April 1, 2021 – The Spring 2021 Education Facilities Design Awards Showcase edition of LEARNING BY DESIGN magazine has been published featuring many recently completed educational facility design and construction projects from early childhood, middle school, high school, specialized education and higher education college and university environments. In total forty-two projects were judged and scored based on six criteria of: Innovation; Sustainability; Interior Design; Next Generation Learning; Planning and Functional Design; Community Needs.
Nine well-designed spaces were bestowed top awards. These projects have been enumerated for their novel design thinking, strong facility site and floor planning, and for successfully achieving the community’s or stakeholders’ operational, functional, and programmatic goals. Three top education facility design projects were awarded Grand Prize Awards, two others were designated with Citation of Excellence Awards, and four were given Honorable Mention Awards.
A distinguished panel of four architects and education facility professionals reviewed, scored, and debated the merits of 42 submissions. They selected three Grand Prize Award-winning facilities that “are the most inspiring projects.” Each of the Grand Prize projects exhibited all the elements that make a learning environment successful—transparency, connectivity, safety, sustainability, great interiors, purposeful design, and sophistication.
The Three Grand Prize Awards were bestowed on the following firms and their projects to: RB+B Architects (Fort Collins, CO) for the New ECE at Maddox (Englewood, CO); HMFH Architects, Inc.(Cambridge, MA) for the Saugus Middle/High School (Saugus, MA); DLR Group (Washington, DC) for the Maury Elementary School (Washington, DC)
Some of the juror’s comments included:
New ECE at Maddox – “This early learning center rings a lot of bells. Appropriately scaled, playful without being kitsch or rote, the spaces serve early learners well by understanding their need to belong in an understandable cohort (the houses). Spaces accommodate the range of possible learning modalities and need for sensory input and processing. The building works exceptionally well for teachers and parents as well. Relationships between classroom space and both indoor and outdoor activity spaces are strong.”
Saugus Middle/High School – “This is a difficult design problem and they've executed it beautifully. The connections of the high school and the middle school are intentional and celebrated with light, graphics, and forms. The weaving of interior architecture, architecture, culture, scale, story is so delightfully constructed. There is thought and craft at every corner.”
Maury Elementary School – “This modernization effectively resolves several complex challenges simultaneously, blending old and new, aligning a historically significant facility with 21st century learning opportunities, and responsible resource stewardship. The historic classrooms are light filled and furnished to maximize flexibility for daily activities.”
Spring 2021: Two CITATION OF EXCELLENCE Awards
- NeoCity Academy (Kissimmee, FL) – Little Diversified Architectural Consulting, Inc. (Orland, FL)
- Sheldon Lake Elementary School (Houston, TX) - Stantec, (Houston, TX)
Spring 2021: Four HONORABLE MENTION Awards
- Lyndhurst Middle School (Lyndhurst, NJ) – Di Cara I Rubino Architects (Wayne, NJ)
- University of Colorado Denver (Denver, CO) – Architectural Workshop (Denver, CO)
- Camden-Rockport Middle School (Camden, ME) - Oak Point Associates (Biddeford, ME)
- James Reese Career and Technical Center (Sugar Land, TX) – Stantec (Houston, TX)
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TO REVIEW ALL 42 SPRING 2021 PROJECTS VISIT: WWW.LEARNINGBYDESIGNMAGAZINE.COM
