The Richfield Public School Academy is a PK-8th grade Charter School located in Flint, Michigan. The Academy is comprised of two locations with the main campus housing students in grades 3-8 and the Early Learning Center facility (ELC) housing PK-2nd grade.
The Academy has experienced steady growth over the last 5 years and saw the need to expand their Early Learning Center facilities and provide a multipurpose space at that site to accommodate their growth.
The Charter School has developed a campus feeling on their Early Learning Center site and encourages its students to leave the confinement of their traditional classrooms and explore the Center’s on-site external options for hands on learning. The ELC site is long and narrow with the school and parking located on the extreme north end. To encourage exploration and further enhance the campus layout of the site, the southern portion of the property has beautiful, natural landscaping with walking trails that lead students through the campus to a pavilion for nature study, a large tree house, and an exterior swimming pool.
The existing Early Learning Center school building is quite unique in that it is a two-story facility with the lower level below the entry grade. Walk-out areas lead from the upper level of the main school building to an outdoor swimming pool and pool building containing toilet/locker rooms, a small kitchen and an open learning space, also used for the ELC program.
With below grade elements and tight site conditions, it would be extremely difficult to add more classrooms to the existing school building and since the new multipurpose space needed to be accessible by not only students and parents, but also the public for rental events, it would need to be close to the parking area for easy access.
The Architects determined that the best solution would be to remodel and add on to the existing pool building to create four new preschool classrooms as well as a new Multipurpose Room. The preschool rooms would have their own exterior entry and the Multipurpose Room would have a separate entry from the parking area, so that K-2 students would not have to pass through the preschool rooms to get to the Multipurpose Room. The strategic location of each of the separate new spaces allowed students and staff to transition along the main building’s eight-foot change in grade, easily and naturally.
The main ELC classroom building has a very unique appearance with multiple geometric shapes and bright colors. Therefore, the Architects incorporated a similar palette of materials and colors into the remodel and addition for the pool building. Each building entry is unique and creates an identity for the separate functions that they serve, while harmonizing beautifully with the surrounding campus facilities.
The uniqueness of the new design is that it celebrates the strong presence of the existing dominant campus effect by creating a facility that looks as if it might have been part of the original design and facilitates improved access throughout the campus as well as visually ties the built environment together.
