Page 66 - Spring_2018

ArchDC Spring 2018.qxp_Fall 2017 2/22/18 9:14 AM Page 64

Detail of the pavilion’s roof structure.

projects including about a dozen curriculum and
community gardens and several pavilions.
“In a project this simple,” said ISTUDIO principal
Rick Harlan Schneider, AIA, APA, LEED AP, “you
look for ‘teaching moments’ in otherwise mundane
architectural moves.”
One teaching moment came with the placement
of the kitchen. The previous two pilot projects put the
kitchen under the cover of their pavilions, which
necessitated elaborate and costly exhaust and sprinkler
systems similar to what one sees in restaurant kitchens.
ISTUDIO argued that there wouldn’t be classes in the
rain anyway, so why not pull the kitchen out? A chic
kitchen—worthy of an “amenity deck” atop a pricey
new apartment building—resulted.
Similarly, the storage shed in the previous two
pilot projects was basically a background element in a
less-visible corner. Here it sits under the pavilion, and
consists of a basic wood frame structure with milky
white polycarbonate cladding. The cladding is usable
as a marker board (that is, a modern-day chalkboard)
and, since it’s translucent, allows the shed to have no
light fixtures. “Things can serve multiple purposes”
is the implicit lesson.
Most of the concrete planter walls from the original
courtyard were retained; new concrete provides wheel-
chair-accessible ramps and a two-tier seating area. The
original brick was combined with new to create an
inexpensive but distinctive paving pattern. The raised
planters of the curriculum garden dominate the planted
areas, including one large square known as the “pumpkin
patch” where the “Three Sisters” of Native American
tribes and the Puritan colonists (corn, pole beans, and
Pavilion and outdoor kitchen.
squash) will be planted, bringing a history lesson into
the courtyard. Responding to a stated interest of the
gables might be more interesting, ISTUDIO’s team
parents, sleeves for potential future chicken coops
thought, and at some point it occurred to them that
were installed.
the folded shape was something like a paper airplane.
For the design of a pavilion, Schneider noted, “The
That realization inspired the decision to skew the grid,
first thing you must consider is how to drain water off,
introducing diagonals that lend additional dynamism
away from the users.” An inverted gable, draining to a
to the form. Drainage was emphasized by extending
low point in the middle, would provide controlled
the channels several feet beyond the pavilion and
drainage and would fit with the school’s architectural
providing chains to guide the water downward to
vocabulary of mid-century modernism. Two inverted
bioretention pits.
64 TEACHING MOMENTS