Community Environment: Community Environment

Community Environment:

Community Environment:
The design of the a new grade school campus for the Riverdale School District is a story about the rebirth of a place which has knitted the community together for over 90 years. The community identified the architectural vocabulary of the 1923 school house as the most important factor in connecting with Riverdale’s history.
Efforts to maintain the 1923 building proved unacceptable to the district due to building area limitations on the small site by an easement, an existing gymnasium and a steeply sloped forest.
The new two-story main building designed in a contemporary interpretation of the proportional relationships of the Palladian renaissance architecture of the 1923 schoolhouse achieves the district’s goals while maintaining adequate play areas.

Community Environment: (Cont.)
The central plaza forms the heart of the campus and unifies the school by connecting all student life components. The density of the site creates a variety of urban spaces which are experienced by circulating through a central spine into which students feed from the bus drop-off to the north and the parent drop-off to the south. The front door along Breyman Avenue provides access to the community.
The commons creates a new face and adds a community gathering space for the existing gymnasium which is frequently used as a community event space.

Learning Environment:
Multiple building additions and modifications had rendered the previous school unable to carry the level of educational excellence as one of Oregon’s top performing public schools into the 21 century. One of the goals of the project was to consolidate all classrooms into one building and to create a sustainable campus for 450 students which reflects current environmental values.
Two classrooms are grouped by grade and have access to a central open break-out space which create small learning communities. Since the school pedagogy focuses on a high-quality and highly flexible curriculum, the break-out areas allow teachers to offer special small group education based on the special interests of individual students. Each community is connected to others through re-lites and circulation areas to allow for increased programmatic flexibility and re-grouping.