School Description
Gilpin ECE-8 is an urban school located in historic Five-Points, one of the oldest neighborhoods in metropolitan Denver. Our dedicated teachers and staff have chosen Gilpin to share their expertise in the areas of academics, socialization, technology, arts and leardership. Students at Gilpin benefit from high quality, uninterrupted ECE-8 grade programs minimizing the number of transistions students experience in their education. Our core academic programs focus on standards based learning directly aligned with state and federal guidelines. Everyone in the school works as a team to teach appropriate postive social behaviors and essential skills that students must have in order to be successful. Our school wide activities promote an understanding of and respect for one’s own culture and other cultures. The programs offered at Gilpin include: before and after school care for all children, half-day Early Childhood Education for four year olds, full-day kindergarten, traditional grades 1-8 classes, gifted and talented, English language instruction, AVID(Advancement via Individual Determination) classes for middle school students, Front Range Earth Force community service projects, middle school sports, after-school tutoring and computer, math, science, dance and Shakespeare clubs, Summer Scholars literacy and recreation programs as well as classes for parents.
Learning Landscapes Description
Major bus stops, transient population and an open and exposed site resulted in constant vandalism and a hostile school yard. The plan focused on how to reestablish a sense of place that was defensible for children playing and teachers walking from their car without creating a prison like atmosphere.
Gilpin Montessori School
Construction Date
August 2003
Landscape Architect
Architects by Design
Play Equipment Vendor
Play World Systems
Master Plan
Vision
The Gilpin Elementary School Master Plan will instill a sense of place for the Curtis Park and Five Points neighborhood by realizing the school yard as a neighborhood park that celebrates its place within the city and foster positive relationships among and between students and neighbors.
Goals
- Create a sense of place.
- Celebrating Gilpin Elementary’s place in the city.
- Foster positive relationships among and between Gilpin students and neighbors.
Design Development
Description
Major bus stops, transient population and an open and exposed site resulted in constant vandalism and a hostile school yard. The plan focused on how to reestablish a sense of place that was defensible for children playing and teachers walking from their car without creating a prison like atmosphere.
Illustrative Drawing
Design Development Drawings
Presentation Boards
Construction Documentation
Description from Architect
Project Description: Gilpin’s campus has an atypical use pattern due to busy public transportation on the block. This mandated that the new design work as a cohesive school campus, as an off-hours park, and as an access way between bus stops. Pedestrian foot traffic that formerly bisected the site was re-directed to a new garden path on site’s western edge. The school’s enclosed campus creates a secure playground comprised of traditional play, gardens, rock gardens, art elements, picnic tables, and shady groves.
Conceptual Plan: Gilpin’s playground design speaks to motion: curving walls, spiraling foot paths, shifting kinetic art all hint at the mutable, the ephemeral. Plant materials, grasses especially, wave in the wind. This idea of flux organizes the traditional play equipment within a series of interrelated arced play pits. Seat walls, picnic tables, and boulder enclaves form outdoor classrooms and community gathering spaces. Integral murals, tiled tables, and kinetic sculpture punctuate the site. The early childhood education playground, separated yet integrated, has the richness of the larger site within its own gardens, grass, shade, and play equipment. The Gilpin gateway epitomizes the larger site, simultaneously moving and changing while claiming a firmly grounded identity.
Results: Gilpin Elementary is transformed from an urban plaza/pedestrian throughway with little identity to a campus for the school. The large sculptural gateway welcomes school and community alike to pause and enjoy this campus/neighborhood park. The project was completed summer, 2003.
Illustrative Plan
Construction Drawings
Play Equipment
Shade Structure
GPD Land Design Project Summary