Architectural Tour assessment by
Greg Louviere, AIA
original tour date October 3, 2014
Trillium Creek Primary School West Linn-Wilsonville School District West Linn, Oregon
PBK
Architectural Tour Assessment
Trillium Creek Primary School
West Linn-Wilsonville School District West Linn, Oregon DULL OLSON WEEKES - IBI GROUP ARCHITECTS, INC. MacConnell Award 2014 Council of Educational Facilities Planners International LEED Gold
School signage at the main entry
Trillium Creek Primary School Tour Observations At the 2014 CEFPI International Conference in Portland, I had the opportunity to tour the new Trillium Creek Primary School in West Linn, Oregon with a group of fellow architects and facility managers. The tour was conducted by Karina Ruiz, Project Lead Associate Principle with Dull Olson Weekes - IBI Group Architects. Based on observations of the tour, I wanted to share with you all some of the thoughtful features and design considerations included in the school. At the conference, the school was honored this year as the receipt of the James D. MacConnell Award which is considered the highest award given for educational design. The theme of our tour focused on how the design of the school reflects the intentions of the “Common Core.� If you may not know (as I did not), the Common Core State Standards Initiative is an educational initiative in the United States that details what K-12 students should know in English language arts and mathematics at the end of each grade.
Trillium Creek Primary School \\ West Linn-Wilsonville School District
Architectural Tour Assessment
Project site plan
Project Scope Trillium Creek is designed to serve 500 students with a gross square footage of 68,000 SF. The school sits on a 16-acre site that contains diverse natural elements including a wetland, forest and creek. Balancing the natural features of the site with the program requirements was an important piece of the planning and visioning stages. The school was built at a total construction cost of $15.8 million for a square footage cost of $220 including site work. The school opened in September of 2012.
Trillium Creek Wetland
One of the classroom Oriels
School lawn and forest play area
“I want to be the captain of my own learning.� - 5th grade student during design charrette
Trillium Creek Primary School \\ West Linn-Wilsonville School District
Architectural Tour Assessment
The Common Core The education specifications for the school were based upon the enhanced implementation of the Common Core. To provide you will a little background there are a few features about it you may want to know. As initiated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Common Core was originally established to provide a standard of education across the nation that instilled emphasis on liberal arts, science and math in kindergarten through all twelve grades. In the Common Core, math standards require students to learn multiple ways to solve problems and explain how they got their answers; while the English standards emphasize nonfiction and expect students to use evidence to back up oral and written arguments. The standards are not a curriculum but rather skills that students should acquire at each grade. How they are taught and the materials used are decisions left to the state and school districts.
Neighborhood Porch
Educational Design The intimacy and quality of the spaces was the most evocative feature of this school. The school was designed so that each moment of the learning experience in the school is considered. Every moment is seen as an opportunity to engage learning through spatial interaction. This was most apparent not only through the design but in the behavior and manners of the students within the school. Library Bird Nest
Trillium Creek Primary School \\ West Linn-Wilsonville School District
Architectural Tour Assessment
Places for study and play
View into library with the bird nest and slide
Behavioral Transformation While we toured the school during a regular weekday all the classes where in session. Where most tours taking place during the school day, the students in session always seem to be easily distracted by the unfamiliar faces. On the other hand, the students at Trillium seemed much too involved to pay any attention to our tour group. Rather, they stayed right on track with the lessons and remained focused on their assignments. Possibly the students have been exposed to so many tour groups in the past that they no longer pay any attention to the visitors or maybe they were genuinely too interested in what they were learning to be distracted. I wondered if the design of the school filter the “noisy� distractions of a tour group. Even though there was a great deal of transparency in the school, the distraction seemed minimized by the acoustical control and the intimacy of the spaces. Noise did not reverberate and the visual interference was somehow manageable. The building was void of long corridors with hard surfaces and bright lights that invariably amplify sound and increase visual distraction.
Quiet areas throughout the school for reflective learning
Trillium Creek Primary School \\ West Linn-Wilsonville School District
Architectural Tour Assessment
Visibility & Proximity A second feature that I became aware of was that there were no circulation halls. The location and configuration of the classroom neighborhoods allowed students and teachers close proximity to the library and shared spaces. Thereby, the students were given the opportunity to move from their classroom, into their neighborhood “porches” and into the library and shared spaces without physical adult supervision. Transparency provided supervision without seeming overtly oppressive. We never saw a line of kids marching like soldiers; the way it happens in most schools. I am not trying to say that this school was an educational Utopia so to speak, but only that the behavior of the children was quite remarkable and noteworthy. To satisfy my understanding of the unique behavior of the students I wanted to understand how the school had achieved this goal since so many other schools fail at achieving this. In my research I found that within the educational program for Trillium Creek is a list of specific strategies including common language, service learning and student behavior that are administered by the three R’s of Respect, Responsibility and Resourcefulness.
Outside view of classroom Oriel
During a question and answer session, several people asked about the behavioral factor because it was a rather apparent to everyone. In response to this question, the principal, the architect and the teachers said that they approached the design of the school with the concept that students are active participants in their learning. They were given the tools to apply their own level of discipline of action to their personal behavior. This approach was derived from the student design charrette where the students stated that they “wanted to be the captain of their own learning.” What an amazing statement and approach to a school design! Inside view of classroom Oriel
Transparency at the main office entry
The successful application of learning ownership is reflected by the design of the school. Students are not given free range of the school, rather there are limitations within the school, but the school does not inhibit movement. As mentioned, there are no hallways in this school. Each grade’s classrooms on both floors creates a collaborative neighborhood surrounding a central “porch,” and each “porch” flows directly into the library and into the other neighborhoods.
