However, on the whole, the design has proved a resounding success, earning high marks from students and faculty. Such a separation would have required partitions that extended all the way to the roof slab and costly modifications to ductwork, explains Jim French, DLR senior principal. One minor problem with the school is a lack of acoustical separation between adjacent spaces. The school also has many spaces where kids can socialize or study in small groups, including a student-managed café. Working within the existing shell, the designers developed a scheme that incorporated concepts new to the district, such as classrooms clustered around a common space and connected to each other with sliding doors-an arrangement intended to encourage collaborative teaching.
The project team also determined that the mechanical system could adequately serve the building’s new use.
#Joplin highschool free#
It was free of the problems that often plague unoccupied structures, such as water penetration and mold. With a budget of just over $50 per square foot, funded primarily by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the designers were fortunate to find the decade-long vacant store in good shape. “We needed manpower and design expertise fast,” explains Angie Besendorfer, assistant superintendent. Before the tornado, the district had been reviewing the team’s submittal for a proposed middle school. To direct the transformation of the 96,000-square-foot space from big-box retail to interim campus, administrators called in national architecture and engineering firm DLR Group and Joplin-based architect Corner Greer & Associates. Freshmen and sophomores, meanwhile, are using an early 20th century school building that previously housed teacher development programs. “I thought we would have rickety chairs and 20-year-old text books.” Instead, 1,100 juniors and seniors now attend class in a smartly renovated former department store at a local shopping mall. But, he anticipated makeshift conditions at best. Principal Kerry Sachetta never doubted that school would start on time.
After a deadly tornado tore through Joplin, Missouri last year on May 22, leveling the town’s high school, district officials pledged to be ready for the regularly scheduled start of the academic year-less than three months away.
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