A team of Southwest Washington high school students has earned first-place overall at the international SchoolsNEXT Design Competition, hosted by the Association for Learning Environments (A4LE), for their design of a future-focused agricultural high school in Ridgefield. Organized annually by A4LE, SchoolsNEXT challenges middle and high school students from around the world to design sustainable, resilient learning environments.

The team designed the Ridgefield Agricultural School (RAS), a project-based learning high school centered on agriculture and community resilience.

Located on a site in Ridgefield, the project draws inspiration from an adjacent creek and interprets the campus as a river ecosystem. Students studied the interconnected roles of water, soil and living organisms, translating these relationships into a campus where each building supports and informs student learning, the press release states.

The design includes biophilic strategies, trauma-informed and inclusive design principles, and sustainable systems tied to the local ecology, all within learning environments that function as a “third teacher,” where the built environment informs and enhances student learning.

The winning student team was mentored through Design CoMission, an outreach program led by LSW Architects, which provides hands-on design experience for local students interested in architecture and engineering, an LSW Architects press release states.

The student team includes seniors Bianca John of Union High School, Judah Lawson of Cornerstone Christian Academy, Paisley Pederson of Skyview High School/Cascadia Tech Academy and junior Karina Onofrey of Hockinson High School.

According to LSW Architects, the students completed full site selection, community research and design development before advancing through regional judging to the international stage.

At the final level of competition, the project was awarded first place overall in the high school category, recognizing excellence in design innovation, sustainability and educational impact.

As part of the award, the team has been invited to present its project at LearningSCAPES, A4LE’s national conference in Seattle, where they will share their work with educators, architects and industry leaders from across the country. The conference will be held Nov. 4-7.

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Following World War II, many schools in the U.S. were designed like other buildings intended to hold large numbers of people.

“A lot of schools were built on prison floor plans,” said Whitney Hennion, a Vancouver Public Schools project manager and a former professional architect. “It was like they just took the prison floor plan and said, ‘Oh, we’ll make this a classroom.’ You can see it in all the hallways; it’s either a radial plan or a central corridor. It’s kind of depressing.”

Fortunately for educators and students in Vancouver, Washington, postwar schools are beginning to be replaced with money from a $458 million bond measure approved by voters in 2017. One is Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary, at 4801 Idaho St. LSW Architects designed a 68,000-square-foot facility that is being built by general contractor Robinson Construction on the same property where the previous structure was demolished.

The main entrance will face the intersection of Idaho Street and Boise Avenue, and the building will be served by two parking lots. Separate drop-off and pickup areas for buses and visitors are expected to improve traffic on adjacent streets.

Unlike a hub-and-spoke or central corridor floor plan of a postwar school, the new two-story King Elementary will have an ‘L’ shape. One wing will hold 26 classrooms, mostly partitioned. The other wing will hold a gymnasium, common areas, administrative offices and community-oriented spaces.

“We’re definitely not a prototype here,” Hennion said. “We want each school to really reflect the community that it’s from. I’m a trained architect and worked in that field for 10 years, so to come over to the owner side and see that expectation or philosophy is really nice, because depending on what district you work for it’s all over the map.”

Along with classrooms and administrative offices, the new building will feature a variety of adaptable spaces that would likely never have been considered when the original building was constructed in 1971. Prominent among them are the commons, which doubles as the cafeteria and also has a low-rise stage for presentations. This space will be able to host many different kinds of events, which fits with design choices for a residential feel rather than an institutional one, both inside and out.

Exterior materials include brick masonry and fiber cement panels. On the inside, vaulted ceilings are intended to let in more daylight, with a two-story gallery space adjacent to the entrance featuring large, spherical LED fixtures able to change color to suit a theme or event.

“It’s going to be a huge shock for (staffers and students) to have so much natural light,” Hennion said.

