Project Name: 116 "K-6 Elementary School "

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Project Description

Credits

Program/Scope

The program for this project was a K-6 Elementary school located on the campus of Cal Poly Pomona, with an emphasis on science and technologies. The design included four classrooms of each grade level, a gymnasium, cafeteria, library, technology center, administration, and playing fields. The challenge for the designer was to rethink the importance and nature of the elementary school which ends up being our first major social atmosphere for the early years of our lives.

Solution

Our world as we know it is composed of a collective of environments that form our existence and our experiences. It is through this collective where we are shaped and defined in terms of who we are: our personalities, our tastes, our desires, the way we perceive, the way we act, and of our capabilities. All of these things come to use through experiences that are a product of our environment.

The elementary school represents the first of our environments that we are exposed to as human beings that is no longer within the protective shell of our homes that we started off in. It is here where we start to "openly" experience in the sense that our experiences are no longer guided and are "pure." What experiences occur within this school environment represents one of the most important periods that give a glimpse to our future selves.

While the architecture of a school cannot change the curriculum or the educational system, it does have the power to physically alter the environment and our experiences in a way that offers a heightening of one’s imagination, perception, awareness, the potential that space has, and a redefining of what we perceive and accept. It is here where my idea for the school is about creating an environment that involves spatial "gradients." The creation of a variation of spaces that bring out and challenge our perceptions and the usages that are associated with certain spaces within society.