Design Values: Service

How do we honor community by designing ways for people to connect?

As social animals, we need each other to learn, to heal and to create. Buildings provide a means for performing these functions. As such, the product of our work provides a frame for the experience and tastes of its users. We’re not creating space for space’s sake; we create space for purposeful interaction. And so we ask: What draws people together, whether it’s two people or 100? Can the same place support both? What makes people come together even better, more productively with greater satisfaction? How do the space, lighting and building systems support that aim?

Example: Benjamin Franklin Elementary School, Lake Washington School District

When asked to design a new elementary school, we first analyzed how their current schools were and were not working. This led us to revise the design of shared learning areas. The result is a functional and flexible learning space that enriches the diverse activities it houses. It addresses the pitfalls of past facilities with clear supervision to the area from four adjacent classrooms and separation from general circulation paths while providing direct access to light, air and views of the forest outside. No longer interior catch-all spaces, the resulting design provides a vital collaborative area that is experienced as the heart of the school’s small learning communities.