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1950s-era blind, deaf schools prep for $43M facelift - Business First of Columbus:
Good lighting and acoustics play a crucial role in any classroom. They take on even more importance at schools for the blind and the deaf.
Bright, glaring backgrounds or bold color patterns can interfere with a deaf student trying to read sign language, for instance. The student in the next seat might have a cochlear implant, which means good acoustics are crucial, too. Likewise, classrooms for the blind need good lighting and visual cues for those students with partial or blurred vision.
SHP Leading Design in Columbus tackled these challenges and more as it drew up plans for new buildings for both the Ohio State School for the Blind and the Ohio School for the Deaf.
The schools are neighbors, built in the 1950s on a former golf course. Access for the school for the blind is off North High Street, while the school for the deaf fronts on Morse Road.
The $43 million construction project calls for new academic centers and individual dormitory cottages for each campus. The remaining buildings will stay untouched, including those now used for programs such as therapies and training, screening children and individual education plans. Bovis Lend Lease will serve as the construction manager.
Robert Grinch, senior project administrator at the Ohio School Facilities Commission, said if all goes as planned, construction will start in the spring, and the schools will move into the new buildings during the summer of 2011.
“We hope this fall we can actually bid a site package that would include earthwork, underground utilities, building pads and preparation,” Grinch said.
Both schools have students from kindergarten through high school, and sometimes a little beyond. Both will continue to have all grades under one roof, but they’ll occupy their own zones within the buildings.
The commission has its own manual for school design, but quickly realized that this tandem project involved special challenges.
“I’m very much involved in the process,” said Edward Corbett Jr., superintendent of the Ohio School for the Deaf. He’s been attending meetings every couple of weeks to keep tabs on the details such as flooring and wall coverings, and their impact on the students.
Details, details
In the design process, SHP tapped the specialized knowledge of consultants from Colorado and North Carolina. The firm also spent a lot of time observing how the students interact with one another and their surroundings.
In the deaf school, for example, students often walk three or four abreast and sign to one another, said Andrew Maletz, vice president of SHP. The new school was designed to encourage such clustering in some places with 12-foot-wide hallways, and discourage it in other areas by narrowing the hallways to eight feet.
“There are so many little details like that that have to be taken in consideration,” Maletz said.
The firm tapped Joshua Predovich as project manager for the construction.
Sound and light naturally were primary concerns. For blind students, and for students with cochlear implants, high-pitched sounds can be a great distraction. Sources can include air rushing through duct work and the buzz of fluorescent lights. SHP cut down on the former by minimizing the number of bends in the ducts, and the latter by using a special ballast that can be mounted in the hallways, away from the light fixtures in the classrooms.
In a hallway, the clicking of heels on a hard floor can be heard by some students and felt by others. Resilient floors should eliminate that distraction.
In the deaf school, students will be seated facing away from windows and the visual distractions they can introduce. Strobe lights will signal fire alarms and another special light will signal a building lockdown, Grinch said.
In the school for the blind, floor patterns will help students with poor vision navigate.
“If we can create a high-contrast boundary where the floor meets the wall, it will give some visual cue of where the hallways end and the walls begin,” Maletz said.
A school hallway can be an obstacle course to blind students if classroom doors suddenly open outward. SHP’s answer was to put most of the doorways in alcove-like recesses so that they won’t stick out into the hallway when opened. But the doors to maintenance rooms and other areas not accessible to students will be flush with the walls. The notion is that the doors will be used by people who can check the hallways first. Students also will be better able to tell where they should and shouldn’t go based on the type of doorway.
Blending old and new
Extra storage space was a must at the school for the blind. “The typical Braille book can be 10 to 12 times the size of a normal textbook,” Maletz said.
Some traditional features will be retained. At the school for the blind, SHP is updating a bell tower and water fountain at the entrance to give visitors an audible signal that they have arrived.
Both schools will get energy-efficient buildings, with a plan to achieve gold certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program of the U.S. Green Building Council. The school for the deaf will get a one-story academic building in keeping with the surrounding architecture. The school for the blind will get a two-story structure.
Integrating old and new construction always is a challenge for an architect.
The existing deaf campus is low lying, the masonry buildings set at a variety of angles among large trees. SHP is continuing with masonry construction and a similar palette of colors.
The challenge was to get the right orientation for solar panels and to get indirect lighting into the classrooms. The aim was for no windows facing directly east or west, for example.
The buildings on the campus for the blind are laid out more at right angles, which SHP likewise is continuing. The dorms will be on either side of a street that’s closed to traffic. The idea is to help students be aware of the relationships from house to sidewalk to road.
Also part of the design is a bridge that would span the ravine on the property and tie the two campuses together.
“We are exploring a possible connection between the two that would allow for ease of maintenance, and for students and staff to pass between the two campuses,” Grinch said. “The methods that are used for the students are different for the different populations, so there are limited opportunities for the students to intermingle. But we do want to promote efficiencies with the operations of the facilities.”
That could include maintenance and food service.
One-fourth of the old buildings will come down on each campus, with the rest finding new purposes. For now, there’s no money for demolition, so the old buildings will be mothballed, Corbett said.
