LEARNING BY DESIGN magazine - Ehrman Crest Elementary and Middle School

Site Plan
Floor Plan
Floor Plan
Ehrman Crest is situated on in beautiful area of Cranberry Township, PA and uses it surrounding natural environment as a teaching tool.
A dynamic circular ramp is both a stunning architectural feature and a key asset for accessibility.
Ehrman Crest makes learning possible anywhere. Not just in classrooms but in corridors, group spaces, on the walls and more. It activates possibilities for students and allows them to curate incredible learning journeys.
The kindergarten room is designed with the same principles-peg walls, vibrancy, informative environmental graphics-but also makes special adjustments for the school's youngest learners. Note the floor level window offering these children views to the rest of the school.
The first floor atrium offers spaces for events and lunch time, while immersing students in beautiful architecture and graphics that empower them to learn even in these instances.
Impromptu spaces allow students to gather and analog peg walls include a pegboard-like series of dense, wooden strips with grids of holes that can hold anything with mass or weight - even 3D objects - in a flexible design.
Just like in a children's museum, students can explore and learn as they see fit, allowing them to find joy in the experience in and outside classroom settings.
Three different types of "walls" within the school empower students to curate their learning experience.
The building is itself a teaching tool. Here students sit amidst a sun dial that helps them tell time. There are numerous spaces throughout Ehrman Crest where architecture elevates learning.
Access to natural light exists from every nuance of the school - inside and out of classrooms.
Grades are grouped in neighborhoods allowing for individual and group learning to happen simultaneously.
Ehrman Crest has been recognized by TIME Magazine and AXIOS as a "school for the future."
Laura Peters/CannonDesign
Laura Peters/CannonDesign
Laura Peters/CannonDesign

Ehrman Crest is an an elementary and middle school that dares to explore what can happen when we design learning spaces more like children's museums. Our team partnered with the district and the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh to create an entirely new type of school. One that activates learning everywhere: in corridors, indoors, outdoors, in group learning spaces, along peg walls and via environmental graphics.

The breakthrough buildings empowers students to embark on an academic and physical journey through a series of porous environments—a room, collaboration space, work-in-progress area or the outdoors—to exercise choice in a truly unique way. The result is a captivating environment that transforms historically unused features of a school's built environment (corridors, walls, etc.) into education elements that promote out-of-classroom learning.

Students learn through individual instruction as well as group experiences. To accommodate both, each grade level is structured in communities that include classrooms, a collaborative area and small-group instruction rooms. This format caters to the academic and emotional needs of students by creating adjacent spaces for teachers and students to engage in one-on-one instruction and for students to work together in groups. By numerous media, Ehrman Crest has been billed a school of the future.

Ehrman Crest Elementary and Middle School

Description

Project Location:
Cranberry Township, PA

Architecture Firm
CannonDesign
Chicago, IL
www.CannonDesign.com

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Photography By:
Laura Peters/CannonDesign

Ehrman Crest Elementary and Middle School

Category

Description