A Sense of Community

How three new elementary schools were designed to fit in

No two communities are exactly alike, even when they’re located in the same region. So although SHP Leading Design (SHP) recently designed three elementary schools in the Columbus, Ohio area, each school is distinctly suited to its immediate surroundings and the needs of the community.

Inner-city Arbor

Nowhere is this more evident than at East Linden Elementary School, located about ten minutes north of downtown Columbus. East Linden’s setting is a study in contradictions: while part of an inner-city community, the school sits on a wooded site that covers more than 12 acres and includes a meandering creek.

“We positioned the classrooms to take advantage of outdoor settings—kindergarten classes, art classes—so that they would face the creek,” says SHP’s Aquil Peerbhoy, an architect on the project. “When you’re back there, you feel like you’re in the middle of a park as opposed to the middle of a city.”

But because East Linden is, in fact, in the middle of the city, some unique challenges arose as building plans got underway.

Beyond specific masonry colors and new playgrounds, the community wanted a bus drop-off adjacent to the cafeteria, which is used as an assembly space in the morning. Because a large number of children walk to school, a network of sidewalks had to be worked out. But the biggest challenge proved to be improving vehicle flow into and out of school grounds.

A colorful commons area doubles as gallery space to showcase student work and welcome visitors to the school.

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“The existing property had one street access, a dead-end street, but we needed to add a way out,” says Peerbhoy. SHP planned to locate the exit adjacent to an existing school building, only to find out that portion of land is not city property but township property, governed by a third entity. “So we had three agencies we were juggling between requirements, and had to go to the public to pay for everything else: street widening, sidewalks, street grid improvements. With all the negotiations, it was held up for over a year. We finally changed directions and provided an exit out through another city street and reengineered the access points.”

The delays meant an increase in building materials costs, but amazingly, SHP was able to bring the project in on budget.

“We went back and tried not to change the design of the building, but we had to use more cost-effective materials,” says Peerbhoy. “So instead of brick we ended up going with concrete block as a veneer. It was a challenge trying to keep the same color scheme and some of the initial design intact.”

SHP worked for nearly six months to flesh out design details with input from a community design team, according to the project’s principal in charge, Andrew S. Maletz, AIA. “The entire design is a reflection of that involvement,” Maletz says.

For instance, instead of a wall separating the gymnasium and cafeteria, the school community opted for a large folding partition so that the two spaces could be combined for events. A fence was erected to allow creek views but limit access, letting young students enjoy outdoor activities without safety worries. The administrative area was positioned to increase security—visitors must enter the building through the main office.

But while secure, the school is anything but institutional. The building’s façade is warm and inviting. Brightly colored laminate panels and display surfaces turn walls in the main entry into a colorful checkerboard. A well-stocked media center makes the most of wooded views and sunshine with large windows.

Maletz feels the final design harmonizes well with both the site’s urban surroundings and the immediate greenery of the school’s campus. “The school has a simple elegance to it,” he says. “The end result is a building that is frankly far more sophisticated than what we had expected.”

Rural Elegance

Elegance of a different sort was the goal when SHP took on the new Hamilton PK3 School, an elementary school serving 1200 pre-K through third-grade students in the rural Hamilton Local School District.

“The design of the new building leans more to the traditional side. That reflects the values of the community,” says Tom Fernandez, AIA, principal in charge on the project. “They have an existing beautiful old high school that is brick with wonderful windows—just what you’d think of when you’d think of traditional academic architecture. So for the new elementary school, they were interested in pitched roofs for aesthetic reasons because it makes it appear to be more of a traditional school.”

The new building is equipped with a new media center and features such as two playgrounds with age-appropriate equipment and an art room with a kiln. Light colors throughout lend classrooms an airy feeling.

“I really like the cafeteria because it’s just flooded with light,” says Fernandez. “It has these huge, beautiful windows. It’s just a happy, uplifting space.”

The Hamilton school covers a lot of ground – 111,162 square feet, to be precise. “We added various elements to break down the building to the scale of the students, to make more intimate spaces,” Fernandez says. “The community didn’t want it to appear to be too large or off-putting; they wanted it to have a very welcoming feeling.”

To help blend with the surrounding neighborhood, the scale of the building was minimized and a wide variety of materials was incorporated into the exterior façade.

