Atrium School

Narratives

Educator Narrative

The School has always taught and lived by a credo of respect – respect yourself, respect others, and respect your environment. In its Statement on Diversity, the School pledges that it “assumes an on going responsibility to act as part of a larger community.” The goal of the School is to help students contribute to and take responsibility for their community and model that responsibility to their communities.

Our goal was to create a school building which encompassed our educational aims. We hoped to create a space which respects each child by providing an optimal place to learn, is comfortable and healthy, and teaches children to value the natural world. We strive to respect the community by choosing to use sustainable building materials, protect habitats and native plants on our site, and design a landscape to maximize infiltration of storm water. We respect the environment by re-using resources and creating a healthy and stimulating environment for our students.

Many green strategies and attributes within the School’s new building are invisible to teachers and students. One of the biggest positive impacts the project has had is to change the relationship between the site and rain that falls on the site. When we started the project, the site was 85% impervious surface, and all of the storm water that fell on those impervious surfaces either ran directly into the town storm water system or ran off to neighboring properties (where it was sent into the town storm water system). The new site arrangement handles all rainfall onsite (along with some runoff from the neighbors), allowing this water to infiltrate into the local water table. The benefits of this change are substantial: the aquifer is replenished, potentially polluted storm water is kept out of the local River, the town storm water infrastructure is used less, and local wildlife habitat is increased.

The fact that this on-site rainwater management was both important and invisible lead to an important design concept and feature. The school was anxious to be able to use the site and building to illustrate and experiment with the local water cycle, so the design team included a waterfall and water collection system for one part of the building roof. This fun feature allows the kids and teachers to both observe the effect of rain on the site and to use this water for experimentation, in conjunction with similar work at the nearby local River.

Many of the floors in the building are un-finished concrete. A conscious design decision, it promotes a message about unnecessary consumption. The visual effect is both intriguing and unsettling for adults, who expect to see finished flooring. However, the kids and teachers use the concrete floors as a tool to discuss the use of materials and where they, as classes, want and need floor coverings. Such learning discussions have been a hallmark of the school since it’s founding, and are clearly strengthened in the new school setting.

What innovations in the planning, programming and design process supported the realization of those exemplary ideas?

When forced through imminent domain to vacate their historic brick schoolhouse, this progressive K-6 school opted to adaptively reuse an existing 70-year-old warehouse in a residential/industrial neighborhood, rather than construct an entirely new building. The institution strives to cultivate world citizens, and saw the need to teach the children about conservation and recycling by utilizing the building as a teaching tool. The teaching philosophy emphasizes whole-child education and values social development as much as cognitive and academic growth. Their methodology incorporates multi-age classrooms and an annual school-wide learning focus to unify all age groups around a common curricular thread.

A highly truncated design and construction schedule of only 10 months and a budget of $2.2 million for the renovation drove the design team’s innovative design efforts. The existing site was blanketed with asphalt, and the building’s only entrance faced a heavily trafficked street with no available parking. This presented challenges in locating parking fields and the movement of pedestrian and vehicular traffic through the site. By reorienting the building’s entrance and vehicular access to the back of the parcel, students now approach the school through a landscaped garden; the one-way traffic pattern minimizes the school’s intrusion in the neighborhood.

The heart of the school is the atrium, a space for weekly all-school gatherings and daily gym classes. Carved out of the warehouse’s former loading dock, the atrium is equipped with a glass garage door, which opens to admit light and breezes. In spring and fall, the door remains open, creating outdoor instructional space. The head of school’s office is located at the crossroads between the school entrance and the atrium to facilitate transparency and encourage chance meetings between students, parents and faculty. An undulating corridor threads through the building, connecting the classrooms and culminating in a ramp to the library. The unfolding spatial sequence breaks down the long and narrow volume into discrete spaces. Classrooms line the building shell on both sides so they benefit from daylight and breezes. Variation in size, placement and shape of classrooms is a direct response to teachers’ subject requirements or student ages. Between classrooms, small break-out areas with built-in seating provide separate space for individual learning.

In satisfying the school’s vision for a healthy and sustainable building, the design team concentrated on a “common sense” sustainable approach. Opening the building on its south elevation through expansive glazing maximizes opportunities for indirect daylighting and passive heating. Existing concrete floors retain radiant solar gains to offset winter heating demands. Operable skylights and new windows support cross-ventilation via the stack effect and promote dependence on daylight. High efficiency artificial lighting supplements where necessary. New mechanical systems harvest site energy through heat recovery and use of 100% ventilation air. Recycled wheatboard cabinets serve as student lockers in the hallways and storage in the atrium and classrooms. Toilets have dual-flush operation. Faucets have aerators and push rod control, encouraging water use awareness. This attitude continues outside where rainwater is collected from downspouts and reused in irrigating the landscape garden.