The old school was basically built around a central library, forcing students to pass through the space to reach classrooms and other areas. The new school’s media center will indeed be prominent, with floor-to-ceiling glass; however, instead of being an obstacle, it will serve a distinct purpose and be comfortably accessible.

“We still wanted the library to be a central focus,” Hennion said. “And (the school) has quite a few events as far as the community coming in, and they do a lot of food-centric family activities, so really the push for this was really to make this a community school and very welcoming to the community.”

Construction is expected to finish this summer, in time for the start of the 2020-21 school year.

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While most construction projects in Washington have been shut down temporarily during the COVID-19 pandemic, some public ones haven’t missed a beat. In Vancouver, crews are building multiple facilities for Vancouver Public Schools via money from a $458 million capital bond approved by voters in 2017.

One of the most unique projects is a roughly $10 million one to provide a new home for Fir Grove/Vista School, which serves approximately 70 of the district’s most vulnerable students.

The existing Fir Grove/Vista building at 2920 Falk Road is 65 years old. It wasn’t designed to host special education programs and persons with disabilities. But the new facility will have separate elementary, middle and high school classroom wings around an outdoor courtyard. A small gymnasium will round out the building, along with a common area, individual and group rooms and a maker space.

“It’s a little bit more durable and a little less flexible,” explained Charles Stiller, a project manager with Vancouver Public Schools. “New age school design has a lot more windows, a lot more glazing and a lot of operable walls or ways to flex spaces. This is very much just four-walled classrooms.”

The new school is being built on district-owned property that formerly held the John R. Rogers Elementary School. That building was demolished first, Stiller said.

Tapani Inc. is the general contractor for the project, which was designed by LSW Architects – a longtime partner of Vancouver Public Schools.

A ceremonial ground-breaking event took place in February. Crews have now wrapped up work on the building’s foundation. Ironworkers with Timberland Inc. recently began erecting the structural steel framework.

The new building will primarily feature brick masonry with metal panels for accent.

“We’re hoping to open after winter break next year, in January 2021,” Stiller said. “We’re supposed to be finished in December and take a couple of weeks to take care of any punch list stuff and get the move-in process completed.”

The one wild card, of course, is the pandemic.

“Even at this point even a two-week delay would move us back to Spring Break at the earliest and a month would probably push us all the way into the next (school) year,” Stiller said.

In part that’s because of the unique student population.

“It doesn’t mean construction would have had to take that whole time,” he said. “But this kind of student population you don’t move over a weekend. These kids, the teachers – they need time to figure out how they’re going to use the new space.”

For now, work is proceeding, Tapani superintendent Michael Walters said.

“In two months the structure will be up, the roof will be on, we’ll be roughed in and the slabs should be poured inside,” he said. “Then we’ll be starting to frame the walls.”

So far, the project has proceeded relatively smoothly, Stiller said.

“We got really lucky with where we’re at in the process, with site work and concrete,” he said. “We’ve had some plumbers as well, but small crews. If we were two months away from opening, we’d definitely have some issues.”

Walters agreed.

“Oh, definitely,” he said. “If we had an enclosed building it would definitely limit the amount of bodies I’d let on the site and what areas you can work in.”

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A 7-year-old magnet school in Vancouver, Washington, is finally united.

Previously, Vancouver iTech Preparatory served students in grades 6-8 in one location and students in grades 9-12 in another. But recently operations were consolidated in a new 80,000-square-foot building at 16100 N.E. 50th Ave. Vancouver Public Schools has seen demand for entry in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) school increase, so it prioritized creation of a new building via money from a $458 million bond approved by voters in 2017.

“It’s one of the district’s schools of choice,” said Jack Claros, facilities planner for Vancouver Public Schools. “They didn’t really have a school of their own. The middle school portion was housed at the main district office and then the high school used to be up here at the Clark College building on (Washington State University’s) campus. So this school was built to create an actual school for those students.”

