2006 Notable Projects: Schools
Vol.01 No.01

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Architypes’ Notable Projects
Architype finds inspiration in projects that somehow redefine our understanding of a certain typology.  Through good design, these architects created smart and forward thinking solutions to the particular constraints or challenges presented by each project.  Grouped together by type, they provide a survey of innovation taking place at several different scales, promoted by both large and small firms. Presented here in the words and images of their own creative team, the following projects also offer an index of ideas and solutions as well as creative people and products within the industry.

Perspectives Charter School, Chicago, Illinois
Perkins+Will

James Steinkamp Photographer

Perspectives Charter School is the physical expression of a new Chicago school dedicated to the mission of providing lower-income urban students with a rigorous and relevant education to prepare them for life in a changing and competitive world. Its signature design signals to the community at large that learning is a paramount civic priority. By participating in an architectural conversation with Chicago’s commercial and cultural landmarks, Perspectives Charter School emphasizes the role of education in the civic landscape. The triangular building’s multi-story windows invite the outside community into the building visually, and physically, as well as figuratively.  Significantly adding to the revitalization of a struggling lower-income Chicago neighborhood, Perspectives actively shares its facility with community organizations that offer enrichment programs to youth.
The new facility parallels the personality of Perspective Charter School’s educational model: versatile, challenging, dynamic, and progressive. Its unique shape and spaces echo the school’s commitment to creativity in education. The beauty and ambition of the new building underline what the school can accomplish for its students. It includes state-of-the-art science and computer labs, a research library, a cooking kitchen for the school’s healthy meal program, and two floors of spacious classrooms.
The facility is designed to feel like home for users of diverse ages. Workspaces and classrooms are simultaneously comfortable and stimulating, featuring natural light and bright colors. The dynamic form of the building encourages students to consider their studies from many perspectives, and emphasize the school’s commitment to innovation.  Large common areas facilitate community and communication, while offices, small group areas, and classrooms permit teachers, students, and staff to work intensively without disruption. 
The open-core building is centered around a heavily used multi-use space called the “Family Room,” a lofty, daylit space overlooked by second floor balconies. The room’s two-story walls graphically display – in both English and Spanish - the principles of the school’s character education curriculum called “A Disciplined Life”. This core philosophy encourages students, teachers, and outside visitors to reflect on the ethical commitments of all members of the school community. It is a central organizing principal of the school’s belief system, its curriculum and consequently, the planning of the school.
Understanding the relationship between daylit classrooms and test scores, the long axis of the building is oriented east/west and affords all classroom spaces north and south exposure. Each classroom offers a combination of low and high linear windows to afford both visual connection to the outdoors and ample daylight to reach deep into the classrooms.
The initial planning process took place in a workshop format with a series of presentations designed to illuminate current trends education, facility responses to the same and conversations regarding specific and appropriate strategies for Perspectives.  Integral to these workshops were numerous discussions regarding “A Disciplined Life”, the culture of the school and how it the building should be the physical embodiment of these important concepts. The result is a new building, constructed on a very limited budget, which reflects the unique culture and philosophy of Perspectives Charter School.

more articles ….

Owner
Perspectives Charter School

Architect
Perkins+Will
www.PerkinsWill.com
Design Principal:
Ralph Johnson, FAIA
Managing Principal:
Steve Turckes, AIA, REFP, LEED AP:
Senior Project Architect:
Jim Skalla, AIA, LEED AP
Senior Project Designer:
Rusty Walker, LEED AP
Project Manager:
Eric Spielman, AIA, LEED AP
Project Manager:
Crandon Gustafson, AIA
Lighting Designer:
Pat Grzybek
Project Team:
Vijay Patel, Thomas Smith, Ellen Mills

Engineer(s)
TGRWA Engineers
WMA Engineers

Consultant(s)
Landscape:
Site Design Group
www.site-design.com

Contractor(s)
Levine Construction, Inc.