Good lighting and acoustics play a crucial role in any classroom. They take on even more importance at schools for the blind and the deaf.
Bright, glaring backgrounds or bold color patterns can interfere with a deaf student trying to read sign language, for instance. The student in the next seat might have a cochlear implant, which means good acoustics are crucial, too. Likewise, classrooms for the blind need good lighting and visual cues for those students with partial or blurred vision.
SHP Leading Design in Columbus tackled these challenges and more as it drew up plans for new buildings for both the Ohio State School for the Blind and the Ohio School for the Deaf.
The schools are neighbors, built in the 1950s on a former golf course. Access for the school for the blind is off North High Street, while the school for the deaf fronts on Morse Road.
The $43 million construction project calls for new academic centers and individual dormitory cottages for each campus. The remaining buildings will stay untouched, including those now used for programs such as therapies and training, screening children and individual education plans. Bovis Lend Lease will serve as the construction manager.
Robert Grinch, senior project administrator at the Ohio School Facilities Commission, said if all goes as planned, construction will start in the spring, and the schools will move into the new buildings during the summer of 2011.
“We hope this fall we can actually bid a site package that would include earthwork, underground utilities, building pads and preparation,” Grinch said.
Both schools have students from kindergarten through high school, and sometimes a little beyond. Both will continue to have all grades under one roof, but they’ll occupy their own zones within the buildings.
The commission has its own manual for school design, but quickly realized that this tandem project involved special challenges.
“I’m very much involved in the process,” said Edward Corbett Jr., superintendent of the Ohio School for the Deaf. He’s been attending meetings every couple of weeks to keep tabs on the details such as flooring and wall coverings, and their impact on the students.
Details, details
In the design process, SHP tapped the specialized knowledge of consultants from Colorado and North Carolina. The firm also spent a lot of time observing how the students interact with one another and their surroundings.
In the deaf school, for example, students often walk three or four abreast and sign to one another, said Andrew Maletz, vice president of SHP. The new school was designed to encourage such clustering in some places with 12-foot-wide hallways, and discourage it in other areas by narrowing the hallways to eight feet.
“There are so many little details like that that have to be taken in consideration,” Maletz said.
The firm tapped Joshua Predovich as project manager for the construction.
Sound and light naturally were primary concerns. For blind students, and for students with cochlear implants, high-pitched sounds can be a great distraction. Sources can include air rushing through duct work and the buzz of fluorescent lights. SHP cut down on the former by minimizing the number of bends in the ducts, and the latter by using a special ballast that can be mounted in the hallways, away from the light fixtures in the classrooms.
In a hallway, the clicking of heels on a hard floor can be heard by some students and felt by others. Resilient floors should eliminate that distraction.
In the deaf school, students will be seated facing away from windows and the visual distractions they can introduce. Strobe lights will signal fire alarms and another special light will signal a building lockdown, Grinch said.
In the school for the blind, floor patterns will help students with poor vision navigate.
“If we can create a high-contrast boundary where the floor meets the wall, it will give some visual cue of where the hallways end and the walls begin,” Maletz said.
A school hallway can be an obstacle course to blind students if classroom doors suddenly open outward. SHP’s answer was to put most of the doorways in alcove-like recesses so that they won’t stick out into the hallway when opened. But the doors to maintenance rooms and other areas not accessible to students will be flush with the walls. The notion is that the doors will be used by people who can check the hallways first. Students also will be better able to tell where they should and shouldn’t go based on the type of doorway.
Blending old and new
Extra storage space was a must at the school for the blind. “The typical Braille book can be 10 to 12 times the size of a normal textbook,” Maletz said.
Some traditional features will be retained. At the school for the blind, SHP is updating a bell tower and water fountain at the entrance to give visitors an audible signal that they have arrived.
Both schools will get energy-efficient buildings, with a plan to achieve gold certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program of the U.S. Green Building Council. The school for the deaf will get a one-story academic building in keeping with the surrounding architecture. The school for the blind will get a two-story structure.
Integrating old and new construction always is a challenge for an architect.
The existing deaf campus is low lying, the masonry buildings set at a variety of angles among large trees. SHP is continuing with masonry construction and a similar palette of colors.
The challenge was to get the right orientation for solar panels and to get indirect lighting into the classrooms. The aim was for no windows facing directly east or west, for example.
The buildings on the campus for the blind are laid out more at right angles, which SHP likewise is continuing. The dorms will be on either side of a street that’s closed to traffic. The idea is to help students be aware of the relationships from house to sidewalk to road.
Also part of the design is a bridge that would span the ravine on the property and tie the two campuses together.
“We are exploring a possible connection between the two that would allow for ease of maintenance, and for students and staff to pass between the two campuses,” Grinch said. “The methods that are used for the students are different for the different populations, so there are limited opportunities for the students to intermingle. But we do want to promote efficiencies with the operations of the facilities.”
That could include maintenance and food service.
One-fourth of the old buildings will come down on each campus, with the rest finding new purposes. For now, there’s no money for demolition, so the old buildings will be mothballed, Corbett said.