International Architecture Awards Tell a friend
ARCHIVE 2024
International Architecture Awards
Architects: Jonathan Levi Architects
Design Team: Jonathan Levi, Philip Gray, Mark Warner, and Elizabeth Bugbee
Landscape Architects: CBA Landscape Architects, LLC.
Contractor: Consigli Construction Co. Inc.
Client: Framingham Public Schools
Photographers: Robert Benson Photography
The new Fuller Middle School design builds on the District's Educational Program by embodying the District's stated commitment to a 21st century STEAM, student-centered approach to education, a commitment acted upon through advanced teaching and learning programs at the elementary school level. STEAM compatible educational environments were achieved by creating student-driven, problem-based, hands-on project space‚ at three different scales within the floor plan.
These spaces provide a high degree of visual and functional connectedness. In the new facility, The Folded Hands design offers a new three-story environment with a learning commons/cafeteria at the core surrounded by collaboration balconies fronting a perimeter of classrooms, an 8,300-square-foot gymnasium and 420-seat auditorium. Additionally, there is space for instructional areas for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics (STEAM).
Forwarding the broader community's goal of creating a new civic focus for South Framingham, the building is set back beyond a sloped outdoor amphitheater with a performance shell, serving as a gathering lawn for students and venue for town-wide events and performances. The building is oriented for energy efficiency and sustainability purposes and utilizes a compact footprint to conserve site space and create a sloped campus open space that unifies the District's three buildings into a cohesive educational grouping.
The site is organized with vehicles removed entirely from the public Flagg Drive. A bus drop-off lane with sufficient queuing space for 17 buses to be parked simultaneously is directly in front of the school and stretches to the west with a separate exit from the main parking area. The floor plan is characterized by two segmented arcs of classrooms facing one another across an open three-story Learning Common atrium. Classroom clusters can be flexibly arranged within the floors or by utilizing monumental stairs, aggregating floors of cohort classrooms.
At the center of each of these is a medium-sized collaboration space. These spaces are located on balconies overlooking the main Learning Common and relate visually to one another. Also located on balconies directly adjacent to the classrooms they serve are several multi-use breakout spaces, also highly visible to one another and the Learning Common. Each cluster also includes a pair of science Exploratories or classrooms at its center.
The school is entered at the second floor level through the administration suite, where one will arrive on a balcony overlooking the entire array of school educational programs. Stairs branch off from this location either upwards or downwards for ease of communication between floors. The eastern end of the Learning Common opens a three-story high glass wall to views of the landscape and for access to outdoor classroom spaces. At the west end is the community access lobby joining the Gymnasium and the Auditorium and offers access from the outdoors and from the Learning Common to the shared large event spaces.