Photography
Steinkamp/Ballogg Photography Inc.
James Steinkamp Photographer
www.steinkampballogg.com

Perth Amboy High School, Perth Amboy, NJ
John Ronan Architect

Images Provided by John Ronan Architect

The project explores the interface between the community and its high school, and proposes a hybrid institution which functions simultaneously as school and civic cultural center, blurring the boundary between the community and its institutions.  The high school is herein defined not as a “building,” but as the sum total of three superimposed systems:  the natural and constructed surface of the site (Mat), the interconnected volumes housing the programmatic requirements of the academies (Barscape), and the volumes housing the communal programs shared by the school and the greater community (Towers).
Mat:
The site surface is a continuous mat with different programmatic zones to support the various activities of the school and community: athletics, contemplation, ecology, outdoor learning, and parking.  It follows the natural topography of the site and provides access on both levels to the Learning Academies and Activity Towers.  The Mat employs a composite porous paving system filled with a variety of materials (grass, clay, rubber, gravel) to create a hybrid surface that blurs the boundary between hard and soft territory and expands the programmatic potential of a surface typically limited to parking.
Barscape:
The academic learning communities are housed in a flexible arrangement of programmatically indeterminate “bars,” that can be easily expanded or adapted to meet the school’s changing needs over time.  The bars are perforated to allow light into the parking area below and together constitute an interdependent spatial field that prioritizes flexibility and interaction.
Towers:
The communal activity spaces of the school are organized vertically into Activity Towers that punctuate the horizontal barscape.  The glass towers house the spaces open to the greater Perth Amboy community (media center, fitness, center, theater, etc. ) and serve as visual markets that link the school to the city to encourage civic participation in the life of the school.  The glass towers allow visual access to the activities within and establish a connection from inside to the city center beyond.

more articles ….

Owner
New Jersey Schools Construction Corporation

Architect
John Ronan Architect
www.jrarch.com
Project Team:
John Ronan, Brian Malady, Yasushi Koakutsu, Oscar Kang, Micah Land, Bradford Kelley

Community School of Music and Arts, Mountain View, CA
Mark Cavagnero Associates

Tim Griffith Photographer

This center for music and arts is a 25,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art education facility.  It is the first permanent home of a 35-year-old non-profit organization in Mountain View, California.   In addition to housing music classrooms and private music studios, the building provides visual arts studios, administration space, a recital hall and an outdoor performance space. 
As the site for the school is surrounded by busy arterial roadways, the building is organized around a central courtyard, which allows the mass of the building to buffer the courtyard from the surrounding traffic noises while lending light and organizational clarity to the school.  With an intimacy of scale from the low surrounding edges, this quiet courtyard provides an exterior performance space as well as an informal gathering space for students or waiting parents during the school hours. 
The building itself is designed to provide the best possible spaces for the practice and performance of music.  The facility was designed as a cast-in-place concrete building to provide the mass required for good acoustic isolation, both between rooms and to the exterior.  The classrooms and the recital hall’s strong shed roof forms were designed integrally for ideal acoustic performance. The meticulously detailed concrete has been meticulously detailed to provide a sense of architectural character. To complement the strength of the concrete, lightly stained wood siding is used as the concrete frame infill material.  Glass clerestories allow for balanced light and distant views. 
The two-story structure is specifically used to provide an acoustic buffer for the courtyard and music classrooms. Here the administration faces the visitor and the approaching urban noise, while the music classrooms remain calm and quiet. Private instructional rooms are built within the ground floor of this two story structure, utilizing extensive sound control detailing to avoid sound between rooms and to address exterior site noise.
The large classrooms are wonderfully tall, well-lit spaces with abundant glass focusing their view toward the sky. With doors to the exterior, these classrooms all have a connection to immediate grounds and their shared courtyard, which is the heart of the school. The classrooms are adjacent to faculty resource rooms and recording studios so students and faculty can interact and efficiently remain involved in multiple tasks during the typical day.
The exterior expresses the complexity of the designed structure, which is both wall and frame, monolithic, and infill in nature. Similarly, the wood siding is seen as a visual and tactile relief to the concrete, adding a finer gradation of scale and warmth to the children-oriented school structure. The rear, small courtyard is a hidden treat for the children, a safe and soft place to play between classes or while waiting for a parent.
With its strong architectural character, the building provides a sense of monumentality, lending the school as well as the arts programming a larger sense of importance and permanence within the region.  

