The Washington School for the Deaf (WSD) Divine Academic and Hunter Gymnasium project centers the Deaf experience. The project provides a full suite of academic, administrative and physical education programs for 150 students on a residential campus, where students live and learn. The voices of students, staff and community directed design development and ensured the school’s educational goals were achieved while honoring Deaf culture. Deaf-led workshops activated broad user engagement, informing a design that contributes to campus connectivity, transparency and a sense of belonging.
The new campus buildings embrace DeafSpace guidelines to amplify visual communication, including intentional acoustic vibrations to extend students’ sensory reach, low-glare glazing and glass corners. Highly tuned classrooms are paired around project-based learning labs and designed with 180-degree, U-shaped seating to maximize American Sign Language / English bilingual instructional practices and equip students for learning in conversation. Working in concert with this approach is a girder-less CLT system that preserves acoustic vibrations to extend the sensory reach of deaf individuals and minimizes floor-to-floor height, and an optimized grid within parameters for three-ply mass timber that reduces cost and embodied carbon (total embodied carbon emissions of 88.5 kgCO2e/m2).
The project has been warmly received as not only an inclusive reimagining of education for deaf and hard of hearing students in Washington state, but as an impactful example of the kind of accessible, inclusive education that can be provided for students nationally.