Core Design Team
Firm: NAC Architecture
Kevin Flanagan – Principal in Charge
Boris Srdar – Design Principal
Brian Love – Project Architect
Bingram Lai – Project Manager
Vincent Montesano – Architectural Designer
Kristen Petersen-Motan – Interior Designer
Alissa Tucker – Architectural Designer
Hafsa Muhammad – Architectural Designer
Consultants/Collaborators
Structural, Civil Engineers: Coughlin Porter Lundeen
Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing Engineers: Hargis Engineers
Landscape Architects: Osborn Consulting
Owner/Client: Seattle Public Schools
General Contractor: Cornerstone General Contractors
Envelope Consultants: Building Envelope Technology & Research
Project Narrative
URBAN NATURE OASIS
A Gentle Fit
Kimball Elementary School is a replacement of the original school built on the same site in 1971. The school is located about halfway down the slope from Beacon Hill to Rainier Valley. The site is a small parcel of only 4.78 acres (208,276 SF) and the new school is almost twice as large as its predecessor. Both the topography and project size presented unusually significant challenges for this urban school. It was also critical that the new school brought an improved civic quality to the long-established single-family neighborhood, while acting as a friendly neighbor both in scale and character.
Building on the school community’s affinity to nature, the design parti embraces the steep slopes, resulting terraces, and the grove of trees located at the heart of the site. Sensitivity to the balance and stability of the natural ecosystem was prioritized through the preservation of all mature trees on site. The tallest portion of the new building (three stories) is at the highest terrace, which sits half a story below the adjacent street elevation. The building then gently slopes down to the second terrace with the cafeteria and gymnasium. These gathering spaces have direct access to the outdoor play area on the same terrace. The large scale of the new school is thus mitigated through its relationship with the site’s topography, and human perceptions of height and distance.
Vibrant School Diversity: Culturally Responsive Design
To reflect the thoughts and opinions of the richly diverse population, the design process included extensive and continuous school and community engagement. The community’s values were articulated with actionable goals at the beginning of the design process and embraced all the way through the final refinement of the interior design. The core mission of the design goals was to foster a sense of belonging and create an equitable learning environment.
Highly inspirational conversations about reflecting the school’s diversity in the design led to the notion of Culturally Responsive Design to foster a welcoming and inclusive feeling for all students. Several methods of engagement were used to initiate dialogue with the broader school community, including in-person community events, School Design Advisory Team (SDAT) meetings, and online surveys shared with families. The school community’s feedback guided the design team to develop strategies to honor language, food, color, and history.
Each of these aspects was interpreted through an educational opportunity. The multitude of languages spoken at Kimball are celebrated throughout the school with different greetings embedded in the floor at the entry lobby and lines from nature-focused poems inset in the learning stairs’ risers. We learned that potlucks are an important aspect of celebration at school and in the neighborhood. This inspired us to ask the community about favorite foods and spices used at home and showcase their responses in a large-scale mural on the partition wall between the cafeteria and gym. Drawing from two colorful mosaics kept from the original school, we developed a bright and varied color palette representing the vibrancy of students’ homes while also preserving a visual connection to these historic elements within the new school.
Interpreting Kimball School Spirit
The original school was designed with an open-plan layout, where teachers formed a strong, collaborative teaching culture. We wanted to learn from and build on their teaching practices while also creating an environment that could improve learning equity. We had to ensure that their teaching culture still came across in a new form with more defined program spaces to align with current district standards.
The new design provides an ample variety of defined and informal spatial choices, from conference rooms to breakout spaces woven throughout the school. The sense of transparency, spatial connectivity, and overall floor plan fluidity allows teachers to continue teaching collaboratively and exchanging ideas, just like they used to.
In the previous open-plan layout, the library served as a central social and learning hub, illustrating the school’s lively teaching and learning culture. The library took on an additional connective role in the new design, providing significant vertical connections spanning three floors, in addition to extended horizontality. With this, the library strengthens visual and spatial links throughout the school. Students climbing the stairs in this central space can look out the windows to feel as if they are ascending into the surrounding tree canopies of the grove.
Sustainability: Embedded in All Aspects
Sustainable design manifests itself in every aspect of the new Kimball Elementary School, from passive design strategies that respect nature to high-performing engineered systems. Significant site topography required a highly sensitive siting of the building that embraces existing natural amenities and provides minimal grade disturbance. The large tree grove at the heart of the site provides excellent sun shading for east-facing spaces. The rain garden at the main entry sends a clear message to the school community about the importance of the natural environment and creates a social neighborhood amenity with a cooling microclimate.
Most academic areas are optimally oriented to allow for pervasive daylighting with sun shading, creating a natural open feeling throughout the interior. Mindful of how much larger of a scale this civic building is than other buildings in the neighborhood, earth-tone materials were chosen to help the school blend in with its surroundings and be a neighborly “gentle giant friend.”
Sustainable reuse preserves the memory of the previous building; large glue-laminated beams from the old school were reimagined and showcased in a new function and pattern at the stage proscenium and gym opening to the cafeteria. The team focused on building systems that provide energy conservation, with features including an optimally insulated envelope and the use of ground source heat pumps. The school is designed to operate at an estimated EUI of 16.95.
In summary, the new Kimball design reflects and embodies the high standards and aspirations of both its district and the users. At a cursory glance, one might think that nothing has changed; the site’s DNA in terms of topography, soil composition, and vegetation is mostly untouched. Upon further consideration, though, it can be seen how the schools’ relationship with the environment has been enhanced to one that celebrates natural beauty, creates a civic presence, and provides a welcoming learning environment for students and families. As a verse from a community selected poem expresses,
“The earth has music for those who listen.”
-From “The Magic of Sound” by Reginald Holmes