“Architectural Programming” – How a K-12 School Building is Planned

“Architectural Programming” - How a K-12 School Building is Planned
"Just how do you plan a new school building?" We get that question a lot from districts and owners at the beginning of their projects. Through our relationships with clients across Northeast Ohio, we have developed systems for success that address the design process known as "architectural programming."

The architectural design process is intense and spans months, with designers considering a building from many perspectives. Naturally, many of our clients ask, “What is the most important aspect of designing such a big building?”

The answer surprises most of our clients.

A foundational element of building design isn’t in the architectural drafting, detailing or 3D modeling. It’s not in the problem solving sessions or even a thorough and detailed understanding of construction techniques. Those are all significant, but the most important aspect begins well before a building is considered. It is realized early on in the design process and revealed in simple conversations, it’s known as “Architectural Programming.”

Abby Rainieri is the Educational Design Lead at ThenDesign Architecture and regularly engages with districts and architects in the pre-design phase called “Architectural Programming.” Having completed many successful projects, she has developed flexible processes for this phase that include determining project funding, community surveys, public engagement and OFCC design compliance.

Abby recounts, “Many times, our clients come to us, not even knowing what to ask for. This leads us to help them discover what they need and what to ask for. We call it “problem seeking.” It’s a lot of listening, data collecting, assessing a facility and trying to understand the problems they are trying to solve. We encourage conversations and explore multiple solutions with the goal of putting projects on an overall path to success. A lot of the biggest things we need to grapple with as we move into programming and schematic design are established in early planning conversations about the project. It sets the tone for the rest of the design process.”

Design Phases Simplified:

Master Planning and Architectural Programming

“Master Planning” proceeds “Programming” and is also a crucial time for conversation. During “Master Planning,” we seek to understand the unique educational needs of a school district, the condition of their existing facilities, their budgetary needs and any other curriculum requirements. Armed with this context, we have an all-encompassing understanding of who the project will serve. Only then, can we begin programming. 

To better grasp “architectural programming,” consider how computer programming works. Software designers need to consider how a proposed program should work, then write the complicated computer code to allow it to function. Throughout this process, they consider how an “end user” ultimately experiences that program and are responsible for making sure the features work for a wide variety of users. When updates are needed, they ensure these additions work cohesively with the existing software.

“Architectural programming” is quite similar. Early in the process, architects and designers work with future building users, clients and stakeholders to understand the features and functions desired for the finished building. Keeping in mind user experience, they create a list of ingredients, (square footage and spaces) that will make up the new building.

At this point, we aren’t even considering a building yet. We are brainstorming and talking through how the building should function in the future and its role in the community. We imagine the key activities inside and ensure enough space is allocated for those purposes. It’s only then that we can start to think about architecture. Once we have a clear idea for how the building should function and a list of needed spaces and their square footage to accomplish these functions, then we can start to think about architectural forms and materials.

The more effort put into the programming phase, the more likely the project emerges successful.

"Many times, our clients come to us, not even knowing what to ask for. So that leads us to help them discover what they need and what to ask for. We call it "problem seeking."
Abby Rainieri

“As we [document necessary spaces] we move into engagement and work sessions. Our “Educational Visioning Sessions,” are a piece of this, along with staff engagement. We take different user groups or a core team on tours of new buildings, so they can see how other districts have solved space problems. In this initial concept phase, we are getting further into planning and feedback. After that, we begin the traditional kind of architectural process of making diagrams and drawing plan iterations, then continue engagement with the community, the board and the staff.”

OFCC and Project Funding

How each project is funded also plays an integral role in the building process. Many districts find that partnering with the OFCC (Ohio Facilities Construction Commission) allows them to receive financial assistance and be able to build structures that would have been out of reach if they tried to do it alone.

Since 1999, the OFCC has provided over $700 million to districts across Ohio and has been involved in opening over 1,200 new or renovated school buildings. This is a common way districts pursue state funding based on their needs for future facilities. However, rarely does the OFCC fund a project in its entirety. District administrators still need to convince voters to approve school construction bond tax hikes to cover some building construction costs.