Trillium Creek Primary School \\ West Linn-Wilsonville School District
Architectural Tour Assessment
Multidimensional Library In its central location, the library is easily accessible through its proximity to the “porches.” The library is designed as a series of terraces that flow from the lower, middle and upper areas. From the first floor you may step down into the largest area of the library, and at the grade level there are a series of study and collaboration areas. From the second floor the library is accessible via stairs or slide. One can also take the bridge over to the “bird’s nest” which is an intimate space for reading. Surrounding the library are small personal “caves” featuring windows for unobstructed view of the library and allow students a private place to read. It was obvious the library was designed with the child’s form in mind since there were many attributes that were simply too small for the adult form.
Reading group in the library
View of the library’s multiple levels with various reading/study areas
Trillium Creek Primary School \\ West Linn-Wilsonville School District
Architectural Tour Assessment
Classrooms & Neighborhoods According to the tour guide, the Learning Neighborhoods consist of “porches” that open to clusters of either four or five classroom spaces. These porches are flexible in nature, allowing students and teachers to utilize the colorful, carpeted environment for a variety of large or small group activities. Students and teachers can transform these spaces with mobile casework and furniture for eating lunch, conducting small group meetings, presenting student work or accommodating independent student learning. The classrooms are also designed to give students and teachers the ability to shape their own learning environments with mobile furniture and limited built-in casework. The Fat L-Shape design of the classroom provides opportunity to separate the variety of classroom activities without permanent barriers. Each classroom in the school also features an “oriel” that extends from the building and presents an independent learning place for students, giving the feeling that they are suspended into the outdoor environment. Children can also easily identify their classroom from the exterior site with the oriel’s bright colored tiles blurring the lines between interior and exterior spaces.
Neighborhood porch and transparency into a Fat L-Shaped classroom
Neighborhood Dining
Second-level servery
A rather unique feature of the school was that it was void of a common cafeteria. In the visioning session of the design, the consideration was made that to enforce the family qualities of the school, the student dining would take place in the individual neighborhoods. A main kitchen is located on the first floor where storage and food preparation take place. A second-level servery is used for the upper grades where students make their food choices and then move back to their neighborhoods. A dumbwaiter transports the prepared containers of food to the second-level servery.
Trillium Creek Primary School \\ West Linn-Wilsonville School District
Architectural Tour Assessment
The Outdoors Through most of my design experience, particularly in Texas, we tend to view the outdoors as a healthful place but only give it limited consideration as a learning space. This is due to the heat and humidity of the local climate. At Trillium, one is exposed to the outdoors at every turn. Each neighborhood is given views and access to the outdoors, either through outdoor stairs or doorways. Each of the three neighborhoods upstairs have their own outdoor stairs and an adjacent green roof. The school’s surrounding forestry area was preserved and acts seamlessly as a part of the children’s play area. While on the tour, there was a classroom outside having a picnic on the lawn while the children played in a forest clearing.
View into school entry plaza
Knowledge of the outdoors and environmental stewardship was made apparent through the many features that were incorporated into the architecture and outdoor learning areas. At the front entry of the school were a series of raised vegetable and flower planters. A potting shed was also made available for maintenance and housing supplies. Surrounding the school, native plants and drainage patterns were incorporated into the landscape and architecture. Along the outlying portion of the site, the landscape is invigorated by the native plant and wildlife habitat. Playground and wetland area
North elevation of school from forest
Trillium Creek Primary School \\ West Linn-Wilsonville School District
Architectural Tour Assessment
Construction Unlike most of our schools which are steel frame construction, Trillium is built using wood frame and beam construction with wood frame construction. The roofs and floor framing is a wood–joist with plywood sheathing. Glue laminated beams and columns are integrated in larger space such as the gym and library and on the stairs. Vertical walls are constructed of wood siding, sheathing, brick and interior gypsum board finish with wainscoting. Floors are constructed using a topping and sound deadening concrete. You can readily notice the sound differences in using the wood frame construction, which also remarkably enhances the sense of intimacy.
North elevation during construction
Energy usage monitor
Further Consideration It is my hope that you have an opportunity to study the Trillium Creek Primary School and look at some of the distinctive features that make the school such a delightful place for learning. It may be difficult to understand from my description why the school is a recipient of numerous awards, but I hope you find the school as a unique and engaging primary school design worthy of study. Trillium represents a successful collaboration between community, district, students and designers that ultimately fostered a high-level design that was also able to meet stringent educational goals. The vision of the school was maintained throughout the process and stands today as a testament to the vision.
Library as the heart of the school
Trillium Creek Primary School \\ West Linn-Wilsonville School District
Architectural Tour Assessment
Awards MacConnell Award, Council of Educational Facilities Planners International, 2014 Grand Prize, National School Board Association Exhibition of School Architecture, 2013 American Association of School Administrators/Shirley Cooper Award, American Institute of Architecture Committee on Architecture in Education, 2013 Elementary School Citation, American School & University Architectural Portfolio Awards, 2013 Council of Educational Facility Planners International, National Project of Distinction, 2013 Learning by Design, Grand Prize Award, 2013 Engineering News-Record, Best K-12 Project – Northwest Region, 2013 LEEDŽ Gold Certified
Trillium Creek Primary School \\ West Linn-Wilsonville School District
WEST LINN - WILSONVILLE SCHOOL DISTRICT
Thank you. My thanks to the CEFPI Conference Committee for arranging these outstanding tours. Also, my thanks to the Principal, Charlotte Morris, and teachers at Trillium Creek Primary School and Karina Ruiz, Project Lead Associate Principle with Dull Olson Weekes - IBI Group Architects for lending their time and effort to create this tour and answer our detailed questions.
For more information on Trillium Creek Primary School please visit: http://www.dowa-ibigroup.com/ http://dowaibitrilliumcreekps.tumblr.com/
PBK