Ernesto Galarza Elementary School

Narratives

Architect Narrative

A variety of learning environments on Galarza’s campus promote social interaction among students, faculty and community members and give the campus a student-created identity.

Classrooms, arranged in pairs in order to share “break-out” rooms, are ideal for small-group teaching or class collaboration. Foldable partition walls separate each pair of classrooms making Galarza’s team teaching requirement an easy possibility. Each group of six classrooms opens onto a wide “main street” area with skylights and display cases where students share their work and ideas. The courtyard between the multipurpose building and library offers a semi-private place for students to lunch and participate in outdoor learning activities among a variety of planters, seat walls and shady tree canopies.

The final design of the campus reflects a comprehensive collaboration between school planners and the surrounding community. Community members contributed to art projects that decorate Galarza’s campus and helped define an optimal campus plan. A clock tower marks the school as a civic building, and the large, open, public entry on the southwest corner welcomes the community. The most public areas are grouped together along the western side of the site, enhancing the large city park across the street. The school’s soccer fields and basketball courts complement the park’s existing baseball fields and the library and multipurpose building near the west edge have separate public entrances to promote community use.

Art is an integral part of Galarza’s learning environment. An art park at the entry corner features student-inspired, professionally fabricated art, creating a venue for student expression in the community. Artistic projects foster creative collaboration among architects, artists, students, faculty, administrators, and the community resulting in professional quality art that incorporates the site users’ ideas. The teachers’ entry exemplifies the extended educational experience students gain from an art program on campus. Inspired by the ancient Aztec calendar and based on school curriculum, painted-steel gates at the teachers’ entry incorporate student-designed animals that designate years within the circular pattern.

Galarza’s campus is landscaped according to the area’s natural surroundings. Large boulders are placed throughout and indigenous plants help incorporate principles of biodiversity. Not only do indigenous plants lessen the need for irrigation, they are a lesson in environmental processes and augment in-class work with hands-on experience. The dry creek bed in the kindergarten play area is connected to roof downspouts, filling with water when it rains. It is designed for teachers to incorporate in kindergarten lessons on rainfall.

Galarza reflects, through diverse learning environments, a truly collaborative effort between students, teachers, architects, and community members.

Educator Narrative

Galarza’s new facility is intended to complement and enhance the school’s primary function — education. Based on Galarza’s vision of “providing a safe, positive and nurturing environment where all children achieve to their greatest potential and experience the joy of learning,” opportunities were made for the integration of permanent artwork in the learning environment. Teachers and staff closely coordinated the projects within school curriculum in order to benefit students and extend learning to outside the classroom. The works of art are the result of a creative collaboration between architects, artist, students, community and staff.

The primary step in implementing the Art in Architecture program on Galarza’s campus was the development of a master art plan. An outline was established to align art projects with school curriculum, timelines were designed to track projects, and a project budget was determined and presented to teachers, staff and the school site council for approval.

Coordination and communication remained open during the construction of Galarza by consistently involving the principal and teachers in site-visits, performing frequent project updates via phone calls or e-mail, and informing the school district’s Director of Facilities & Construction of project developments. Once projects were approved by the School District Board of Education, a fabrication contract was issued. Support came from grants, corporate donations, and in-kind donations of material from community businesses and parent groups. Based on the collaboration of all parties, Art in Architecture is owned by the community.

Galarza has two artworks currently in place. Aztec Gates at the teachers’ entrance and the Kinder Yard. Aztec Gates represent the Aztec Calendar and other indigenous designs, based on the concept of time and the history of Latino culture. The Kinder Yard was developed with the Kinder Team. Teachers and architects looked at ways to incorporate natural science concepts, like erosion, into the Kinder Yard’s design. The result is a dry creek bed connected to building storm drains that fill when it rains. While a great idea, the boulders in the dry creek bed have been problematic with young kindergarteners that like to climb and end up injured.

The art projects provide students the opportunity to impact their campus in a visually powerful way. The artwork reflects the school vision, spirit of the students, the cultures of the school community and creates a unique and stimulating learning environment.