How does this impact the programming design phase? In order to qualify for assistance, the school design must follow guidelines directly from the OFCC to ensure the educational needs of the building are met. These guidelines come in the form of a “Program of Requirements” guideline or PORs. The POR is essentially a checklist of spaces and square footage that need to be allocated inside the building. Since each district is different, there are a number of POR options to consider. One option is a “Traditional POR.” This is the most rigid in terms of square footage and spacial requirements, another option is a “Partial Order Reduction POR,” this allows some flexibility in spatial requirements and allocating square footage. Another type of POR is the “High Performance Learning Environment (HPLE) POR” which gives the most flexibility in the design of educational spaces. However this plan needs to be accompanied by rigorous curriculum documentation and support from the district with professional development for teachers which include plans on how to use the spaces in their new curriculum. While flexible in design, this requires the most district planning early on to ensure the new space will work for students.

PORs directly influence architectural design, since they are the starting point–a list of spaces and square footages which need to be included in the building. It is the job of a creative designer to make the most of these spaces within the district’s given budget.

Engaged Learning Environments

“Within the traditional POR, there have been times when districts wanted to create extended learning areas. They wanted to create collaborative learning areas, but they’re not going to go through a documentation and educational visioning process for an HPLE. (Imagine a spectrum of traditional PORs on the left and contemporary student centered learning (HLPE PORs) on the right, some districts may fall in the middle of that spectrum.) We can work within the Traditional POR to make some extended learning spaces.

For the last five to ten years, a lot of districts have wanted to create extended learning areas or flexible learning spaces in their buildings. Since there wasn’t always a vehicle to do that within the “Traditional POR,” we carved away 10% chunks of some of the academic spaces, we’d gather those chunks up in what we called “donor square footage” and we would create those other types of learning spaces that they wanted. There are ways to manipulate and move within the Traditional POR and still design unique learning environments. Another example is to move the space dedicated to a media center or computer lab into classrooms or to other collaborative spaces, so students wouldn’t be confined to a central area but could access these resources in their classrooms. So, there is some flexibility in these plans, all of this planning and initial design takes place during architectural programming.”

Technically, programming is establishing the spatial relationships, quantities and functional solutions for an end user.
Abby Rainieri

Even though the OFCC is known for assisting with funding for public projects, they also help with comprehensive guidance throughout the project, from groundbreakings, to the demolition of old facilities, then to the completion and opening of the new building. They have resources to help smaller districts complete a large project such as a new school building.

“In order to ensure spaces are compliant with the OFCC standards, the architect partners with the OFCC, particularly in the early phases of design. “There’s either going to be a project administrator from the OFCC an OFCC planner, or what’s called an RPC (a Regional Programming Consultant) to check in on progress. So they’re essentially acting as eyes to review and make sure you’re following all the OFCC requirements. They’re the ones that are going to review square footages, and your overall building square footage once we start submitting drawings, to make sure you meeting requirements.”

Open Collaborative Learning Environments:

Architectural Programming: How a School Building is Designed

Having been through the programming phase many times as a registered architect, Abby places a huge important on this initial phase of design. “Technically, programming is establishing the spatial relationships, quantities and functional solutions for an end user.

As architects and designers, I think sometimes, we are too eager to jump into architecture. Sometimes the building owners are too. They’re excited, they want to see pretty pictures and almost immediately want to start planning a groundbreaking ceremony. However, if we set up an approach to program the building intentionally and with an open mind, we setup the successful integration between defining all the necessary spaces and the schematic design. We can create the best, most useful and interesting spaces this way. So that’s why I think architectural programming is so important.”

It's important to recognize how much of it is about communication and gathering and analyzing data ... ultimately we get to design something that serves, kids and young people.
Abby Rainieri

The design phase “programming” is key to a successful project. In this phase the architect, district, and community can imagine (or reimagine) what their building should be. Without being bound by costs, or materials, they can think broadly about how this structure can function, improving the lives of the community and students. Then armed with a list of spaces and square footage, the designer begins laying out diagrams to show relationships between spaces-which are the beginnings of successful architecture.

“Most of those actions, that I just described really don’t have anything to do with architecture. They integrate nicely with it, when we’re ready to go there. But it’s important to recognize how much of it is about communication and gathering and analyzing data. Then with the understanding that this is all K-12 architecture, ultimately we get to design something that serves kids and young people. I mean, come on, that’s just the coolest thing–and why I do this.”

Key Takeaways:

Let’s work together to make education better. Interested in speaking with us? Get in touch!

Ryan Caswell

Ryan Caswell

Communications

“Educational Visioning Sessions” – Imagining Better Ways to Educate

"Educational Visioning Sessions" - Imagining Better Ways to Educate
Educational Visioning Sessions are collaborative planning events, that allow architects, educators and students to ensure a future school construction project is successful. Working together, they identify goals, priorities and design solutions from a wide variety of perspectives. A robust Educational Visioning session encourages attendees to imagine better ways to educate generations of students through good design.