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Owner
Community School of Music and Arts

Architect
Mark Cavagnero Associates
www.cavagnero.com
Design Principal:
Mark Cavagnero
Principal in Charge:
Roslyn Cole
Project Architect:
Jasmine Chu
Project team:
Laura Blake, John Fung, Elizabeth Goldstein, Renata Li

Engineer(s)
Structural:
Murphy Burr Curry
MEP:      
C&B Consulting Engineers
Civil:
Sandis Humber Jones
                               
Consultant(s)
Landscape:
Stephen Wheeler Landscape Architects
Lighting:  
Architecture & Light
Acoustical:
Charles Salter Associates
www.cmsalter.com

Contractor(s)
Rudolph and Sletten

Photography
Tim Griffith Photographer
www.timgriffith.com

Benjamin Franklin Elementary School, Kirkland, Washington
Mahlum Architects

Benjamin Benschneider Photographer

Learning is all about creating connections. That’s why Franklin Elementary School is designed to preserve and utilize the environment as a learning opportunity. The school is set within a residential neighborhood interlaced with equestrian trails, horse paddocks, and mature stands of Douglas fir trees. Recognizing the value of this rich environment, two-story classroom wings reach like fingers toward the site’s large wooded area and visually connect students with nature.
Between, courtyards landscaped with native plants serve as outdoor classrooms complete with diverse settings for classes to gather, observe and discuss. These structured outdoor learning environments expose students to art, elements of our region’s unique hydrologic process and direct connections to the site’s native landscape. The functional ecosystem of the southern courtyard makes natural processes visible on a day-to-day basis. This outdoor learning environment provides educators with a 3-dimensional, ‘hands-in-the-dirt’ laboratory fostering understanding through observation. A water feature fed by rain collected from the roof and integrated art installations enhance the experience.
Inside, small learning communities are formed by clusters of four classrooms around a shared activity area that faces the forest and reinforces connection between lessons and environment. Shared resources link the clusters, and sustainable design features make science tangible. The cluster arrangement supports a variety of grade configurations and instruction models. Each activity area features large glazed pocket doors that strengthen visual connection to the surrounding four classrooms, and slide away to create a fully-integrated, open learning community. This flexibility supports the daily use of these areas as alternative teaching space, and also responds to ever-changing educational delivery models. Moreover, through careful studies considering supervision, accessibility, circulation and access to the outdoors, the shared areas have been well integrated into the daily teaching activities in order to best enhance the learning process.
The new school expands learning beyond the classroom by connecting the district’s educational pedagogy with environmental sustainability at every level – including indoor environmental quality, environmental connections, land use and site ecology, water and energy conservation, and appropriate material use. Given the profound impact of daylight and indoor air quality on student performance, the design maximizes building performance in these areas. A goal of 100% natural ventilation and daylight in all teaching spaces, met through rigorous daylight and thermal modeling, achieves exemplary energy performance. Energy analysis of building envelope and HVAC systems confirms that the school design would perform 35% better than the state energy code.
Anticipating local, state and even national mandates for more sustainable buildings, the district proactively pursued sustainable design to better understand the effects on school buildings and district-wide policies. Now complete, Franklin Elementary School will be model for future development in the district. The school district is committed to understand the effects of high performance buildings on student test results, staff retention, absenteeism, energy savings and true total cost of ownership.
In the end, the school’s educational program not only celebrates current high performance building practices, but also focuses on inspiring and educating generations of students toward a sustainable approach to living.

