Roosevelt Elementary School Master Plan

Dan J on November 17, 2023

The Roosevelt Elementary School Master Plan brings the school’s campus into the 21st century while celebrating its history as a pioneering example of the Santa Monica Plan. The Santa Monica Plan emphasized indoor-outdoor connections in the educational environment and became a national model for school design.

The Roosevelt Elementary School Master Plan preserves the original quad in the center of campus as a focal point around which the rest of the campus is designed. New campus buildings, including classrooms, maker spaces, a cafeteria, an auditorium, and a library, are all organized with careful, considered input from teachers and staff. They also retain the indoor-outdoor principals of the original Santa Monica Plan. The restored, original entrance on Montana Avenue creates a more welcoming connection to the surrounding neighborhood, making the school’s historic buildings newly visible from the street.

The plan balances preservation and adaptive reuse without compromising the School District’s needs for larger classrooms, new extracurricular facilities, and adequate support infrastructure. It envisions a modern educational facility that also contributes to the character of the entire Roosevelt School community.

School of Business

Dan J on November 17, 2023

With a 58 percent increase in enrollment since 2015, the new School of Business responds to tremendous campus growth particularly within the business school. Thru a design-build competition, the Moore Ruble Yudell/ McCarthy team was selected with a forward-looking design that is uniquely of its place and welcoming to its diverse student community. The project is a gateway to and first new academic building in the South Campus District. Strong indoor-outdoor connections harmonize the building to its climate, site, district, and greater campus. Building and site integrate into the South District’s hillside topography and offer a spectrum of indoor and outdoor gathering spaces that are a destination for students and the business community.

The project centralizes School of Business classes and activities and is designed to be an inclusive and inviting home where students feel they belong. The new building includes collaborative classrooms; a 350-seat auditorium; computer lab; recording studio; multi-use spaces and café; open collab areas; group study rooms, lounges; student services suites, offices, and an executive meeting room. State-of-the-art technology for hybrid learning allows multi-media presentations to be recorded and streamed. The project will achieve LEED Platinum and advances towards net zero energy and carbon through passive and active strategies that take advantage of the hillside setting.

An animation of the design process can be viewed here.

Ge Hekai Hall

Dan J on November 17, 2023

Ge Hekai Hall at Wenzhou Kean University (WKU) is an emerging educational building type in which diverse academic and research programs are gathered into a major campus hub. This interconnected facility encompasses the College of Architecture, the College of Design, and the School of Computer Science.  The unique mix is cultural as well as academic—as a Chinese institution whose curriculum is provided by Kean University in the United States, WKU offers students dual Chinese and American degrees, with students from both countries.

Ge Hekai holds  a prominent position at the  heart of WKU’s fast-growing campus, following a master plan by Michael Graves Architecture and Design. Its design superimposes open plan design studios over a two-story base of flexible loft spaces that house class labs, library, maker spaces, and office suites. The base buildings form a pattern of lofts and alleys, clad in dark gray granite, contrasting with the white ultra-high-performance concrete of the upper structure. At the north and south, grand porches address major campus spaces, and frame entrances to the great central hall , which boasts stadium seating reminiscent of Rome’s Piazza di Spagna. This central hall serves as the largest shared venue on campus for a wide range of events.

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