Core Design Team

Firm: Mithun

BRENDAN CONNOLLY, ARCHITECTURE
JOANN WILCOX, ARCHITECTURE
DOROTHY FARIS, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
SEAMUS KELLY, ARCHITECTURE
CHIP HAMMER, ARCHITECTURE
SAYAKA AKIYAMA, ARCHITECTURE
AMELIA JENSEN, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
MOLLY HOLLYMAN, INTERIOR DESIGN
JEAN-CLAUDE LETOURNEAU, ARCHITECTURE
CLAIRE MCCONNELL, ARCHITECTURE
K KACZMAREK, INTERIOR DESIGN
STERLING BRADBY, ARCHITECTURE

Consultants/Collaborators

Progressive Design-Build Leader and General Contractor: Skanska USA Building
DeafSpace Consultants: Hansel Bauman Architecture + Planning, with Robert T. Sirvage
Civil: Harper Houf Peterson Righellis
Structural: PCS Structural Solutions
MEP: JH Kelly & Glumac
Acoustical: A3 Acoustics
Specifications: Avidcraft
Lighting Design: Dark Light Consulting
Food Consultant: Halliday and Associates
LEED Consultant: O’Brien360

Project Narrative

The Washington School for the Deaf (WSD) Divine Academic and Hunter Gymnasium provide a full suite of academic, administrative and physical education programs for 150 students on a preK–12 residential school campus, where students live and learn. The new campus buildings total 50,500 sf and leverage DeafSpace Design Guidelines for learning spaces that support deaf spatial sensibilities and bi-lingual communication through American Sign Language (ASL) and English. The design centers the Deaf experience and supports occupant wellbeing — reducing stress, improving daylighting and increasing engagement in a conducive, home-like learning environment that is highly tuned to maximize ASL/English bilingual instructional practices, equipping students to thrive.

HISTORY
The history of deaf education in the United States, particularly within residential schools for the deaf, contains several troubling aspects, often stemming from prevailing societal attitudes towards deafness and disability:

  • Forced oralism and the suppression of sign language, with student consequences of linguistic deprivation, stunted academic growth, isolation and shame
  • Vulnerability to maltreatment
  • Segregation and discrimination, including exclusion from decision-making
  • Institutionalized oppression and cultural insensitivity.

PROCESS
In stark contrast to prior development over the WSD campus’s 139-year history, shaped by generations of pervasive marginalization, the design process for this project was intentionally Deaf-centric and student-focused. The voices of students, staff and community directed design development and ensured the school’s educational goals were achieved while honoring Deaf culture. Early visioning, project goals and design concepts were authored and nurtured by the school community and began with a six-month listening-first predesign phase, during which the design team immersed themselves in learning, including ASL. The design-build team joined the campus community for week-long workshops to learn, build trust and crystallize project goals with students, staff and alumni in the lead.

CAMPUS AND COMMUNITY RECIPROCITY
Historically, residential schools for the deaf were sited either entirely outside of, or on the fringe of cities; with building plans replicated from asylum or correctional facility design. However, within the deaf culture, Schools for the Deaf are the heart of Deaf community. This project develops equilibrium between reflection, or the preservation of campus memory, and the community’s desire to transform their relationship with the city that surrounds their home.

For the last quarter-century, derelict buildings obscured views to the heart of campus from the street; buildings presented solid facades to the street; chain link fencing wrapped the site; and the entrance was hard to find. State funding created an extraordinary opportunity to consolidate preK–12 programs dispersed across the campus in aging facilities under one roof, reorient campus arrival to engage the liveliest urban edge and introduce a new “heart” — all designed specifically to create a sense of belonging uniquely attuned to Deaf cognitive, linguistic and cultural sensibilities.

To complement the City of Vancouver’s newly adopted 2045 Comprehensive Plan for the Evergreen and Grand Commercial Corridor, the project creates a new front door that opens physically and visually to the neighborhood. It also boldly commits a third of the site area to a new public-school interface zone. This new reciprocal relationship between the school and the city creates awareness, connection and integration with the broader community. A now visually porous campus membrane creates safe, interactive thresholds between public, academic and residential zones.

Founded in 1886, the school is older than the state of Washington. This is a point of deep pride for the community, and is expressed through material selection, visual connection and details throughout the design. Historic materials were repurposed, and the new campus entry is sited to honor the footprint of a demolished campus landmark, the Red Barn by Deaf architect Olof Hanson (1862–1933), whose designs were the precursor of today’s DeafSpace principles. Salvaged materials are celebrated within the new structures: trusses from the Red Barn are incorporated at the reception desk, flooring from the original gymnasium is on display in the new gym lobby, and bricks manufactured by the local Hidden Brick Company were saved from the demolished cafeteria and boiler and hidden throughout the campus, ready for discovery.

