Teaching Method Drives Design -- Vinyl Flooring Frees Designer and Architect
"What would I be if I had all the advantages that children have today?" That's the question you might ask yourself immediately after touring the Kennedy Elementary School in Janesville, Wis., located 60 miles west of Milwaukee. This newly built school defines "child-friendly environment" in an entirely new way.
Before ever drawing a single line, Bray Associates Architects, Inc., Middleton, Wis., sat down with teachers and administrators to determine the type of building needed to facilitate the kind of innovative teaching that is going on in the school. What the architects learned drove them to truly color outside the lines in designing the building.
Kennedy Elementary School uses a method of teaching called "looping," in which one teacher keeps the same group of children through two grade levels. Thus, the architects decided to group the classrooms into neighborhoods; one neighborhood for first and second, another for third and fourth. Fifth graders have their own neighborhood to help in the transition to middle school. Each neighborhood has a common area complete with a kitchenette for special class get-togethers involving more than one subject, art projects and one-on-one meetings. Design elements were developed to take away the feeling of a big impersonal school with long corridors and nondescript rooms.
Curiosity and creativity are stimulated through the use of color, pattern and texture for flooring and wall surface and ceiling design elements. High ceilings with open beams and natural light, curved corridors, angled walls and child-height windows all encourage students to interact with their environment. The flooring, as well as the carpeting backing, in this 72,631 square foot facility is vinyl.
Why vinyl? Patti Balliet, Bray's vice president and director of interior design, said, "It really boils down to two things, design flexibility and durability." According to Steve Kuhnen, Design Architect at Bray's Sheboygan office, "The laser cut technology allowed us to create a scholastic theme with learning icons embedded in the vinyl composition tiles throughout the galleria space."
Mannington Mills Inc.'s vinyl composition tile was used in the project in part because of its extensive color palette. And Mannington's custom design flexibility, coupled with laser cut technology, allows for an exciting use of color. Altogether, 10 colors were used to create stimulating patterns, numbers and even a world atlas. Mannington's commercial vinyl-backed carpet added another layer of dynamic color and texture, while providing the performance characteristics and satisfying maintenance demands for a school application.
This project continues to gain national recognition and was recently featured in Interiors & Sources magazine. It also was chosen by AS&U 2000 Architectural Portfolio magazine as one of eight elementary schools in the nation to receive a citation award.
The AS&U publication said, "Functional layout … great philosophy reflected in the floor plan. Cafetorium is spectacular." Bray Associates Architects has become a recognized specialist in the field of school design. The main office is in Sheboygan, Wis., with additional offices in Middleton, La Crosse and Mequon. The company can be contacted at 1807 Erie Avenue, P.O. Box 955, Sheboygan, Wis. 53082-0955, phone (920) 459-4200 and fax (920) 459-4205 or visit their Web site at www.brayarch.com.