LSW Architects designed the three-story building, which features a slab-on-deck foundation, a structural steel framework, and cross-laminated timber floor panels and ceiling panels. General contractor Robinson Construction began work in September 2018, and substantial completion was achieved in just over 14 months.

This is the third school project for Vancouver Public Schools with cross-laminated timber panels.

“Part of it is the ‘biophilic’ element of wood,” Claros said. “It’s about warming up the space and bringing nature indoors. It just made sense, at least strategically. We placed the panels in areas where it would be visible and kept it exposed.”

The heart of the building is a learning stair that serves as an assembly and event space, an extension of the adjacent cafeteria, and an informal gathering and learning space. A huge flat-screen display faces the learning stair from a second-level balcony with the exposed framing that was included for seismic resilience.

The individual laboratory spaces are many and varied. The new building has science and fabrication labs, a media center, break-out and collaboration spaces, a robotics lab, an art studio and more – all visible through generous glazing.

Finally, exterior materials are dominated by brick masonry and a smattering of metal panels given a wood-like finish.

“I think this building contextually achieves multiple things,” Claros said. “It resides on WSU’s campus, we worked with them as a stakeholder, and the architecture resonates contextually with the campus while maintaining its own integrity through the use of materials.”

Vancouver iTech Preparatory

Owner: Vancouver Public Schools

General contractor: Robinson Construction

Architect: LSW Architects

Planner: BergerABAM

Civil engineer: Harper Houf Peterson Righellis Inc.

Mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineer: PAE

Structural engineer: KGA Structural Engineers

Landscape architect: PLACE

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Multiple school construction projects are under way in Vancouver, Washington, for Evergreen Public Schools. The district last year gained voters’ approval for a $695 million bond, and money is being put to work.

One of the projects under way is a replacement for Image Elementary School. General contractor Emerick Construction is building the school on a parcel of former farmland near the intersection of Northeast 131st Avenue and 52nd Street.

“It’s a really significantly different site,” Evergreen Public Schools spokeswoman Gail Spolar said. “It doesn’t have a school on it, but (crews) have had some interesting things to take care of (on the site) before they started constructing the new school.”

LSW Architects‘ design for the two-story, approximately 62,000-square-foot facility calls for use of mass-timber structural elements, including glulam beams and columns. Laminated veneer lumber will be used extensively in the framing.

An open interior design will allow for tall ceilings, large learning stairs and a media center. The gymnasium and family resource center will be isolated from the rest of the school to allow for public use.

Excavation and site work began in June.

“It’s a little challenging because we have the wetland that’s all part of it,” Emerick Construction project manager Alicia LaManna said. “So, the soil makeup underneath the site is quite interesting in how it’s been filled in over the decades of being a farmland. We had quite a lot of excavation that we had to do before we could even start the foundations.”

In addition to excavation, however, plenty of fill was required to level off the site before construction could take place. Fortunately, there was a ready supply available from excavation taking place for a new elementary school (not yet named) being built on Northeast 162nd Avenue between 39th and 43rd streets.

“The export from 22 – it was quality material,” said Dan Bodell, a project manager with R&C Management Group. “We also ended up taking dirt from underneath the building here and we were able to use it elsewhere on this site, and we went ahead and rearranged all of that. And then we brought this other material in to bring the whole site up.”

As a result, much of the site has been raised. Also, extensive groundwater required construction of a massive stormwater retention chamber on the east side of the site. Multiple temporary wells were used to pump out groundwater during excavation for the slab-on-grade foundation.

“Everything has been brought up four or five feet so that we weren’t down in the wet,” Bodell said. “And that goes back to all the engineering that goes into handling the rainwater – making sure we’re not flooding (adjacent residences) when the rains come because all of a sudden you have a hard surface here.”

After the new Image Elementary School opens (fall 2020 is the target date), the existing one – near the intersection of Northeast 122nd Avenue and 44th Street – will serve as a temporary facility on a rotating basis for other schools being replaced by new ones on their current properties.

