Landscape Architecture Faculty & Students Team Up for Science Museum Installation

Content

Schools across Western Mass are feeling the effects of extreme heat in the classroom. This spring, Carolina Aragón, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Climate Artist, and Art for Public Good founder, teamed up with Cooler Communities and the Duggan Academy in Springfield to co-create “sWARM,” a participatory art project that aims to raise awareness and helps find solutions to this problem. Students in the Landscape Architecture program contributed their skills to assembling the exhibition.

Over 500 Duggan Academy middle school students and their teachers worked together on the project to make hundreds of origami butterflies, using an educational kit created by Aragón. The kit included origami folding instructions, daily lessons about climate change, and pre- and post-activity surveys to reflect on what the students were learning each day. The project also asked students to decorate their butterflies with personal messages about what to do when it’s hot and what their hopes are for the future. For example: 

“Next time there is a heat wave I am going to...”   
“keep my grandmother safe from the heat.”  
“stay in the shade.” 

“In the future, I hope...”  
“to plant more trees.” 
“it gets less hot.”

Students painted over each paper butterfly with a special thermochromic paint that changes color in response to temperature. When temperatures rise above 77 degrees, the paint changes from pink to clear, revealing the personal messages and yellow paper beneath. 

Middle school students at the Duggan Academy followed an educational booklet prepared by the UMass team to create the color-changing Origami butterflies. The booklet also contained daily lessons and activities about climate change; photo by Camilla Novo.

Aragón’s team of UMass Landscape Architecture students, along with Art for Public Good, assembled the butterflies into a public art installation that acts as a visual thermometer of extreme heat and its health impacts in schools and other buildings. 

On Saturday, June 1st, sWARM opened at the Springfield Science Museum. It will be on display until late August, when it will be moved to the Duggan Academy's main hallway. Visitors to the opening event had the opportunity to participate in quizzes, raffles, and science and art activities hosted by project collaborators, providing valuable information about how to protect homes and communities from rising heat. Professor Aragón, Cooler Communities Director Uli Nagel, and Duggan Academy Director of Partnerships Mary Kay Brown shared the story behind project sWARM and thanked the many students and teachers who played an integral role in its success. Said Aragón,

“All the work really was students and the teachers. You opened the doors to us and Cooler Communities and worked with us to make this project happen. It’s heartfelt and we’re all here with good intentions. It’s important to remember there are people who want to do what’s right."

Aragón, Nagel, and Brown invited several Duggan Academy students in attendance to introduce themselves and tell visitors what they gained from the experience. One 8th grader shared that he liked being part of sWARM because it was something he could connect with as he feels the heat in our world just about every day. A 7th grader told visitors that being part of sWARM helped her understand how heat affects the planet and why it is so important to take care of the earth for one another. 

Back at Duggan Academy, students and teachers are supporting one another by discovering innovating ways to reduce heat in their classrooms. Many classrooms at Duggan lack air conditioning; as a result, rooms can reach as high as 90 degrees on a hot day. At the exhibition opening, Mary Kay Brown recounted that when one middle school class tried to paint the butterflies for the first time, students were astonished to see no pink on their paint brushes. The thermochromic paint immediately turned clear because the classroom was too hot. Mary Seid, a 7th grade science teacher, shared that she and her students are measuring their classroom windows so they can order window films that reflect 95% of incoming light. After installing the films, students will collect data on heat gain reduction. If the experiment proves successful, the class plans to bring this solution to other second floor, south-facing classrooms.

At UMass Amherst, Carolina Aragón is now working with Ezra Markowitz, Associate Professor of Environmental Conservation, to study the impact that project sWARM may have on the knowledge and perception of extreme heat by its participating students. Aragón and Markowitz look forward to sharing their results with students and teachers of the Duggan Academy community in the coming months.

Education is the first step to ensuring our environment and communities do not suffer. Art can be a transformational tool for students to learn about the effects of climate change and advocate for the health and wellbeing of their communities. With its educational kit, the leaders of sWARM believe their project has the potential to be replicated in other schools throughout Western Mass, especially those suffering from extreme heat.