|Mahlum - Bainbridge High School 200 Building in Bainbridge Island, Washington|
|Monday, 08 November 2010 12:29|
Given the opportunity to replace teaching space and enlarge shared common areas, the client’s primary objectives for this project were to clarify campus entry, create a world-class education facility that reinforces learning and connectivity through transparency. Of equal importance was to strengthen the connections between education and environment as well as accommodate community use. Finally, the new facility and site development honors the heritage of place; including preservation of historic cherry trees planted by Japanese Americans upon returning from World War II.
In response, the building stands as the front door to the campus and is sited as an edge to a central quad that is completed by buildings on each of the remaining three sides. All new spaces are visually connected to this student-oriented place, which opens to a 1.4-acre woodland to the west, reinforcing the link between buildings, students, community and the environment.
Additionally, the new building addresses overcrowding on the Bainbridge High School campus by providing 20 new classrooms and enlarging shared resources including administration, student services, library, commons and food service. The design successfully balances the need to create an intimate campus for learning while providing a sense of the natural environment to help Bainbridge Island students become citizens of the world.
This new building replaces one of six buildings on a campus located at the crest of the island. The facility is oriented to maximize day lighting along north and south elevations and take advantage of views east to the Cascade Mountains and west to the Olympic Mountains. Inside, a two-story gallery connects the building vertically and encourages collaboration across levels. This spine creates the facility’s heart, connecting classrooms, specialized learning spaces, administration and the library and allowing daylight to flood the lower level. Layered public spaces unfold from this core as the building steps down a terraced slope to the west. Anchoring the west side of the building is the commons, seemingly uniting building and landscape into a single contour while mitigating a significant separation between upper and lower portions of the campus.
The existing campus follows a departmental organization for educational delivery. To maintain flexibility, new classrooms are identical and provide space to integrate two curricular areas. New teaching spaces connect learning opportunities to one another by providing significant transparency to other areas of the building and campus.
Transparent walls from teaching spaces create layers of connection and learning throughout each of the building levels. Exterior classroom walls are completely glazed from ceiling-to-floor and walls adjacent to interior circulation spaces offer similar glazing over half of the wall area, making learning visible throughout all areas of the facility.
|Last Updated on Thursday, 25 November 2010 11:22|