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Evergreen Public Schools in Vancouver, Washington, is putting to work $695 million of bond money approved by voters in February 2018. Dozens of school buildings are being renovated or replaced; one of the first is Sifton Elementary School, in Northeast Vancouver.

General contractor Pence Construction is tackling the $38 million project to replace an existing school built in 1958. The new, two-story, 62,000-square-foot Sifton Elementary will be the first of multiple new schools produced from a prototype design by LSW Architects.

Construction crews broke ground in April. These days, large glulam structural members are being erected for the gymnasium and auditorium, and exterior and interior walls are being framed. Soon, other tradespeople will arrive on site to begin rough-in work, but right now framers are working to get the building roofed and dried in before weather becomes harsher.

Wood framing is being used for the new school.

“It was a judgment call that we made early on in the design process,” R&C Management Group senior project manager Dan Bodell said. “Two years ago, construction costs were going nuts. Now, it’s not the same month-to-month creep that was going on; it’s a little more like a three-percent-a-year kind of cost creep. But we had to think: What can we do in the bones of the building to save money? And that’s why we went to wood framing.”

Crews with Salem-based DSL Builders are framing interior walls away from the main building and using a crane to fly them into place.

“Everybody will do some level of pre-fabbing,” Bodell said. “But here it’s all being done on site. At PS 22 they’re framing them in place and standing them up – not building them 100 feet away and swinging them into place. It’s just about different styles.”

“PS 22” is a new school, not yet named, being built by general contractor Triplett Wellman Contractors on Northeast 162nd Avenue. Meanwhile, a replacement for the existing Image Elementary School is being built by Emerick Construction on Northeast 131st Avenue. All three project teams are expected to finish their work by summer 2020, in time for the facilities to open for the 2020-21 school year.

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On the north side of the Columbia River, more than two years after voters approved a $458 million bond measure for Vancouver Public Schools, construction is taking place at 28 school sites. Workers are remodeling, expanding, replacing or upgrading existing facilities, and building new ones.

At one site, two replacement schools are being built under one new roof, on property between their existing buildings on MacArthur Boulevard. McLoughlin Middle School and Marshall Elementary School will operate on a single 203,000-square-foot campus.

LSW Architects designed the project, and Skanska USA Building is serving as the construction manager/general contractor. Kramer Gehlen & Associates is performing structural engineering, and PAE Consulting Engineers is handling mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering.

Ground was broken in June 2018, and work is scheduled to finish in March 2020. It’s one of the first public school projects to feature mass-timber structural components.

“We’ve got two main types of construction,” Skanska superintendent Krys Lukesh said. “One of them is wood framing in the classroom wings, while the main core buildings will have tilt panels. They all utilize glulam columns to support the (cross-laminated timber) and then they will all have CLT decks and roofs on them, so it’s a couple of different methods.”

The new building will replace a pair of aging schools previously improved in 1992. Designers engaged staff, students, parents and community members in a process that produced plans for a two-story structure with a great deal of daylighting as well as modern, secure access both from the outside and between the two schools.

The massing is dominated by five large structures connected by second-story sky-bridges. On the west end of the 1,000-foot-long site a pair of two-story classroom wings will serve the middle school. Two more classroom wings on the east end will serve the elementary school.

Some of the space, including a kitchen and “family-community resource center,” will be shared. Another such space will be a huge media center able to become two smaller ones via a partition.

A new gymnasium is included in the project, but it will be built on the site of the existing middle school after it’s eventually demolished. The old elementary school will be remodeled to accommodate programs now located at other schools.

“It’s all one building,” Skanska project manager Brian Hover said. “Right now, with phase one, the schools minus the gym will be done. And once they’re moved in we’ll take this school (McLoughlin) down.”

The new building is dominated by wood, both structurally and aesthetically. Many of the CLT panels manufactured by British Columbia firm Structurlam will be left exposed, particularly in the shared spaces and the sky-bridges.