As Washington’s only ASL-bilingual residential school for the Deaf, students come from across the state — traveling by bus, train and plane — many arriving Sunday and returning home on Friday. Mirroring their diverse backgrounds and honoring their transition from one community to another, the design references the Missoula floods that shaped this site. Large “glacial erratic” boulders, sourced state-wide, offer students ASL-friendly conversation nodes in the landscape.

DEAFSPACE DESIGN
Deaf people inhabit a rich sensory world where vision and touch are a primary means of spatial awareness and orientation. Many use sign language, a visual/spatial mode of communication, and maintain a sense of belonging to Deaf culture — a linguistic minority with strong collectivist values built upon these sensibilities and shared life experiences.

Our built environment, largely constructed by and for hearing individuals, presents a variety of challenges to which deaf people have responded with a particular way of altering their surroundings to fit their unique ways-of-being with a community-based design vernacular now referred to as DeafSpace. The study of DeafSpace principles — sensory reach, space and proximity, mobility and proximity, light and color, and acoustics — offers valuable insights about the interrelationship between the senses, the ways we construct the built environment and cultural identity from which society at large has much to learn.

In addition to employing best-practice DeafSpace design principles and research, stakeholder input guided the design process and project planning. The resulting spaces support WSD’s bi-lingual and bi-cultural educational goals while celebrating and promoting the community’s unique Deaf culture, by creating a continuum between the individual (private) and the group (public/collaborative) — in equilibrium.

POSITIVE COMMUNITY IMPACT
A Sense of Belonging — Within Deaf culture, space plays an important role in one’s sense of belonging. To build a “home away from home” at WSD for residential students, the design creates places that are memorable and easy to orient within, and embeds cultural references expressive of local community history and Deaf culture (like the use of salvaged materials and inclusion of Deaf art throughout campus). The site and building are organized to foster social engagement in visual communication by locating “nodes” for social gathering at the crossroads of circulation and view corridors, and distributing “social eddies” — small alcoves for brief visual conversations out of the path of corridor traffic. Large expanses of glass throughout the building make it possible for deaf and hard of hearing occupants to always maintain awareness of others.

Measured Impact: 84% increase in sense of belonging, 53% improvement in wellbeing.

Equipped Learning, Tailored Spaces — From the pedagogical perspective, student receptivity is a critical aspect of learning for a Deaf child. Vision and autonomy are key. When the learner steps into a space, the design provides an inherent understanding about how students’ individual needs will be met while they comfortably cooperate with others. At WSD, students are immersed in spaces that are Deaf-centered, resulting in a fully accessible learning environment that engages the whole student through heightened sensory experience, responsively tuned to each program, pedagogy and purpose. The design team developed a kit-of-parts approach to delivering project-based learning spaces, driven entirely by the spatial needs, U-shaped furniture arrangements, lighting and acoustic characteristics that benefit Deaf learners. The library bridges language, culture and heritage, highlighting the historic curved brick wall of the existing theater. The Life Skills Lab connects to student social space, transforming after-hours to the “hub of the home.” Spaces like the Art and the ASL Lab focus on applied, interdisciplinary, hands-on learning and exploration in media that promote self-expression.

The academic building’s mass timber structure enhances sensory vibration to extend the users’ perceptory reach. Windows extend to the structure, eliminating high-glare conditions and allowing daylight to graze the exposed wood surfaces, further enhancing the biophilic warmth.

Measured Impact: 74% increase in motivation to learn, 88% satisfaction with visual comfort, 48% experienced reduction in visual fatigue.

Responsible Resilience — Diverse design strategies were used to enable campus resilience in the face of changing environmental conditions with minimal resource use. Key to the project’s energy efficient performance is the building’s thoughtful configuration, which provides ample daylight to all regularly occupied spaces. Strategically placed windows and skylights bring natural light deep into the interior, reducing the need for electric lighting and creating a comfortable and well-lit environment for students and staff. The project exceeds standards with an air-tight envelope that reduces energy loss and minimizes the need for additional heating or cooling. The building is also tied into the campus’s geothermal wellfield system and includes 36kW of photovoltaic panels, utilizing renewable, on-site energy for space heating.

Measured Impact: 88.5 kg CO₂e/m² embodied carbon footprint, 0.058 CFM75/sf air leakage rate, 100% Electric Building, 100% stormwater treated on-site, EUI 47% less than benchmark, LEED GOLD.