Completion Date: October 2011

Owner: School District No. 38

Program: A two-story, 50,590-square-foot public K–7 elementary school with classrooms, offices, a prekindergarten, special education classrooms, a computer lab, a library, a gymnasium with a stage, and an adult literacy center serving the community. The new building replaces an existing school on the same site; the original structure lacked sufficient seismic safeguards, except for the gym and stage, which Perkins+Will incorporated into the new school.

Design Concept and Solution: Working together with students, the community, the City of Richmond, and other stakeholders, Perkins+Will needed to translate the district's principles of environmental stewardship, diversity, and inclusion into a design idea. The architects developed the site plan around saving the gym; they adopted an L-shaped format, with the long, double-loaded corridor of the new classroom wing running east-west and the gym to the south. The east side of the glu-lam post-and-beam structure, which includes the gym and the district's adult literacy center, is open to the community. A stair in the main corridor of the academic wing marks the transition from public space to private; as they enter the building, students pass under the concrete landing of the stair, whose low height suggests an entrance to a more intimate space. The second story of the academic wing is faced with a curtain wall that spans the length of the building and brings light into the corridor. The architects clad the school primarily with cementitious panel, but used bands of brick (for durability) around the outdoor areas where students play. The building's signature feature is its wavy roof, made from two-by-fours joined side by side to produce gentle slopes. The roof also allows for passive ventilation, through windows at the peaks of the wave. Exposed wood roof decking throughout the interior forms the ceilings, and the floors of the ground level are concrete to convey heat from the school's geoexchange system.

Total construction cost:  $12.7 million Can