Boora Architects

The Canby School District has embraced recent research revealing that sustainable buildings are more supportive of learning and well-being than conventional buildings. Because of Boora's long history of leadership and innovation in sustainable design, the district hired Boora to design the Baker Prairie Middle School, which accommodates successful community use after school hours while serving as an effective educational environment during the school day. Today, the students, teachers, and staff who occupy the school spend their days in an environment vibrant with light, energy, creativity, and wellness. It has been certified LEED Gold.

All spaces within the building are organized along a single main corridor, which gives the building a “main street” plan. Boora exploited recent changes to the International Building Code to allow this corridor and those connecting to it to have greater openness and continuity than ever possible before. This corridor parallels the Southern Pacific railroad tracks that delineate the site's east edge. These tracks will be converted to linear parkland by the Rails to Trails Conservancy.

As one walks the length of this corridor, one passes through three pods of educational space. Each pod contains two stories of academic spaces on the east of the main corridor and one story of support space on the other side of the main corridor. Organizing the pods at an angle to the main corridor created triangular flexible spaces in which the team placed shared functions -- flexible learning labs, conference rooms and break-out spaces, and the outdoor courtyards that drive the building's natural ventilation system.

The courtyards naturally ventilate surrounding spaces and allow daylighting to penetrate to the first floor of the building. Additionally, as controlled outdoor rooms, the courtyards allow spaces such as the media center, which typically cannot be open to the outdoors for safety and control reasons, to access daylight and ventilation. The courtyards use automated mechanical louvers, present in the courtyards and elsewhere, to optimize natural ventilation without user interface. Located under the windows, the louvers contain an acoustical pad which controls noise, eliminating one of the primary challenges of natural ventilation.

Within the 2-story academic houses, movable walls between classrooms offer these spaces – and the teachers who design curriculum within them – a high degree of flexibility. A teacher planning room sits amid the classrooms, sized identically to a classroom so that the space can be repurposed as a regular classroom if the student population grows. For the time being, all classrooms are shared, and teachers conduct their prep work in the teacher planning rooms.

With large windows, daylight from above, fine craftsmanship, multilevel visibility, and dense circulation paths, the stairways in each pod are rich social spaces.

In addition to flexible classrooms supported by break-out spaces, shared spaces include a media center and a shop, both flooded with daylight and fresh outdoor air.