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Oak Park-Carpenter Elementary School
Typically school construction follows development, but in Shawnee Mission, Kansas the School Board used a $184 million bond program, in part, to help spur economic development and revitalize aging communities with the renovation and construction of several school facilities. Spanning over seventy square miles the District is home to over 28,000 students and some of the neighborhoods within the District’s borders are some of the oldest in Kansas City. Oak Park and Carpenter Elementary Schools were built nearly forty years ago and designed under the open school concept, an educational style deemed inadequate by today’s learning standards. The plan was to combine these two schools into one new facility since both facilities were in need of modernization and were located less than one mile from each other. Complicating the plan was the lack of available green sites in the well established neighborhood on which to build a new school. At the same time the School District wanted to provide necessary space for and improve the environment and learning experiences for children with special needs, in this case autism. The result was a new building built on the existing site of the Oak Park Elementary School. The constrained site limited layout options and drove a two-story design solution. The building is organized around a central atrium spine that divides the school into Academic and Support sections. This provides the opportunity to lock down the academic wing during off-hours and allow certain community uses in the support section. The twenty-three classrooms accommodate 550 students in a three-section layout. The District’s preferred layout groups classrooms by grade level utilizing a serpentine design, where one section is adjacent to the other. This allows the District to allocate classrooms by grade level and accommodate any “bubbles” in age groups from one year to the next. In a two-story design this becomes more challenging. A flex classroom was added to each level to maintain their preferred grade level allocation and accommodate a four-section grade level with no disruption to the learning environment. A Media Center and Computer Lab are located in the center of the first floor as a hub of the design. This location provides greater proximity to the younger and special need students. It also is adjacent to the central atrium where it borrows natural light. The art department is also located within the Academic Wing in the North Westerly corner of the school. This location provides a great learning environment with the preferred North light and dramatic views overlooking the adjacent park. Its location is adjacent to the play ground areas and has direct access outside allowing the teacher to move projects outside to enhance their experiences. The school also accommodates up to seventy-five autistic children in five classrooms in a connected wing. A major initiative of the School District was to provide a normal learning environment for autistic children. Research has shown that peer interaction and integration may be beneficial to autistic children. Autistic students have problems not only with language and communication, but with socialization as well. By facilitating peer interaction, teachers can help their students with autism make friends, which in turn can help them cope with problems or understand the world around them. This can help them to become more integrated into the mainstream environment of the school. This wing is located on the main floor and provides accessibility to the Media Center, Cafeteria, Gymnasium, and Playgrounds. This interaction with the rest of the school helps provide a more normal learning environment and allows the children to feel connected to the rest of the school. A separate entrance and controlled access door to the rest of the school along with minimally invasive fencing around their Playground provide the ability to isolate the children if necessary. The Support section houses the Kitchen, Cafeteria, Gymnasium, Music Room, and Administration. The community is able to utilize part of these areas during off-hours. The Gymnasium and Cafeteria share a stage area that through a creative partition system allows either side or both to have direct access to the stage area. In the cafeteria you have performing risers that extend the stage into the area and on the Gymnasium side a more traditional elevated stage. This has been incorporated into the School Districts preferred design guides. The Music Room has been isolated from the Academic areas to control acoustics which are vital in today’s successful learning environments and doubles as a staging area for performances on the stage. The Administrative office are located directly adjacent to the main entrance and are integrated with the passive security plan requiring visitors to enter through the office and by the receptionist prior to gaining access to the entire school. The central atrium provides the primary access to the school with the bus entrance to the West and the Vehicular and Main entrance to the East. The two-story design also created a dramatic atrium space which was incorporated into the design with a monumental stair case that has become a focal point in school activities and serves as an orienting feature upon entrance. Clerestory windows fill the atrium with natural light combined with direct and indirect light systems create a very welcoming and inspiring space. The playgrounds are organized to the North and connect to Bluejacket Park. These become an extension of the park and as a result strengthen the connection of the school and community. The process to go from vision to reality required a tremendous amount of team work and consensus building. The closing of a school is always a highly emotional issue and only added to the community’s involvement in this project. Early in the design process when concepts were still being created several community meetings were held to gather input and listen to concerns. To say there was active community participation would be putting it mildly. Numerous issues were raised including queuing, stormwater runoff, scale, lighting, safety during construction, maintaining ongoing operations, and eliminating existing attractive nuisances. Very close coordination was required with the City of Overland Park because the existing stormwater capacity was inadequate and a significant amount of retention on site was required. A major concern was the current lack of queuing space for cars. Currently cars are backed up onto Neiman Road a busy feeder street. By siting the school further back away from the road we were able to quadruple the amount of cars on site. The scale and location of the buildings to neighboring homes was solved through a setback from the property line, the planting of additional trees to create a buffer, and a small retention pond integrated into the treed area creating a pleasant water feature when filled and also helping to mitigate stormwater runoff issues. Another concern was the desire to eliminate attractive nuisances, areas that would provide some shelter for others to congregate. The team went to great lengths to maintain open sight lines throughout the site thus minimizing the likelihood of these occurrences. Lighting was also utilized in this effort, but to minimize any community concerns was directed toward the school. The bus drop off location behind the school was gated to eliminate another potential nuisance area. The design of any building must evaluate life-cycle costs to ensure maximum value to the owner. Several design decisions were made with best value and energy efficiency at its core. The mechanical systems were designed to be as efficient as possible. The lighting system was designed to maximize natural light, especially in classrooms, to minimize the load on artificial systems, but balancing the amount of glass with masonry materials to reduce heat loss and radiant heat gain. The lighting system utilizes efficient fixtures, ballasts, and lenses. At the high point of the site a ridge ran along a North-South axis. The building’s design was altered to maintain the majority of the mass of the school on the center line of the ridge. This also added visual interest to the building enabling the design team to ‘kink’ the academic section at the main entrance. The two story volume also enabled the design team to create a dramatic visual element at the main entrance which is further enhanced with the use of aluminum metal panels providing relief from the predominately red brick façade. A slight curving element was incorporated into the entrance and carried through in the design of the Atrium. These elements combined together provide a sense of arrival and serve to orient the visitor on the site. The atrium inside continues the dramatic entrance and serves as a gathering space and ultimately the heart of the school. The school is a success in so many ways from the commitment to the neighborhood by the School District helping to spur additional economic development to the strong commitment to providing a positive learning environment for not only the regular students but the autistic children as well to the successful involvement of the community and the numerous little details and solutions that make Oak Park – Carpenter a school that everyone is proud to call their own. Project Description:
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