YONKERS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, YONKERS, NEW YORK

a. Design Approach: This creative and unique architectural solution to a special educational program turns inward on itself to create a micro-city and marketplace that articulate the needs of the educational program. Thus, the children have a landscape full of natural light and free from contact with the deteriorated neighborhood, which helps to make up for the lack of exterior play area.

This school was the only new elementary school in the United States implementing a "microsociety" school program. Beyond providing the customary spaces associated with a microsociety elementary school, the architects designed a unique area that abstracts the students' own physical, societal, and economic environments in the downtown area to create the "Freedom Square".

The "microsociety" spaces include a marketplace, government offices, manufacturing spaces, two banks, and media and publishing spaces. These spaces are used as the settings for the innovative educational program that incorporates traditional approaches with "real life" experiences. All of this promotes an incentive to learn.

b. Site Considerations: The new building, set on a small, urban 2.06 acre site was built to be a magnet school as part of the city's 1986 school desegregation plan.

The building's massing and exterior details were specifically designed to acknowledge the mixed use and varied scales of the buildings surrounding the site. Along the residential streets, the neighboring buildings are primarily two-story detached houses with peaked or gabled roofs; along the avenue they are multi-story. The scale, angled roof and detailing of the masonry and fenestration of the new building reflect the facing facades. It is the pride of the neighborhood.

c. Technical Information: The building is steel-frame construction with masonry cavity walls. A vocabulary of special shaped brick was used to provide the facades with recesses and reveals. Synthetic stucco is used for decorative elements on the upper facades. The building's central marketplace is typified by the use of split-faced block and brick to give the space the feel of a "main street". Natural light floods the space through an insulated 1,500 SF skylight.

The building's systems feature state-of-the-art energy conservation and environmental controls. The building is equipped with computer-controlled temperature and monitoring systems. Multi-zoned air conditioning units allow for varied occupancies, schedules, and exposures. Low-glare lighting is used exclusively to facilitate the extensive use of computers in the facility. All areas of the building are piped for computer and television networks.

d. Project Facts:

1) District: City of Yonkers
2) Occupancy: January 1992
3) Grade Level: Pre-K through 6
4) Capacity: 550
5) Site Size: 2.06 Acres
6) Area: 72,000
7) Cost: $10,500,000
8) Technology Provision: Building-wide

>> Return to List of Projects