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Owner
Lake Washington School District

Architect
Mahlum Architects
www.mahlum.com
Principal-in-Charge:
Gerald (Butch) Reifert, AIA
Design Principal:
Anne Schopf, AIA
Project Manager:
Mitchell Kent, AIA
Project Architect:
David Mount, AIA

Engineer(s)
Civil/Structural:
Coughlin Porter Lundeen
www.cplinc.com
Mechanical:
Stantec 
Electrical:
Coffman Engineers

Consultant(s)
Landscape:
Cascade Design Collaborative,
Cost Estimator:
Rider Hunt Levett & Bailey
Acoustical:
The Greenbusch Group                    
Daylighting:                         
Daylighting Lab
Artist:
John Hoge

Contractor(s)
SpeeWest Construction

Photography
Benjamin Benschneider Photographer
www.benschneiderphoto.com.

Lick Wilmerding High School, San Francisco, CA
Pfau Architecture, Ltd

Tim Griffith Photographer

Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco requested that the design of a new Technology and Design Center represent the school’s unique dedication and appreciation for arts education.  Additionally, they sought a design that would capitalize on this opportunity to create an environment that could encourage collaboration and inspire a sense of community for its users.
Lick-Wilmerding High School’s integrated and demanding academic curriculum holds a strong emphasis on the technical and fine arts—the only college preparatory school in the country with this program.  The school’s motto is “Education for the Head, Hands, and Heart.”  Over the years, the school had nearly exhausted its ability to expand within their own property and felt forced to proceed with a building location on the eastern edge of the existing field.  This move, dictated by their existing master plan, would drastically alter the experience of the school, cutting off the views of the distant hills.
Departing from the school’s previous master plan, this design extends the lower level of the campus, placing the shops at the heart of the campus, under the plane of the existing field.  In addition to creating a new focus for the school, the configuration of the shops allows them to be oriented toward each other, defining a shared work area that encourages interdisciplinary work and collaboration.  The rest of the campus wraps around the centralized core, forming an understated design solution.  The new student center/dining hall overlooks the shops level addition and connects through a stair to the lower level.  The school’s eastward views remain unimpeded; the distant hills remain an extension of the school’s field and a borrowed landscape for the inhabitants of this small urban site.  The landscaped field area that was once ambiguous and under utilized, takes on new meaning.  The roofs of the shops are transformed into a series of terraced landscapes, which quickly became the favorite spot for students to gather during lunch or between classes.

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Owner:
Lick Wilmerding High school

Architect
Pfau Architecture, Ltd.
www.pfauarchitecture.com
Principal:
Peter Pfau, AIA,
Principal:
Dwight Long
Project Team:
Mallory Shure, Libby Ortwein, Chris Tymoff, Karen Mar, James Ho, Caroline Cassavoy

Engineer(s)
Structural:
Tipping Mar and Associates
www.tippingmar.com
Mechanical:
Guttman & Blaevoet
www.gb-eng.com
Electrical:
O’Mahony & Meyer
www.ommconsulting.com
Civil Engineer:
Sandis Humber Jones

Consultant(s)
Landscape:
Conger Moss Guillard Landscape
www.cmgsite.com
Lighting:
Revolver
Acoustical:
RLS
Waterproofing:
Ferrari-Moe
Industrial Design & Fabrication:
Hellikson Design & Manufacturing
Food Service:
Myers Restaurant Supply
www.myersrestaurantsupply.com
Solar Panels:
Eco Energies

