The Heart of a Community: North Ridge Elementary School

THE HEART OF A COMMUNITY NORTH RIDGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

INTERGRATING THE COMMUNITY

COMMUNITY

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DESIGNING THE COMMUNITY A school is an integral part of its community. This is particularly true for elementary schools, which bring together not only students and staff but also a small army of parents, volunteers, and siblings whose daily rhythms harmonize with the school day. School pick-up and drop-off in a tightly knit community becomes more than a daily errand; it’s also an opportunity to connect, participate, and socialize, if only for a few moments.

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When it became clear that the existing facilities for North Ridge Elementary School in Raleigh, NC were approaching the end of their useful service life, the school community didn’t want to lose the connectivity which made North Ridge feel special. The wooded campus was surrounded by neighborhoods and drew a huge population of walkers, and an hour before school let out each day, families started emerging from pathways through the woods with strollers and family dogs to gather and enjoy a little social time. Replacing the school would mean either relocating it to a new site- increasingly difficult to procure in the densely populated area, and with the risk of disrupting the tight-knit community- or demolishing the old campus and rebuilding a new school onsite. Even if it meant relocating students to a swing space during a year of construction, the latter option was the right choice.

Engage a Community + Neighborhood COMMUNITY

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ESTABLISHING GOALS The LS3P team led a series of visioning sessions with stakeholders to conceptualize a new campus that would be connected and community focused. The original buildings were designed around an outdated open-air concept in which every classroom opened directly to the outside, with no internal circulation. The new design needed to accommodate current standards for school security while maintaining a strong sense of connection to the outdoors and creating welcoming public gathering spaces.

Working closely with Wake County Public School System planners, the team embraced a “city, neighborhood, and block” concept that works from macro to micro. The school’s tight-knit neighborhood is the “city” context, the school is a “neighborhood” within itself, and the classroom clusters function as “blocks” within the rich layers from outside to inside, city-scale to classroom scale.

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NEIGHBORHOOD BLOCK 21st Century Learning The “neighborhood block” pattern created a series of learning commons spaces nestled within classroom clusters and shared by grade level pods. These mini neighborhoods open up the classroom areas, extending to the exterior walls to capture daylight and views to nature. This visual connection to the outdoors creates views from almost every spot in the building, reimagining what the community was used to in terms of immediate access to nature. Students, families, and staff enter the building through a light-filled grand lobby that runs all the way from the front entrance to the back of the building, and the design incorporates floor-to-ceiling glazing wherever possible in the community spaces. Traditional corridors connect the neighborhoods but provide secondary, not primary, circulation; the majority of circulation space is found within the neighborhoods themselves.

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The design, from the playful butterfly roofs and sculptural lighting above the entryand media center to the bright, flexible, kid-friendly furniture, is all about the students. Each neighborhood is color-coded for easy wayfinding, including dropped bulkheads, fun pops of color in the lights, and baffles to bring the scale down. These colors spill into the learning commons spaces and let the kids know they’ve arrived at their neighborhood. On the exterior, green metal panels celebrate special spaces such as the learning commons areas and the media center.

Collaboration spaces are central to the design, both indoors and outside. The media center features floor-to-ceiling curtainwall and opens to an exterior reading area, and doubles as a community gathering and meeting space after hours. The design includes thoughtful details to encourage the extended school community to gather, such as benches at pick-up areas and an outdoor eating area adjacent to the cafeteria with a butterfly roof.

Fostering a Block COMMUNITY

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UNPARALLELED COLLABORATION The smooth process- resulting in an on-time, under budget project despite the compressed site and tight 14-month construction schedule- wouldn’t have been possible without the commitment and full participation of every team member. LS3P’s design team, Wake County’s planners, and the contractor Clancy & Theys worked closely together to maximize the site and budget and took pride in creating an authentic sense of place for this community.

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LOOKING TOWARDS THE FUTURE This beloved elementary school is now ready for a new chapter of use. Now that the design and construction process is complete, the school community has a bright, connected, and vibrant campus that will serve the next generation of students - and its entire neighborhood - well into the future.

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