Lyons Mill Elementary School

Developed as part of a Planned Unit Development (PUD) in suburban Baltimore County, and designed in alignment with 21st Century Learning principles, the new 715-student Lyons Mill Elementary School differs from other elementary schools through the project's focused efforts to develop a sense of community, expand the learning environment beyond the walls, enable flexibility, and promote collaboration. Articulated by the commons areas throughout the school and the grade-level neighborhoods in the two-story classroom wing, the sense of community serves to foster collaboration between students on both a micro and macro scale and offer flexibility to teaching methods. Community and collaboration take place daily in the classroom wing, where each grade level has its own color identity, classrooms, and commons space. Opportunities for small group learning to multi-classroom activities exist right outside of the traditional classroom in the common breakout space. Each grade level neighborhood is accessible via a corridor off the central grand stair commons, where all core learning spaces extend from and return to. Adjacent to the grand stair commons are shared classroom spaces. A rooftop classroom terrace, with soil beds for planting, expands the learning environment both as a classroom space and by allowing the opportunity to use sustainable design techniques as a learning tool. Designed to be the heart of the school, the centrally-located, light-filled media center offers varying degrees of flexible collaboration spaces. Taking advantage of natural daylighting, the center merges the indoors and outdoors and expands the learning environment beyond the walls through an outdoor reading garden that showcases regional flora and a rain garden. The media center connects the classroom wing with the third collaborative element of the project, the gymnasium and cafeteria spaces. Separated by an operable partition, the individual gymnasium and cafeteria spaces can be combined to provide flexibility, accommodating the whole school for community-wide activities. To achieve the state-mandated LEED Silver certification, sustainable design strategies included recycled and recyclable building materials with long life-cycles; low-emitting building materials; bicycle racks to support alternative transportation; vegetative roof assembly; geothermal heating and cooling system; daylighting; LED lighting on occupancy sensors; and site generated solar power. As part of a PUD, the project's location and pre-developed stormwater management concept resulted in many LEED credits being unattainable, therefore requiring the project team to focus efforts on innovative ways to achieve as many credits as possible in other areas.