Lt. Eleazer Davis Elementary School

Narratives

Architect Narrative

The existing school was a fifties vintage structure with significant overcrowding. The school ran a progressive team-teaching program within a school structure that did not support it. A year-long study to assess town-wide space needs concluded with the recommendation of a replacement building for the existing school.

Design challenges for this K-2 school included designing a school for 560 pupils that was not disproportionately large for its young users, creating group spaces, creating suitable areas for team-teaching, providing space necessary for faculty cooperative planning, allowing for community use, and designing a building suitable for future expansion.

Parents and community members were initially hesitant about the move from small neighborhood schools to a larger 560-pupil facility. This was addressed by creating a school ‘village’. The village is made up of classrooms or group unit ‘houses’ with common cluster spaces in each. These cluster spaces allow for team teaching, group projects, and multi-grade teaching. They are wired so that technologies used in the classrooms can also be used in the cluster areas. Each team cluster space has brightly colored amphitheater-like seating, which can be folded for easy storage or more floor space.

Each team cluster has a color associated with it, which makes it possible for students to identify with their small community. The colors are repeated in wayfinding and signage throughout the school to aid the children. The exterior design of the school uses the ‘village’ language with towers and rotundas. The layered masonry helps break down the scale of the school to make it less intimidating for its small users. All of the clusters and core spaces such as the library, gym and cafetorium are joined by a ‘Main Street’, which continues the village concept.

One of the requests of the designers was a library that was the heart of the building. The final design solution placed the library on the ‘Main Street’, which joins the cluster groups to the ‘village center’ core spaces. The outside wall of the library in the lobby incorporates wood panels in the colors of the cluster teams in order to make all students feel welcome in the space.

Inside the library there is a student reading space, computer and technology resource area and a professional development library for teachers and staff.

The cluster spaces also contain shared resources for teachers in the team. While students are in the cluster area, teachers use the vacant classrooms for cooperative planning. In addition, there is a core of teacher support spaces as part of the main office area. The teacher’s dining room abuts a conference room that is well used by teachers for planning and peer support.

The community use component of the program was accommodated in several ways. The gymnasium is high school sized to allow for community athletic group use. The cafetorium is also used for community meetings. Each of these areas has outside entrances, which allow the remainder of the school to be sealed for added security.

The completed site includes a 78,000 SF building, bus drop off loop, public access door, staff and visitor parking and athletic fields.

The planning and design process for the elementary school is a model of how stakeholders can work together in an open process that produces a sense of ownership and pride in the final design. Throughout the process bi-weekly meetings were held with the designers and the Building Committee (made up of parents, administration, and community members). The architect also hosted a community forum where workshops were offered on ‘site planning’, ‘building design’, ‘elements to provide a user – friendly school atmosphere’ and a student workshop. Publicity for this event included a panel-discussion video featuring members of the design team and building committee that was broadcast on local cable. Input from these forums was incorporated into the final design, producing a school that truly works for the users.