“Educational Visioning Sessions” are collaborative events that allow architects, school districts and the community to imagine all the ways a new school facility can provide better student opportunities. Early in the design process, they establish project goals, design challenges and priorities, along with introducing the architects and solidify relationships between stakeholders. It also provides a glimpse into how these new spaces will further the school district’s curriculum. During Educational Visioning Sessions, we are free to think openly, unencumbered with budget numbers, square footage totals and headcounts. We can imagine how this new building will positively affect our district, our educators, and the future of our community.

Facility Design - A Big Decision

According to the 2020 Facilities & Construction Brief by Spaces4Learning, educational spending has continually increased since 2013. As of 2019, the United States spends $98 billion dollars on educational construction projects annually. As the US population increases, so does the need for schools, colleges and research institutions. With the educational landscape shifting rapidly over the last several years due to technology changes, updated facilities are a necessity, attracting the best students and educators. Even though capital investment has generally increased, facilities’ needs have outpaced funding. The project backlog is unending and makes relationships between educational institutions and the AEC industry more important than ever.

While the decision to begin a new school construction project (including renovations to existing buildings) is thrilling, it is also incredibly stressful. Often years of preparation go into it, with dozens of people involved. Steps such as securing funding, passing bond issues, levies, existing facility assessments and master planning all lead up to the decision to build a new school. Since all budgets are limited, it’s necessary for every dollar spent to bring the maximum return for each district.

"Problem Seeking"

Abby Raineri, a lead designer at TDA regularly engages with districts and architects early in the design process. She is familiar with seeking out the needs of each district.

“Many times, our clients come to us, not even knowing what to ask for. So that leads us to help them discover what they need and what to ask for. We call it “problem seeking.” It’s a lot of listening, data collecting, assessing a facility, and trying to figure out the problems they are trying to solve. We encourage conversations and explore multiple solutions with the goal of putting projects on an overall path to success. A lot of the biggest things we need to grapple with as we move into programming and schematic design, are established in early planning conversations about the project. It sets the tone for the rest of the design process.”

If communication between the district, community and architect aren’t realized, then the project is primed for failure. These relationships drive a projects success. By getting a wide variety of perspectives and identifying any roadblocks early on, it ensures the new school satisfies both the present and future needs of the community.

Educational Visioning Sessions

Early phases of design include an Educational Visioning Session. These unique events bring teachers, students, administrators, board members, local safety forces, community members and clergy together to discuss the project and ultimately serve as the genesis of the design. It’s not uncommon to have over 100 people in attendance taking part in these initial conversations. Ideas for the future building generated by participants are shared in round-table discussions and other interactive group activities. Grassroots ideas from those who will use the new structure are distilled and streamed into future plans. This is a time for architects to listen and capture the concerns and goals from these groups that will inform our design process.

They are a collaborative activity that results in a comprehensive planning tool for an educational institution. This session, often scheduled for the project kickoff, runs concurrently with the programming phase, usually long before we are thinking about the building’s shape. Everything is thrown against the wall (before we have designed walls to throw things at).

While all Educational Visioning Sessions are uniquely tailored to our clients, they can range from a few hours or last an entire day, depending on needs. They include presentations from the design team on the current state of education, the district’s desired curriculum, the current facilities and their limitations and cover plans for the future facility. The team presents case studies for how similar districts have handled facility upgrades, before we break out into small group discussions and other hands-on activities. These activities are designed to capture unique ideas for design solutions and get a sense of the visual direction for the project.

While our current circumstances don’t allow us to meet in large groups in the same way, we have a fully staffed communications department that enables us to perform these engagement sessions through staff polling, video production and other digital feedback activities.

This collaboration is why districts return to us again and again to provide architectural and planning services. We listen to our client’s needs and empower them to drive the initial designs and produce a completely unique building. This diversity of input is a hallmark of our design strategy and one element that strengthens our portfolio.

"Many times, our clients come to us, not even knowing what to ask for. So that leads us to help them discover what they need and what to ask for. We call it "problems seeking."
ABBY RAINERI
Registered Architect

Continuing Education

Engagement doesn’t stop at the Visioning Sessions early in the project but continues throughout the design process. During the planning and construction phases of design, TDA engages educators in training sessions as the project’s completion approaches. At these events, project designers, along with future occupants, attend a series of meetings dedicated to coaching and professional development. These sessions also include, brainstorming activities and interactive projects, that are geared towards training educators and administrators on ways to engage students in their new building. They are invaluable for collaboratively rethinking the way educational spaces can be used to promote student learning. This crucial component is a link between the early Educational Visioning Sessions and a fully occupied building.

