ROBBINS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Trenton, NJ: 2004

Robbins Elementary School was conceived by the client to be a “full-service community school”. The proposed design takes this literally, fusing academic life with that of the neighborhood. This is achieved by creating a jointly-used linear “playground” which encircles the school and off of which the building’s public facilities (media center, cafeteria, gymnasium, auditorium, instructional commons, etc.) are organized. Echoing the organization inscribed within the school itself, it ties into the public sidewalk at either end, weaving the larger flows of the community-at-large into the life of the school, and establishing a nexus of academic and recreational activities which promotes the notion of ‘student-as-citizen’ and ‘parent-as-teacher/mentor’. During school hours, it is the principal thoroughfare and site of student social life and activities, while after hours invites the neighborhood in to use it. The array of school facilities adjacent to it, meanwhile--which can also be rented out as community meeting rooms, broadcasting booths for the courts below, or daycare rooms for working members of the community—can be accessed without opening up the school as-a-whole. Finally, this outdoor street is covered by a ‘curricular canopy’ (actually the top floor of classrooms), which provides welcome shade from sun in the summer, and cover from rain all year round, yet is high enough (at 28’ tall) to allow for deep penetration of light and sun during the cold winter months.

From the standpoint of the school organization itself, the linear playground serves to re-orient the existing historic building away from its status as an hermetically-sealed object, towards being the center of an open network which is both supportive of additional academic / recreational activities, and able to adapt to various changes over time. Each tie into the school occurs at strategic locations allowing interior areas such as the basement gymnasium to be connected with the outdoors and, in particular, the public life of the community. This re-orientation generates new relations, or ecologies, which fuse ideas of academics with economics, recreation with infrastructure. This may be read in the way that the linear open space is “programmed” through the use of both ground materials and recreational infrastructures: these range from clay, wood, sand and grass to rubber or Astroturf, etc, while the infrastructures include tetherball poles, backboards/hoops, lunch tables, climbing ropes, jungle gyms, and others.

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