Contractor(s)
Plant Construction Company,L.P.
www.plantconstructioncompany.com

Photography
Tim Griffith Photographer
www.timgriffith.com

Clifton Middle School, Monrovia, CA
Osborn

Photography by Fotoworks

The project scope for Clifton Middle School focused on enlarging and intensifying the campus by adding a new classroom building and a series of site features, including lunch shelters and recreational areas. The primary challenge was to transform the spirit of the entire campus through small interventions within a streamlined budget, while accommodating the interactive needs of the student body.  A larger number of intimate recreational spaces are interconnected to form discreet gathering areas that are unified within the existing environment. An underutilized corner of the campus is transformed into a vibrant, animated space.
This project engages a fundamental question that architecture culture recurrently comes up against in productive, civilized, urban environments: How can a building endorse a social program? Moreover, can a single architectural intervention propagate a sense of emancipation into its physical and cultural setting? This setting implies a varied set of adjacencies, ranging from the social (how the building is used) to the political (what the building represents) to the physical (what the building looks like).
The project scope was to expand the school by adding a new six-classroom building and a series of small-scaled site features. The site intervention was conditioned by a 7-foot difference in level between the upper field and the lower courtyard. The unsightly existing retaining system was a key concern for the client, as much as the undifferentiated open space.
The solution is layered as follows:
The Use-Intensive Retaining Wall System:
By maximizing the surface area of the wall (by breaking its geometry) we programmed specific uses into the wall itself: benches, grass areas, a soapbox for emergent voices, an outdoor lecture space, and lunch shelters built into site features.
The Low-CMU Block Wall System:
By increasing the outdoor seating capacity, a hierarchy is established for an otherwise nameless open space.  It breaks up courtyard functions towards extended/outdoor classroom capabilities and free use.
Grade (earthwork) Management:
The retaining wall system does more than simply retain earth.  Seamless connectivity between spaces (outdoor and indoor) occurs while maintaining a separation between functions, especially in open spaces with flexibly-programmed uses. The building steps in increments of two-feet per pair of classrooms.  Lunch shelters are raised and buried in relation to the slope of the land.
An elemental building vocabulary:
This system emphasizes the importance of use and the invention of activities for flexibly-programmed spaces.  Maintenance and durability are key factors for choosing building systems. Materials are also elemental: standard and burnished CMU, cast-in-place concrete, pre-cast concrete panels and steel. An example of consistent detailing would be the concealed flashing systems for CMU parapets.

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Owner
Monrovia Unified School District

Architect
Osborn
www.osborn320.com
Principal in Charge:
Craig Windsor
Design Principal:
Michael T. Pinto
Project Designer:
Juan Azulay
Project Architect:
Curt Johnson
Project Team:
Robert Sumrell, Brian Lucas, Natalia Ikemiya

Engineer(s)
Structural:
Grossman and Speer
Mechanical/Electrical:
TMAD Engineers
Civil:
Civiltec  

Contractor(s)
Neil Edwards Construction (Shell Contractor)

Photography
Fotoworks
www.fotoworks.cc

Building 9, Wildwood Elementary School, Los Angeles, CA
Cigolle X Coleman Architects

Photogorphy by Cigolle X Coleman

Wildwood Elementary School inhabits an aggregation of nine separate buildings; the newest, Building 9, hovers over the edge of the parking lot. The site strategy, reinforces a design by Cigolle X Coleman a decade ago, preserves the existing buildings, saves as much positive outdoor open space as possible, and allowed construction to occur without disrupting the functioning of the campus. The design for Building 9 integrates the location of the three existing handball courts that had been a favorite play area for the children, reconstructing them as shear walls for the new building. The new building displaced three parking spaces, but eliminated no other ground level space. The new construction both complements the aggregation and provides a frame to complete the campus.
The three classrooms of Building 9 provide opportunities and types of spaces not existing elsewhere on campus. The computer lab, with an adjacent room for editing digital video, is for teaching, explorations and group projects. The performing arts classroom is a flexible, skylit space for performance, movement, singing, playing instruments, and improvisation. A storage wall for musical instruments doubles as backdrop for performance, setting apart a backstage area/office. The science room has activity centers, such as lab/microscope areas for older children to do small hand work, places for group activities, and areas for younger children to work on ongoing projects, care for and visit the animals, read, and research before school and at lunchtime.
The sculptural silhouette of the roof of Building 9, with its skylight and roof screens, is a distinctive form that is visible from a distance. Materials and finishes are collaged from a palette borrowed from both on and off site. The classroom floor is supported over the parking lot on blue steel columns; intumescent paint is the fire protection for the steel. A board-form concrete base wall and stairs contrasts with lightweight corrugated sheet metal sheathing that wraps three sides of the second floor. The corrugated galvanized sheet metal reflects the changing sky and animates the public faces of the building. Smooth, yellow-green cement plaster is used next to the second floor walkway and inside the inner perimeter of the school, tying the new building with the multi-colored stucco buildings on the campus. Structural tongue and groove exterior decking is both structure and ceiling over the second floor walkways and the entry/stair canopy. On the interior, open web truss-joists and OSB sheathing are sealed in their natural state, a finish that is both warm and straightforward. Metal railings, frames, and beams are of galvanized steel, and windows and doors are low maintenance aluminum.
Wildwood elementary school embodies an idea expressed by Thomas Jefferson: "Not to erect one single magnificent building to contain everybody and everything, but to make of it an academical village” Building 9 and its connecting interior and exterior spaces provide a place of high creativity and sustained focus, a revitalizing place in the life of the village.