“It gives a Northwest look with the wood,” Hover said. “And the CLT decks are structural, so instead of doing steel we’re doing CLT, and that becomes the structural surface between floors and the roof as well. You get bigger spans with it, and it installs fast.”

The project’s CLT panels range in size from five-ply to nine-ply – from 6.5 inches to 12 inches thick.

Skanska project manager Scott Mettler and Lukesh both noted that mass-timber projects of this type require substantial collaboration with designers because the prefabrication makes on-site adjustments more challenging.

“I just think that in general with wood construction you have to do that in order to make the MEP penetrations,” Mettler said. “That’s one thing we had to do ahead of time, and it’s a different sequence than usual. With the MEP routing in a steel building, sometimes you would come up with your MEP design and you have all these penetrations and then you have supplemental steel design package.”

It just means a more complete design is needed earlier in the process, Lukesh added.

“That’s probably the biggest challenge of using it, because there are a lot of benefits to using it,” he said.

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The path to construction of a new Sifton Elementary School in Vancouver, Washington, actually started with a massive fire.

That 2013 blaze may have destroyed Crestline Elementary School, but the process to replace the building led Evergreen Public Schools officials to select a prototype by LSW Architects. The new school opened barely 18 months later and featured a design that could be used in the future.

Fast-forward to 2018, when voters approved a $695 million capital bond measure – a sizable amount of it for six new elementary schools. Naturally, officials referred to the Crestline project when beginning the new ones, including Sifton.

“It was great because we already had the prototypical design,” said Gail Spolar, communications director for the school district.

Pence Construction is serving as the construction manager and general contractor for the Sifton project, which was designed by LSW Architects. Also, R&C Management Group is handling project management duties.

The original Sifton Elementary School, at 7301 N.E. 137th Ave., was built in 1958 as a single-story structure largely with a slab-on-grade foundation and concrete masonry unit (CMU) walls. The replacement structure, with a different footprint on the same property, will feature wood framing over a slab-on-grade foundation. Exposed glulam beams will be used for both practical and aesthetic reasons.

“There are not a lot of exotics in the design itself,” R&C Management Group project manager Dan Bodell said. “There are some design concepts that are more about the teaching methods, but as far as the structure itself we have a one-story gym with administrative on the front and then a two-story classroom wing and the nice views of (Mount Hood).”

Although the Crestline design was the basis for the new Sifton facility, improvements have been made, according to Sue Steinbrenner, Evergreen Public Schools’ director of facilities.

“Our other prototype really had the media (center) self-contained within its own room,” she said. “So we put the libraries here front and center so you have to walk through it, which is ironically how a lot of our buildings from the 1970s are.

“It’s about being sensitive to noise issues and having spaces for the students to break out and choose how to interact,” she added. “The other big difference is splitting the commons from the gym so we can use the gym for after-hours activities and close down the academic wing and make it more about the community partnership.”

The new Sifton school will have a capacity of 550 students. A single-story wing will hold the gymnasium and administrative space, along with the media center and commons. A learning stair in the commons area will serve as the bridge to the two-story classroom wing. Outside, a playground area and a soccer field will be built.

The district’s bond program calls for construction to take place through 2025. Currently, three new elementary schools are being built: replacements for Sifton and Image, and a completely new one not yet named.

One advantage of using the same design prototype on those projects, Bodell said, is that representatives of the three general contractors involved – Pence Construction, Emerick Construction and Triplett Wellman Contractors – are meeting regularly to discuss progress and go over any possible hiccups.

“Sifton is a month ahead of the other two and these guys have the most learning curve,” Bodell said. “But they can pass that information on to others. We’re pretty happy – from the R&C standpoint, there’s been great support from the district.”

All three schools under construction are scheduled for delivery in time for the start of the 2020-21 school year.

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School construction is surging on both sides of the Columbia River, and one of the latest projects is the new Sifton Elementary School in Vancouver, Washington.

