When design work began for Golestan School’s new campus at a vacant and opaque parochial school built in 1954, we had no idea of the pandemic that would come. It was clear that the original building was well-sited to improve the building’s access to the outdoors and could be adapted to increase passive daylighting & natural ventilation strategies for the classrooms along the double-loaded east/west clerestory corridor. From this, we added large sliding doors to new outdoor classrooms, replaced covered windows with insulated low-e glass, removed walls to widen the corridors onto a new teaching kitchen and admin wing, added all new low-VOC materials & coatings, and converted the playground to a natural & edible schoolyard - all in service of the school’s pedagogy for a biophilic and multi‐sensory learning environment.
The architectural transformation and the sense of community that it fostered also enabled the school to face COVID with extraordinary expediency and resilience. When Shelter-in-Place restrictions were lifted and health department protocols were released, it was clear that the school had been future-proofed for the pandemic: new circulation routes onto/off campus and in/out of classrooms accommodate physical distancing, new outdoor classrooms and well-ventilated interior environments promote stable cohorts, and increased hygiene awareness from the teaching kitchen to new touch-less plumbing fixtures enabled Golestan to become the first and only east bay elementary school in the area to receive a waiver for in- person learning in the fall.
While COVID has exposed everyone to the precarious dangers of our biological lives, the Golestan campus has proven itself a resilient refuge where the natural world, woven into its spaces and curriculum, make up the very fibers that kept this community intact.
When design work began for Golestan School’s new campus at a vacant and opaque parochial school built in 1954, we had no idea of the pandemic that would come. It was clear that the original building was well-sited to improve the building’s access to the outdoors and could be adapted to increase passive daylighting & natural ventilation strategies for the classrooms along the double-loaded east/west clerestory corridor. From this, we added large sliding doors to new outdoor classrooms, replaced covered windows with insulated low-e glass, removed walls to widen the corridors onto a new teaching kitchen and admin wing, added all new low-VOC materials & coatings, and converted the playground to a natural & edible schoolyard - all in service of the school’s pedagogy for a biophilic and multi‐sensory learning environment.
The architectural transformation and the sense of community that it fostered also enabled the school to face COVID with extraordinary expediency and resilience. When Shelter-in-Place restrictions were lifted and health department protocols were released, it was clear that the school had been future-proofed for the pandemic: new circulation routes onto/off campus and in/out of classrooms accommodate physical distancing, new outdoor classrooms and well-ventilated interior environments promote stable cohorts, and increased hygiene awareness from the teaching kitchen to new touch-less plumbing fixtures enabled Golestan to become the first and only east bay elementary school in the area to receive a waiver for in- person learning in the fall.
While COVID has exposed everyone to the precarious dangers of our biological lives, the Golestan campus has proven itself a resilient refuge where the natural world, woven into its spaces and curriculum, make up the very fibers that kept this community intact.