.
So, school being a prison? All I have to do is remember my elementary school days.
This is obviously not that bad, but there was a continuous rumor going around the school that it was going to be a women’s prison but they decided to make it a school instead.
Windows are terrible at efficiency. Yes, even modern ones with three panes and filled with argon. A building with minimal windows is generally going to have better thermal efficiency than one with lots of them, and that started to be really important during the 1970s oil crisis. The result was a bunch of schools like this that look like prisons.
If you get some local mural artists to paint the concrete in bright, whimsical images, it fixes a lot.
My middle school was a stupid place that looked like a prison on the outside, but on the inside, the classrooms had no back walls and were separated by accordion dividers. Occasionally, they would open up the dividers and show the whole three-classroom block a video on three of those carts all chained to one VCR.
The one I remember was on a fun day where we all got to watch Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which had just come out on video. They fast-forwarded through Napoleon’s, “Merde! Merde! Merde! Merde! Merde!” being translated as, “Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!” in the subtitles, but we could all see it and we were all like 13, so it was pretty funny.
Here is the school. It still exists. Batchelor Middle School in Bloomington, Indiana. I hear the inside has been renovated and there are now actual walls.
And I’m not exaggerating when I said it looks like a prison. It’s not the most comforting sight the first time you go.
Honestly, as far as brutalist architecture goes, that one’s not too bad. I kinda like it, especially the cantilevers.
Yeah, that’s brutalism done right.
My school’s bus, which was used only for sporting events and trips, was an actual prison bus. It still had restraint attachment points and the bars on the windows.
It was brilliant for psyching out the other football teams.
I went to a similar looking middle school, but each grade was in one giant room probably the size of a gym. No class had an actual wall unless it was on the edge. Probably 10-11 classes in each big room for the grade. The only dividers between classes were like rolling bulletin boards and maybe a metal cabinet or two. I couldn’t imagine having to teach in those conditions because it always was pretty noisy.
I also remember the school’s gym had a full locker room with showers but students weren’t allowed to use the showers and none of the bathrooms in the school had stall doors. And the stalls were those short ones were your head was higher than the top of the wall. It was super weird.
I don’t get the idea. Prison on the outside, anarchy on the inside. Who came up with that concept?
My elementary school was an old Timex watch factory. It was a “temporary” building that ended up lasting 13 years. The only windows in the building were in the office and kindergarten wing. Last I checked, which was over a decade ago, the building had been turned into a firefighter training course.
So, school being a prison? All I have to do is remember my elementary school days.
This is obviously not that bad, but there was a continuous rumor going around the school that it was going to be a women’s prison but they decided to make it a school instead.
1970s build?
Windows are terrible at efficiency. Yes, even modern ones with three panes and filled with argon. A building with minimal windows is generally going to have better thermal efficiency than one with lots of them, and that started to be really important during the 1970s oil crisis. The result was a bunch of schools like this that look like prisons.
If you get some local mural artists to paint the concrete in bright, whimsical images, it fixes a lot.
Only problem is that the paint fades eventually, and if no one cares to redo it it’ll end up looking like those sad old fading Soviet murals.