Pence Construction is seeking sub-bids for a range of work involved with construction of a replacement school designed by LSW Architects. A new design template was created especially for Evergreen School District, which has several projects on tap.

Sifton, built in the late 1950s, is one of the district’s oldest schools. The new one will be built on the same property as the existing one. It will remain in use during construction and then be demolished once the new school is completed.

The new facility will increase capacity and eliminate dependence on existing portable classrooms. The construction team will build new classrooms and administrative offices, a kitchen, a gymnasium, sports fields, a playground, parking areas, and separate drop-off areas for buses and passenger vehicles.

Bid package No. 1 consists of demolition, abatement, surveying, earthwork, utilities and structural concrete. The deadline to submit bids is 2 p.m. on April 16.

MacKay Sposito is leading the land use approval process and handling civil engineering design for the project, which has an estimated budget of $38 million.

Questions about the project may be directed to Pence project manager Ruchi Yadav at ruchiy@pence.net or 503-252-3802.

To find information on this project, or others like it, join the 91��Ƶ Project Center. It’s a searchable and trackable database of thousands of construction projects in the Pacific Northwest. Discover projects ranging from civil transportation work to private multifamily housing, and gain access to all the contact information and project documents you will need to bid on the project. Sign up for a free trial today by contacting Sharlene Richard at 503-802-7252 or SRichard@djcOregon.com.

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Southwest Washington is abuzz with school construction.

Vancouver Public Schools, for instance, has under way multiple projects being for with money from a $458 million bond measure passed by voters in 2017.

On the Washington State University-Vancouver campus, crews are building new space for iTech Preparatory – a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math)-focused magnet school that serves students throughout the district. The school, which opened in 2012, has students in grades 6 through 12; middle school pupils currently attend classes in district administration offices while high school students occupy a leased building on the WSU campus.

“We’ve never had a facility where we could house all the grades at one location,” said Todd Horenstein, an assistant superintendent and director of facility support services for Vancouver Public Schools.

The new building will have approximately 80,000 square feet of space over three stories and be able to serve up to 700 students. LSW Architects of Vancouver designed the facility, which is being built by Hillsboro general contractor Robinson Construction.

The project’s budget is around $30 million, Horenstein said. The building is being constructed to Washington Sustainable Schools Protocol, an energy efficiency process with standards roughly akin to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design silver, he added.

Currently, site work is under way at one end of the iTech Preparatory site. Meanwhile, ironworkers and carpenters are building formwork and installing rebar in preparation for concrete slab foundation and footer pours.

On Northeast 28th Street in Vancouver, ground was broken this past summer on a replacement for Peter S. Ogden Elementary School. LSW Architects and Robinson Construction are handling this project as well.

The two-story building will be wood-framed over slab-on-grade foundations. It will be able to accommodate as many as about 500 students.

Foundation work already is complete. Currently, first-floor walls, both on the interior and exterior, are being built and placed by crews from DSL Framing.

Meanwhile, on MacArthur Boulevard, two schools are being built anew. Marshall Elementary School and McLoughlin Middle School will be constructed as a single two-story structure on open land between existing facilities.

The two schools will be physically connected by a shared kitchen and mechanical space, as well as a media center able to be partitioned. However, each school will function separately, Horenstein said.

LSW Architects designed this project too, but Skanska USA Building is the general contractor for this project. Currently, crews from Tapani Underground, Skanska and Prairie Electric are carrying out site work, underground utility installation and form work for upcoming foundation concrete pours.

Instead of standard steel or wood framing, however, cross-laminated timber structural elements will be used atop a concrete foundation. This will be one of the first educational buildings in the Portland-metro area to feature such construction.

Evergreen Public Schools, another school district in Vancouver, also has projects on tap. Voters in February approved a $695 million bond measure. Numerous construction projects totaling more than $800 million will be completed by 2024, according to the district’s website.

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