Once having broken the project into three separate schools, it was important to bring them back together.
The small school concept drives the scheme toward separate identities for the school volumes yet the requirement for shared common functions forces them back together. This project structures the architecture around this dialectic by placing a tree at the spatial center of the plan and section and organizing the basic disposition of the program and circulation around this element.
In various forms, the tree symbolizes both knowledge and life in Western, African, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu and American Indian cultures. As such, its universality passes across almost all cultures and serves as a multifaceted metaphor for the project; simultaneously simple yet complex.
The main entrance to each school occurs at the top of the ramp off the courtyard with the tree at center. Like true small schools, each school has a separate entry off of the courtyard. Underneath the courtyard on the ground floor, major circulation between the administration/kindergarten building and the school building occurs around the tree with the library surrounding the base of the tree and opening out onto a lower level garden terrace.
(completed by 4240 employee, Robert Benson, while at VWA)