School & University Architecture
Learning environments shaped by their communities.
A school building brings together teaching requirements, daily movement, and the identity of its community. Its success depends on understanding how teachers prepare, how students encounter one another’s work, and how shared spaces can serve more than one purpose. Those questions become especially important when several programs must fit within a constrained site.
At the Shared Integrated Learning Center in Manitou Springs, CSNA brought art, drama, music, and computer science together between the middle and high schools. The School Board wanted a practical shared facility that also expressed the character of an artistic mountain community.
Teachers had walked between two schools. Dedicated classrooms gave them a place to keep instruments, materials, displays, and student work. Music classrooms could accommodate pianos, timpani, tubas, and xylophones. The building supported the daily work of teaching while allowing the learning environment to develop over time.
The exceptionally small site required part of the mountain to be removed, and the existing high school parking lot was already full. We incorporated covered parking within the building. That practical response also created a place for weekend dances and concerts, adding a social use to space needed for the school’s daily operation.
Art classrooms occupy the upper floor beside an outdoor deck where students can paint the mountain landscape. A glass-lined hallway looks toward the town and Pikes Peak. At the entrance, a five-sided glass hood shelters the stair from mountain winds. Movement through the stair animates the building, giving the community’s creative life a visible presence.
Experience in practice
Shared teaching needs and the identity of an artistic mountain community shaped a building for learning, gathering, and creative expression.
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Tell us about your students, teachers, programs, and site. Whether the need concerns shared teaching space or the renewal of an existing learning environment, the conversation begins with how your community learns.
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