Green Acres School Lower School

Green Acres School Lower School

Bethesda, MD

The school wished to build separate classroom buildings for the grades 1-2 and 3-4. Each building has five classrooms with 900 SF each, a large central gathering space, and two small conference rooms that are shared by all teachers. The students are broken down into small groups for instruction and study.

The plan is organized to minimize circulation space so that most of the square footage is usable space. Skylights and differentiated floor materials extend the act of entry into the center of the building. The architectural language attempts to ameliorate the differences between that of the original 1955 building and the more recent classroom building. Although another recent classroom building had abandoned the 1955 idea of outside learning, we proposed that these new buildings have an exterior teaching space equal to that on the interior space.

Small niches are created along one edge of the classroom with casework. Each individual space is devoted to a specific discipline. The teachers refer to it as the “Learning Wall”. The divisions of the windows are designed to illustrate multiplication. The architectural, structural and MEP technologies are left exposed and are arranged to make the “architecture” of the building. The triangular arch of the exterior and interior entries are modeled after the arch in the Treasury of Atreus in ancient Mycenae.