E.H. Greene Intermediate School
Client: Sycamore Community Schools
Location: Blue Ash, Ohio
- To support the school’s interdisciplinary team model, the design creates self-contained learning communities. Each offers classrooms for science, math, social studies, and language arts, and provides small group spaces, extended learning areas (ELAs), special education intervention space, and a shared teacher workroom.
- The classrooms within each pod are intentionally diverse in their interaction with the ELA and other classrooms to support a variety of teaching and learning approaches.
- Each team’s color is integrated within their pod, celebrating the school’s culture and offering a playful yet warm and calming palette.
- The daylit media center provides a central learning hub and supports STEM projects with an integrated makerspace.
- The new dining space with a presentation platform delivers a multifunctional space for student presentations and community events.
- The design incorporated the two existing gyms and transformed the existing student dining area into an inspiring music suite with music practice and performance spaces with the proper acoustics and storage for orchestra, band, and choir.
- Positioning the addition deep within the site greatly improves site circulation and safety, with plenty of room during drop-off and pickup.
Interesting Fact: Because four small neighborhood elementary schools feed into the intermediate, the design paid special attention to the creation of intimate learning communities, which eases the transition to a bigger school, and enables teachers to get to know their students and students to get to know their classmates!
Architecture|Interior Design|Engineering
A part of the $127.5M Sycamore building program, the substantial addition and complete renovation project replaces a 1960s-era school that restricted teachers’ and students’ ability to collaborate. Following the district’s overall theme of continuity, the new intermediate school now fits the curriculum and offers a bright, inviting environment focused on connection that will help students grow in this stage of their educational journey.