New Childes Middle School

Narratives

Architect Narrative

A long-standing client challenged us to come up with a new design concept for a middle school. Although the new school would accommodate 1,500 students, our client wanted smaller classrooms, augmentative areas and a sense of community at each grade level. Thus, the ‘School-Within-A-School’ concept was born.

For six months our design team met regularly with school administrators, educators, parents and an educational specialist to evaluate design criteria. The conclusion was that smaller learning communities, or schools, would enhance the overall educational experience by imbuing a greater sense of identity, manageability and safety.

The goals of the new design are:
• to reduce the scale of a 1,500 student school into a series of smaller learning communities of approximately 450 -500 students;
• to provide a more flexible learning environment;
• to decentralize the administration and media center;
• to centralize the essential academic elements for each grade level;
• to provide a readily accessible, technology rich environment for interactive learning; and
• to enable teaching methods to be more demonstrative.

The design was achieved by creating distinct 6th, 7th and 8th grade level schools. The resource center is the central feature within each community. It houses a technology research / group meeting / media production suite. Each school also has its own science labs, art labs, business labs, administration area, and ESE classrooms, as well as individual classrooms.

The three schools are arranged around a central courtyard which doubles as circulation and an active learning space, and provides a sense of place and community. Students will traverse the courtyard to core facilities such as gymnasium, music and cafeteria. The park-like design creates a subtle transition from academic to social space to encourage interaction among the students and faculty in the temperate Central Florida climate. The courtyard will also have an outdoor amphitheater and outdoor dining.

Conversely, for issues of safety, the courtyard pathways are designed to facilitate supervision not only by administrators, but also by students and teachers.

The campus-wide technology framework enhances the technological capabilities of the school, empowers the classroom environments and learning processes, and is designed with maximum flexibility for future technology investments. The resource centers make technology accessible to students and teachers, and the campus-wide wired and wireless environment allows greater access and distribution of information.

Efficiencies in the core facilities, such as the gymnasium and dining/cafeteria, are realized in one centralized building that serves the entire student body, as well as the community for after-hours events. The core building houses the welcome center, a CCTV studio, a reading library, a black box learning lab, a music suite, dining and a gymnasium/wellness suite. These programs were located at the front of the school to ensure security and to prevent entry to the rest of the campus during after-hours use.

The new middle school will open for the fall 2005.