Robert Elkington
Middle School
Designing learning enviornment for the 21st century
Grand Rapids dedicated this new middle school in August of 2003, replacing an aging, outdated facility that no longer met the needs of the school district. It was the desire of both the school district and DSGW to design a new school to meet the needs of the district through the use of high performance design systems and with an image that reflected Grand Rapids.
The new 160,000 sf, $24,000,000 building is built on a site consisting of open fields and heavily wooded forest on the edge of a residential neighborhood. The low impact design sited the building to maximize sun exposure while maintaining stunning vistas to the wooded site and retaining a natural buffer to the adjacent neighborhood. The open fields were re-used for athletic fields, parking and roads with water run-off stored on-site through a series of underground pipes and retention ponds. Natural landscape was used throughout the site to minimize maintenance.
The school was designed in a series of wings that track the sun from morning to dusk. Natural day lighting is used abundantly throughout the building to minimize artificial lighting and enhance the character of the space. Every teaching space has fritted glass windows designed to maximize natural day lighting while minimizing glare and heat gained. High impact natural materials, such as terrazzo floors and burnished block walls, are used to minimize long-term maintenance and extend the useful life of the building. All classroom lights use indirect-type fixtures and are controlled by occupancy sensors to minimize energy usage. Heat recovery systems are used throughout the building within the air handling systems to maximize ventilation while minimizing energy usage. The resulting floor plan is very efficient and creates a series of “schools within a school” to minimize the overall large scale of the building.