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Balconies and varying ceiling heights help break up the vastness of the school’s footprint. Classes are divided between 50 classrooms, which help to foster a more personal learning experience.

“At the core of any school project is creating fantastic learning environments for the students and making sure that you have the right combination of spaces to fulfill their curriculum needs,” Fernandez says. “You have to orchestrate the site design to incorporate both the practical needs of getting students to and from the building, to the recreational needs of the students.”

To that end, SHP combined community input and their own creativity to design a space with both practical and recreational purposes.

“With a big building like this, you worry about traffic circulation—how you will get from one wing to another,” Fernandez says. “Our customers did not want a courtyard. Instead, we eliminated the first floor and created a bridge from one wing to another wing. The underside of the bridge creates a covered outside area. That is where the buses drop off students and where the playgrounds are. Kids can use the covered area during inclement weather or while waiting for the bus.”

Just as elements of traditional school architecture merge with modern innovation at the Hamilton school, Fernandez looks at the new school as a place where students will enjoy the present—and someday remember fondly. “I always ask myself, “What kind of memories am I creating? When these kids grow up, what are the spaces that they’re going to remember?” he says. “This school has a lot of spaces where the kids are going to have fun.”

Playful Elements

New spaces define Marysville, the village where the Northwood K-4 elementary school was built. SHP approached the design of the 65,029-square-foot school with the goal of keeping it in scale with the surrounding suburb—one so new that 300 homes are still under construction.

“We made a concerted effort to break down the scale of the building and utilize a wide material palette to not have it feel too institutional,” says SHP’s Jeff Sackenheim, the project’s project manager.

The land on which the school sits was donated to the district by Dominion Homes, the builder whose homes surround it. The 14.695-acre site includes a wooded area that provides a natural boundary on the south side of the building. The preservation of that natural element is one of the main reasons that the school’s footprint resembles the shape of an S when viewed from above.

To the right of the school’s main entry, SHP took a cue from surrounding homes and added a modern version of a bay window. The large glass opening offers great views both into and out of the building. Inside, carpeted stairs, which double as seating, lead from a media center to a raised reading platform inside the window. It’s easy to imagine the appeal the space would have for schoolchildren.

“The community wanted to create a building that really focused on the experience of the child,” Sackenheim says. “The staff and community were excited by the opportunity to create a dynamic and engaging environment to ultimately help motivate the children and keep them excited about coming to school.”

A striking faux-wood-sided ceiling extends from the media center over the school’s entryway. Classroom colors range from light yellows to dark red-orange.

“Ultimately, we’ve created a contemporary building with traditional details and materials,” Sackenheim says. “The classroom wings are pretty straightforward, and the building gets more playful at the middle—the main entry, administration, media center, gymnasium and student dining. The entry is defined by a large, projecting canopy that appears to float over the front doors, and a generous amount of glass.”

The building includes two separate wings of classrooms to allow a division of Kindergarten through 2nd grade and 3rd and 4th grades, a lobby ceiling treatment to control noise, flatscreen television technology wired for web-streaming video, and common hand washing areas to promote better hand washing techniques.

Though it all sounds rather high-end, the school was actually built for $10 less per square foot than comparable state-funded projects, which Sackenheim says is a combination of a talented construction management partner (Ruscilli Construction Company) and a motivated staff.

“We also relied on a series of sustainable principles to help guide the design process,” Sackenheim says. “The most simple had the biggest impact: orienting classroom wings along an east-west axis, resulting in a north-south exposure for the classroom windows.” Sloped ceilings allow larger windows and increase natural light, resulting in decreased lighting costs. Other elements that are both energy- and cost-saving include automatic lights that come on only when the room is use, and autoflow water at the hand washing stations.

“Final decisions had much to do with what is best for our students with a keen eye on creative ways to control costs,” says Northwood principal Trent Bowers.

“We took the opportunity to revisit what we liked most about our other elementary schools and then made modifications that further enhance the environment for our students.”

“We wanted to create a school that was ‘kid-centric,’” Sackenheim continues. “The resulting building is more playful than a lot of typical elementary schools. It was a great feeling when I overheard a teacher’s son say that this was the coolest building he’s ever been in.”