Call to Action:

1. A high level overview describing the advantages and disadvantages of consolidating two schools on one site and two schools under a shared roof will allow attendees to determine whether a consolidated school campus is suitable for their own project.
2. Planners, designers, educators, and facilities personnel will be exposed to numerous design solutions that address the distinct needs of multiple age groups concurrently that can be directly applied to their next project, whether it be an Elementary School, Secondary School, or a Campus.

Abstract: For communities and catchment areas that have a wide array of student age groups, architects are often tasked to create a School Campus/Facility that encompasses Kindergarten to Senior High Students. The desire to host both Elementary and Secondary Schools within the same site, invites students and staff to be more united with one another while encouraging everyone to become engaged and active participants within their community. Some advantages of having both an elementary and high school curriculum on to the same site means that resources can be shared, friendships can be built, connections can be established, and mentorship can be fostered amongst both students and staff. There are also inherent advantages of consolidating schools and sites from a construction and cost perspective. At the same time, creating a campus that captures a student 4 years of age through to 18+, poses a challenging problem whereby contradictory design objectives need to be met concurrently. How can a campus create camaraderie AND separation? How can a common space be shared across all ages AND prevent bullying? How can a school create unity AND individuality? How can you offer a sense of graduation, progression, and accomplishment? Each school needs to reflect its students to foster a sense of pride and ownership in themselves and their education. Through a variety of methods, these seemingly conflicting goals can be realized. Site design, scheduling, passive surveillance, scale of space, scale of furniture, travel distances, colours, and materials all play a part in addressing these seemingly conflicting goals. Through the collaboration of landscape architects, architects, interior designers, educators, and facilities personnel, we can innovate and optimize space to reflect the individuality of the students while creating a harmonious environment where students can thrive. We bring our 40 years of combined experience working on schools across Canada; in urban centers as well as in many First Nation Communities to present a wide range of design solutions that meet these challenging design objectives. We will walk through some of the successful planning strategies for singular K-12 school facilities as well as multi-facility school campuses.

Learning Objectives:

1. Uncover the advantages and disadvantages of consolidating Elementary and Secondary Schools within the same site. Determine the constraints and opportunities inherent in Campus Design from a social, educational, construction, cost, and sustainability perspective.
2. Determine how to approach site design for Elementary and Secondary Campuses and discover how scheduling comes into play.
3. Determine how to approach space planning, programming, and scheduling for Elementary and Secondary Campuses.
4. Discover how volume, scale, furniture, and material selection can transform space to promote harmony, individuality, maturity, playfulness, progression, and a sense of place.