Chicago
Program: A four-story, 17,000-square-foot addition to the kindergarten- to eighth-grade Erie Elementary School’s existing quarters in a former Catholic school in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood. The expansion, which replaces a convent next door, adds a gymnasium, a library, a computer lab, offices, classrooms for after-school programs and adult education, and an open-air playground on the top floor. Located on a narrow, 46-by-125-foot corner lot, the new building marries into the floor plan of the existing four-story school.
Design concept and solution: Before the expansion, Erie Elementary sorely lacked a gym, a playground, and dedicated classrooms for after-school programs. John Ronan Architects needed to squeeze these normally space-hogging functions into a compact, vertical building on a skinny lot. And the addition had to sync up with each level of the original school, which has extremely low floor-to-floor heights of just over ten feet. To keep the new building’s bones thin and capture every available inch, the design team opted for a steel brace frame structure with precast concrete panels. Using precast meant they could cut down on the number of beams and strategically locate walls underneath beams in order to raise ceiling heights. The architects ran bulky ductwork vertically and concentrated the lighter ducts over offices and other small rooms, reserving the tallest spaces for classrooms. On the exterior, crayon-hued precast panels interlock with a checkerboard of low-e-coated windows so dark they read as flat voids. (The open-air playground, set behind a black steel-mesh screen on the fourth floor, reads as another.) Thanks to the camouflaging effect of the charcoal-hued glass, the design team was able to push the windows beyond the floors and ceilings without calling attention to the window frames and floor structure. From the inside, the glazing has an edgeless quality that helps decompress the small spaces. The architects carried over this space-conscious approach to the interior color palette. Gray vinyl tiles transition to blocky patterns of blue, yellow, and red near windows and in light-filled spaces, such as the double-height lobby.