Abby notes the importance of continually mining feedback from stakeholders. “Early on during the “programming phase” of building design, we move into engagement and work sessions. Our “Educational Visioning Sessions,” are a piece of this, along with staff engagement. We take different user groups or a core team on tours of new buildings, so they can see how other districts have solved space problems. In this initial concept phase, we are getting further into planning and feedback. After that, we begin the traditional kind of architectural process of making diagrams and drawing plan iterations, then continue engagement with the community, the board and the staff.”

Then, through exit interviews and teacher surveys, we measure how these architectural designs impact the education experience. We have found significant benefits such as reduced behavioral issues in the classroom, increased teaching time, and additional opportunities for student collaboration. All of these ensure that each student receives the best education possible.

We encourage student engagement throughout the process and have led student oriented charettes allowing them to help design new playgrounds, walk the construction site for facility updates and take an active role in construction by placing stones in a structure’s foundation before the floor slab is poured or by signing their names on beams before installation.

In addition, we hold community meetings during Schematic Design and Design Development to update the public on the building layout, getting their feedback on how the exterior of the building develops. We believe that professional educators should influence the design of the interior of the building and the community determines the exterior aesthetic. We have developed a number of interactive exercises to gauge what aesthetic the community feels most strongly about.

In short, we intentionally emphasize the needs of people and their experience as much as the building itself.

"So, it was a process of even delineating which goals were important to them or not. The architect shouldn't necessarily drive the stakeholder’s goals. It's their building, so they need to tell us what's important."
ED SHEARSON
Registered Architect

Ideas Come from Anywhere

We find that great ideas often come from very unconventional places. Chris Smith, TDA’s president recalled an instance where ideas on school security came from a third-grade student. He recounts: “We believe good ideas can come from anywhere and that means from anybody…We’ve had the strangest ideas come from the coolest places. When we were investigating school security and the potential of armed intruders, we were on the forefront of designing those guidelines. We actually got an idea from a young student in one of our collaborative processes and our Educational Visioning Sessions. They came up with an idea to color code the building so that if there was an intruder in their elementary school, they could say “the bad person is in the red part of the building or the blue part of the building.” That led to some very intuitive design standards that are still enforced today and it came from a third-grade student. So, the educational design process with school buildings in general is a very collaborative process, not only collaborative with our own designers but with the public at large.”

In another instance on the recently opened Garrett Morgan High School, the idea to split the building into two sections [public and school related functions] with a connecting bridge, came from a councilman involved at an educational visioning session. Jeff Henderson, a lead architect on the project mentioned: “We were on a very urban, commercial street, Detroit Ave. There was a desire not to have parking along the street, but still keep the front entrance there. That would force occupants to park on the opposite side of the site and walk all the way around the building. The councilman that was involved says, “I don’t want anybody to have to walk around the building, I want them to walk to the front door, which wants to be on Detroit Ave.” So that comment in part, resulted in the solution where we fractured the building into 2 sections and put a bridge on the second floor. This allowed everybody to circulate right from the parking lot, underneath the building and into the front door. So that was a big design challenge that was addressed in a collaborative session.”

Ed Shearson, who served as Project Manager on that building recalled: “There was a large stakeholder meeting early on in the project and it involved representatives from Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD), the City of Cleveland, Gordon Square Planning Commission and local residents. We developed an inventory of goals for the site and they voted on that. Just because the architect notes a goal, that doesn’t mean it’s a goal the stakeholders share. So, it was a process of even delineating which goals were important to them or not. The architect shouldn’t necessarily drive the stakeholder’s goals. It’s their building, so they need to tell us what’s important.”

We believe that this collaboration and relationship building makes our process unique and successful. Educational Visioning Sessions establish a clear vision forward and how a district can use their new building to benefit students. It is an opportunity to build trust, develop support and champions for the project and incorporate the needs of the stakeholders into the finished building.

Key Takeaways

Let’s work together to make education better. Interested in speaking with us? Get in touch!

Ryan Caswell

Ryan Caswell

Ryan is a communications specialist who is passionate about using digital media to further the goals of organizations and communities in Northeast Ohio. With a background in construction and a degree in architecture, he spent over a decade in corporate video production and brings this mindset to videography, editing, photography and content marketing. He is passionate about supporting the arts, and can be found hiking in the parks system.