PUBLIC ART IN SCHOOLS: A CASE STUDY
 Bill Gould Design "Art in Architecture" Program
Bill Gould Design Art & Architecture has been incorporating public collaborative art into its school designs for the past 12 years. The Art in Architecture program, created in 1994 by Gould, is his response to fixed construction budgets and a trend toward austere, institutional school design. Art in Architecture brings the artist and architect together with students, faculty, school administrators and the community to create, from conception through completion, an artistic component to school campuses. Functional elements such as fences, walkways, or walls are transformed into permanent public art, and integrated into the fabric of the campus. 
Art in Architecture provides students with an opportunity to influence their environment and it exposes them to public art. If possible, Bill enjoys expanding the experience by taking students that will be participating in creating public art on field trips to observe local examples of public art that enhance the community.
Bill's commitment to public art inspired him to develop a design /fabrication studio, Lizard Skin Studios, so that his architecture firm could have complete control over the collaborative public art that has been included in many of their public school designs.
The process of creating public art for schools really enhances the curriculum and gives the students the experience of shaping their own environment. For example, at Crittenden Middle School in Mountain View, CA, students from the Art & Technology class worked together with us to create a thirty-foot circular plaza for the center of their newly remodeled campus. Many classes over time worked to leave their legacy for future site users. Their contribution of poetry and symbol stones reflected their ideas, languages, and values at the time this plaza was created. This special place on campus provides seating, a place of inspiration and a place to meet friends.
 At Bill Gould Design, we try to make the public art projects teacher friendly, where there is no extra burden put on them. For example, at Galarza Elementary School in San Jose, CA we chose the teachers' entrance gates as a site for public art. The two gates, which were needed to secure a private entrance, combine beauty and interest with functionality. The image of the Aztec Calendar was chosen to recognize the school's namesake, Ernesto Galarza, who had an interest in preserving a connection to Mexican heritage for the Hispanic community. The students re-created glyphs of the twenty-day signs of the 260-day calendar, their black and white drawings were translated into cut metal. This project reflected the community, taught the site users about the importance of their new school's namesake, and the importance of culture.
At Theuerkauf Elementary School in Mountain View, CA we took an annual class assignment of making African-style clay masks and developed it into having students create self-portraits in the African-style, with the enhancement of making the masks out of high-fired clay specified for an exterior site. The masks, rich in texture and character, were placed in a seven-foot framework of concentric circles and expanded metal. This art piece, "A Thousand Faces: Mask Mandala" is located at the entrance to the administration building and symbolizes the continuum of students that attend over the years. This type of project was appreciated by the teaching staff because it did change or increase their curriculum. It is an annual project now with the additional benefit of incorporating their teaching into the physical body of the school, showing off their contribution to the student's education, giving incoming students an idea of what type of projects they will be a part of. 
Some examples of collaboration will reveal how creative and flexible such a process can be. Adding collaborative public art into school design extends the lessons into hands-on practical experience, which is an added value that is priceless and limitless. At Campbell Middle School – kids created molds and poured concrete. They physically created the molds, but also learned about concrete, put their hands in it, did the math, and learned about the Golden Section and how it relates to nature and the human form. At Theuerkauf Elementary School, the children went to the nearby wetlands in Mountain View to see the influences of their environment and drew the nature they experienced and the modes of transportation that could get them there. Once we had those drawings, images were selected to be translated into 3-D form. But at Luther Burbank Elementary School in San Jose, we didn't translate, but actually used the pictures the kids created by scanning them into the program that cut the steel. At Rosemary Elementary School in Campbell, we had the students draw fanciful plants and creatures and had the Campbell Middle School Students enlarge and paint them to create a series of floating three-dimensional sculptures. For the sign at River Glen (the Spanish immersion program) we designed the sign along with the teachers and had the students work with an artist to produce tiles depicting images from different Spanish speaking regions.
We also look for ways to use collaboration among students. When asked by the San Jose Redevelopment Agency to create a gateway into Hester Elementary School, we took the opportunity to have the elementary students design the mosaic and create the "power" words for the gate that reflect their ideas and values, but we had the nearby Lincoln High School students create the mosaic. Not only do we get the enhanced enthusiasm of the faculty, but we also attract parents and others who then buy into the process – with the funding, the creativity, or the support.
 This hands on experience; creativity and experimentation can really change these children's lives forever. At Los Gatos High School, we created a barrier fence that represented the students curricular and extracurricular activities. One of the students from the school's drafting class created the CAD representation of what the finished fence would look like. From that experience and collaboration, he ended up coming to intern at our architectural firm and he is now an architectural student at the University of Oregon. His one experience with public art inspired him to become an Architect.
We are dedicated to adding collaborative public art into our school designs. It has been a very successful program. The projects are fun and whimsical and showy and exciting. It is a thrill to see the pride of children at their inclusion in shaping their environment. Rarely do students have an opportunity to leave a legacy.
- Bill Gould, AIA
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