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Baldwin Elementary and Intermediate School
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At Baldwin Elementary and Intermediate School, every space serves a purpose in advancing education. The new three-story building replaces a 1958 facility with an approach that puts adaptability first—from corridors that double as learning spaces to classrooms that shift with teaching styles. This is architecture that grows with its students, kindergarten through sixth grade.
Flexible Learning Environments
The school's design prioritizes flexible learning environments, with corridors doubling as extended learning spaces while maintaining circulation requirements. These areas feature smart projectors, monitors, and operable glass partitions that enable teachers to simultaneously supervise small group activities outside the classroom and larger groups within. When not used for instruction, these spaces accommodate teacher-student conferences, staff meetings, or multi-class collaborations.
Color-Driven Design Strategy
Student input directly influenced the interior design strategy, which uses color to create an engaging learning environment. The media center incorporates turquoise, lime green, navy blue, and yellow to stimulate student engagement, while the fifth and sixth grade wings feature sophisticated color schemes appropriate for intermediate students. Each elementary grade level's extended learning lab is distinguished by its own primary color palette.
Light-Filled Media Center
The second-floor media center exemplifies the building's emphasis on natural light, with large front windows and clerestory openings in the dining areas flooding the space. An adjacent outdoor terrace provides additional space for studying and socializing.
Adaptable Design
The design anticipates future needs through adaptable spaces that can be modified without significant expense. This flexibility was demonstrated when the school, which initially served kindergarten through fourth grade, successfully integrated fifth and sixth grade students into the third floor's extended learning labs.
Site Optimization
By utilizing the former operations office site and high school baseball field, the project maintained a compact footprint without requiring extensive site work or tree removal, minimizing environmental impact. The original school's demolition site was repurposed for permanent ball fields, completing the campus transformation.
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"Extended learning areas offer opportunities that make a positive impact for learning. Baldwin students now have the ability to break out from the traditional classroom into a visible area outfitted with technology that a standard hallway does not offer. Multiple groups can work within the space without disrupting each other. The ability to use the end of each extended learning area as a computer lab saves space while reducing scheduling conflicts. Baldwin has become the hotspot for staff professional development because of the extended learning areas. The spaces welcome collaboration as seating arrangements can be easily modified to suit different learning opportunities."
Russ Helton
Director of Facilities and Maintenance, Manassas City Public Schools
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