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Owner
Wildwood School

Architect
Cigolle X Coleman, Architects
www.cxcarch.com
Project Team:
Mark Cigolle, Kim Coleman

Engineer(s)
Structural:
Dimitry K Vergun and Associates,
Mechanical:
Fruchtman and Associates
Electrical:
G&W Electrical Engineers

Contractor(s)
Brown Osvaldsson Builders

Photography
Cigolle X Coleman

Bronx Charter School for the Arts, Bronx, N.Y.
Weisz + Yoes Architecture

© Albert Vecerka/Esto

The program was to design a K-6 charter school with an emphasis on the Arts.  The existing factory to be converted had only one perimeter wall with windows and was very dark.  The client wanted to promote the arts and community participation through a strong street presence in the urban industrial neighborhood.  The school also wanted to explore educational ideas about openness and easy communication that could be encouraged by the built environment.  The challenge was to turn an old factory into a light filled, street friendly, sustainable design with open planning elements that meets the needs of children in a nurturing arts environment.
The school is located in an urban industrial neighborhood in the South Bronx, New York City. It shares the street with auto repair shops, warehouses and small factories.  This site is located at the end of Longfellow Avenue and encompasses two buildings; a sausage factory and a fur factory with a combined area of 23,700 s.f.
The floor plan of the school combines a traditional school layout with an open design. Through the utilization of multi-use shared spaces called "pods" the school is able to expand learning spaces outside of classrooms into zones that promote interaction between teachers, students and faculty.   At an urban scale, music, art and dance rooms that occupy the picture-windowed facade provide visibility from street level and connect the arts to the community. 
The building incorporates various sustainable features and exceeds the minimum standards for air changes and natural light. Filtered fresh air and north facing skylights supply the building with an ethereal aesthetic and healthy environment for children. Additionally, the natural top skylight reduces heat gain and insulates the roof, allowing the school to spend less money on heating and cooling.
The incorporation of bright color throughout the school creates an identity with a bold palette that evokes the potential for a multitude of color combinations. Bright color glazed brick tiles, floor tiles, door and window frames, carpets and furnishings are coordinated to promote this idea of vibrancy and unity.

more articles ….

Owner
Bronx Foundation for Education & The Arts
Client Representative:
Civic Builders Inc.,

Architect
Weisz + Yoes Architecture
www.wystudio.com
Project Team:
Claire Weisz, Principal
Mark Yoes, Principal
Jasmit Rangr

Engineer(s)
Structural & MEP
Buro Happold Consulting Engineers

Consultant(s)
Lighting:
Jim Conti Lighting Design
Acoustical:
Shen Milsom & Wilke,
Community Engagement:
Sam Schwartz Company
Zoning:
David Turner Architect

Contractor(s)
Kel-Mar Interiors, Inc.

Photography
Albert Vecerka, ESTO Photographics
© Albert Vecerka/Esto
www.esto.com

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