Community Partnerships

An excellent school facility not only performs educational functions well, but goes beyond.   A school should express the distinct values and traditions of the community it serves. It has its own stimulating presence in the landscape of its site and neighborhood. It gives pleasure by its forms and proportions, its materials, textures, and colors, and its sequence of spaces.

Thus, a key ingredient to the success of our collaborative approach to architecture is community involvement. Collaboration between the public and our team is not only invigorating but it allows what we envision as a great building to become a landmark for the community, which in turn instills pride among its users.

Historic Preservation

Historic schools are woven even more firmly into a community’s fabric, and restoring these schools can often have a restorative effect on community pride. We believe in a balanced approach to the preservation and restoration of historical architecture. We strive to celebrate and preserve the historically significant architectural character of the building, while at the same time renovating and expanding the facility to meet programmatic and educational needs for the 21st century.

We have been involved in historic renovations since the 1970s and have since undertaken the successful restoration of a number of much loved elementary, middle and high schools, including Greenwood Elementary School, a multiple award-winning project for which we restored the main building and built architecturally compatible additions.

Other historic preservation projects have included:

• Garfield High School
• Fern Hill Elementary School
• Meeker Elementary School
• John Jacob Astor Elementary School
• Robert Gray Elementary School
• Bryant Elementary School
• Maplewood Elementary School
• Friday Harbor Middle School
• Puyallup High School

Community Use

Schools are no longer isolated places of learning. School facilities are often used as community gathering places. And with increasingly tight budgets, schools have become a public resource like never before. BLRB works to ensure that community needs become part of a design. Examples of this in our work include:

• The renovation of Puyallup High School’s 800-seat theatre, a community jewel.
• Creation of a community icon, the new Mount Tahoma High School. Used virtually seven days a week, 365 days a year, Mt. Tahoma blurs the distinction between school and community. The facility is not only a quality place of learning for South Tacoma’s youth but also a public park, community recreation center and adult education facility.
• The deliberate design of South Seattle’s Brighton Elementary School as two independent facilities—a “community center” and a “learning center.” The community center includes a child-care facility, indoor and outdoor recreational facilities and community meeting spaces.
• The redesign of Seattle’s historic Garfield High School. The project expands community partnerships by incorporating such facilities as Teen Recreation and Health Centers, a Garfield Foundation office, and community volunteer work and meeting spaces.

Read more about our unique community outreach process.