School

Single classroom study || AutoCAD, Photoshop, Illustrator

Sections ||AutoCAD, Illustrator, Photoshop

Site plan with resources || AutoCAD, Illustrator, Photoshop

Diagram of community access || AutoCAD, Photoshop

Egress strategy || AutoCAD, Illustrator

Figure/ground diagram of proposed site || AutoCAD, Photoshop

Section perspectives || Revit, AutoCAD, Illustrator

Program organization || AutoCAD, Photoshop, Illustrator

Sun study || SketchUp, InDesign

Concept diagrams || AutoCAD, Revit, Illustrator

In this project, I designed a school for a specific site in the Northern Liberty neighborhood of Philadelphia. However, the design process required that I first design an adventure playground to better understand the different ways that learning and discovery works with small children. To begin this process, I manipulated a study model to find ways that a single element might be used in different ways to create different kinds of play and learning. After abstracting these concepts, I was able to further refine the ideas to create a playscape in which the children are in total creative control and have a stable environment off of which to build.

Translating that environment into a series of spatial instances transferred the concepts into architectural realities that I then manipulated and fit together to create a school structure that had all of the spatial conditions of learning from the playscape. From there, the designs were refined, made more architecturally specific, and more related to the given site. I also incorporated more functional aspects such circulation, entry and egress, and after-school access to the community.